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Homemade quilts were very popular in the United States before the Civil War. Most were valued for their
usefulness, beauty, and quality of work, but some were also used for other purposes. People who helped
slaves escape from the South to the North and Canada used the quilts to show directions for the Underground
Railroad, a secret system that helped slaves travel to freedom. Read the article about "slave quilts" and
answer the questions that follow.
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[Internet Editor's Note: The horizontal gray bars below represent page breaks in the printed document.]
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Pattern for Freedom: |
Women's Quilts as Art |
by Susan Goldman Rubin
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| SLAVE QUILTS |
| 1 | Over the years, women have made quilts not only to produce something useful, but
as a form of self-expression. They have needed beauty despite the ugliness of their
surroundings. Women who could not even read or write have passed on their emotions,
histories, and religious beliefs through quilting. Sometimes women have even fought
back and resisted oppression with quilts. Many of their creations are so brilliantly
original and beautiful that they are considered art. |
| 2 |
Before the Civil War, African American slave women on plantations made quilts
in their "spare time." That is, after the day's work was done or on Saturday afternoons
and Sunday evenings. Children helped, too.
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| 3 |
The slaves made two kinds of quilts: some based on European American designs
and others with their own patterns. Africans who had been captured and enslaved
came from many countries and spoke different languages. They handed on their
traditions by telling stories and making quilts. According to scholars, some African
quilts communicate information in a secret code. A cross shaped like an X, for
example, signifies a crossroads. Conveying messages this way was commonplace in
African culture. Tribes that had no written language taught ancestral customs, events,
and legends through textiles. The snake motif represented the West African god of
fertility, 1 and flower patterns symbolized the Haitian goddess of love. Slaves taught
each other designs such as "Cotton Leaf," "Tulip," "Tree of Paradise," "Log Cabin in
the Lane," and "Whirligig."
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| 1 | god of fertility — god of the harvest |
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| 4 |
Many black quilt makers thought it boring to repeat the same design over and
over, so they invented original patterns. The Crazy Quilt2 was started by a slave
named Hannah in North Carolina. When Hannah was twelve years old, her master,
John Logan, gave her to his daughter as a wedding gift. Logan also gave his new
son-in-law a twelve-year-old slave boy named Pharoh. Hannah became a house
servant and Pharoh became a blacksmith on the plantation. Later they married and
had a daughter, Emma. Hannah made many quilts. One of her last was the Crazy
Quilt. She died before it was done, and Emma completed it in 1895, stitching the
words, "Finished by M." |
| 5 |
A slave woman in Mississippi created patterns inspired by nature. Years later
her daughter showed one particular quilt to a museum curator and told how it was
made. "My mother wove that white cloth an' the thread it's quilted with," she said.
"The red an' green an' blue pieces was bought from the store, but she got the pattern
by goin' out into the woods an' gettin' a leaf to cut it by. The two parts of the pattern
is cut from the bull-tongue leaf and the gopher grass. The quilt is about ninety years
old, an' it was made when people was smart, an' went into the woods to get their
patterns." |
| 6 |
Most slaves could not read or write. It was against the law to teach them. But
they left a record of their lives in the quilts they designed. Their choices of bold
color, odds and ends of fabric, and wild patterns expressed their feelings. Red, a
favorite color, symbolized a woman's birth process and a man's role as hunter and
warrior. Blue represented protection for the maker of the quilt. But superstitions
went along with quilting. "Don't start to sew a piece of goods on Friday unless you
are sure you can get it done before night, for that is bad luck," said one slave. And
the color black often meant someone might die. |
| 7 |
However, black later came to have a different meaning on the Underground
Railroad. When runaway slaves trying to escape to the North saw a quilt with black
fabric hanging on a clothesline or airing in a window, they knew they could safely
stop at that house. If the popular "Log Cabin" design had a black square in the
center instead of the usual red (representing a fireplace), it signaled a safe house.
Other patterns, such as "Jacob's Ladder," sent the same signal. Quilts conveyed
secret messages in the Underground Railroad Quilt Code. |
| 8 |
One scholar learned about the code from an African American craftswoman,
Mrs. Ozella McDaniel Williams, to whom the story had been passed down.
Williams explained that different shapes gave traveling instructions. Quilts with
zigzag patterns such as "Drunkard's Path" told escapees to take an indirect route
and double back in order to escape slave catchers. "Drunkards weave back and
forth, never moving in a straight line," Williams said. A star meant to follow the
North Star. The "Flying Geese" pattern instructed the fleeing slaves to head north
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| 2 | Crazy Quilt — a quilt made of pieces of cloth in various colors, shapes, and sizes with no real pattern |
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in the springtime, just like geese. Although the pattern has triangles pointing north,
east, south, and west, the quilter made one set a different color, thus showing which
way to go. Even the stitches told what paths to take. "The length of the stitches and
the position of the stitches formed a language that only the slave would know," said
Williams. The quilts became maps and helped many slaves escape to freedom.
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Text from ART AGAINST THE ODDS by Susan Goldman Rubin, copyright © 2004 by Susan Goldman Rubin. Used by permission of
Crown Publishers, an imprint of Random House Children's Books, a division of Random House, Inc. |
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