{"id":1063,"date":"2012-11-03T18:02:24","date_gmt":"2012-11-03T18:02:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/?p=1063"},"modified":"2012-11-12T15:54:00","modified_gmt":"2012-11-12T15:54:00","slug":"if-these-quilts-could-talk-signals-along-the-underground-railroad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/?p=1063","title":{"rendered":"If These Quilts Could Talk: Signals along the Underground Railroad"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Rita Cox and her version of a monkey-wrench code quilt.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

____________<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

If These Quilts Could Talk\u2026African American Quilting Traditions<\/em><\/strong>. <\/strong>Quilts by Rita Cox and others. King Drive Commons Gallery and Studio, 2775 N. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Drive, Milwaukee – 414.704.9117. <\/strong><\/p>\n

Remaining exhibit hours with Rita Cox, 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday, November 10 and 17.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

In a wooded region just over the Kentucky border in Ohio, the black woman peered outside and saw\u00a0no one around. She dragged out a large, richly\u00a0patterned quilt and hung it out\u00a0on the clothes line, even though the quilt was not wet. The wind caught the cloth and the fabric danced ponderously alone, waiting for the right set of eyes to arrive to appreciate it.<\/p>\n

The day passed and the woman inside the small cabin grew anxious, but held out faith.<\/p>\n

Dusk fell and a small group of armed white horsemen\u00a0trundled up the heavily rutted road. They halted their horses and one man in a uniform dismounted and began patrolling the yard. He poked at the quilt with his rifle. Then he walked up to the door and\u00a0kicked the door open and found the cabin empty.<\/p>\n

The woman had heard the men coming and had gathered her children and hid behind bushes away from their shack, but with a view of the intruders. The sheriff with the rifle, slightly frustrated, walked back out and suddenly\u00a0fired a shot straight at the hanging quilt. The smallest hiding child wailed and her mother stifled her — that quilt kept the child and two sisters warm at night.<\/p>\n

The family huddled in horror, certain the men would find them.<\/p>\n

But the sheriff spit on the doorstep and cursed under his breath, then remounted and the group rode away.<\/p>\n

Overcome, the mother fell from her crouch down to her knees, in gratitude.<\/p>\n

What had happened?<\/p>\n

In the same instant her child wailed,\u00a0a hawk had swooped down with a fierce cry from the opposite direction, distracting the men from the child\u2019s utterance.<\/p>\n

Only an hour later, three\u00a0Africans, fleeing\u00a0from\u00a0plantation bondage, came up the very same pathway. The mother, back in her home with her children, saw the three people out front, through the window. One of them noticed the large gunshot hole torn in the quilt.<\/p>\n

\u201cGet down, be quiet!\u201d he hissed.<\/p>\n

He breathlessly scanned the terrain\u00a0and heard nothing but the wind whistling through the trees. All of the refugees crept closer to examine the gently waving quilt and, in the early moonlight, spied an image sewn into the cloth pattern — in the shape of a monkey wrench.<\/p>\n

This was all they needed to know, for now. It was time for them to return home, pull out a wrench to tighten up the wheels of their wagon and swiftly make all preparations for the\u00a0hard and perilous flight north, to Canada.<\/p>\n

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They would hope to reach\u00a0the next\u00a0signal —\u00a0another hanging quilt with another covert symbol,\u00a0another key to\u00a0freedom. How much better a hanging quilt than a black man, as Billie Holiday sang,\u00a0hanging like strange fruit from a poplar tree?<\/p>\n

______________<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

A question remains. Did something like this quilt-signal scene ever take place?<\/p>\n

The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 decreed that any enslaved Africans who had escaped plantations must be returned to the owners. The woman hanging the coded quilt\u00a0 violated the dubious federal law, risking recrimination as much as the fugitives. The law was stiflingly draconian: Any federal official who did not arrest \u2013 or any person aiding \u2013 slavery runaways were subject to six months’ imprisonment and a $1,000 fine. Law-enforcement officials were required to arrest any runaway suspect on no more evidence than a claimant’s sworn testimony of ownership. Officers\u00a0capturing a \u201cfugitive slave\u201d * were entitled to a bonus or promotion for their work. Suspected runaways could not ask for jury trial or testify on their own behalf. 1<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Underground Railroad scene painted by Paul Collins. Avisca.com<\/em><\/p>\n

The quilt codes were reportedly used during the period of the Underground Railroad (approximately 1780-1860), the\u00a0escape-route\u00a0system for slavery refugees to reach Canada, where the Fugitive Slave Act didn’t apply (Wisconsin was the only U.S. state that did not enforce the act). So brave women began hanging the\u00a0 signal-laden quilts out right on Southern plantations. Yet the quilt code is hidden in the lore of the oral tradition as surely as the quilts themselves. To date, no coded-quilt artifacts from that era remain, says artist Rita Cox, whose quilts are on display.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, quilts were a central part of enslaved and African-American women\u2019s culture, and continue to be, as evidenced by the fascinating traveling exhibit The Quilts of Gee’s Bend<\/em> at the Milwaukee Art Museum in 2003.<\/p>\n

If These Quilts Could Talk\u2026\u201d<\/em><\/strong>,<\/em> Cox’s evocative and provocative King Drive Gallery exhibit of Underground Railroad-inspired \u201ccode\u201d quilts, documents what may have been a crucial aspect of communications among Africans attempting to escape bondage during the heyday of slavery and up to the Civil War.<\/p>\n

A large crowd gathered for the exhibit opening\u00a0recently during Gallery Night, a vibrant, multi-cultural event organized by gallery director Marquita Edwards, which included live jazz by the Larry Moore Trio, hot food, and performances by several members of the Hansberry-Sands Theater Company. Edwards sees the event as providing community healing though the arts, “a holistic, preventative approach to living.” She also operates a holistic fitness studio next door.<\/p>\n

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Photos of Rita Cox and pages of\u00a0“Hidden in Plain View” by Richard Allen<\/em><\/p>\n

Each of the large quilts by Cox is a down-home, New World symphony of vibrant colors, textures and patterns. By turns rough-hewn and elegant, the sewn cloth swatches nudge, elbow and commingle with each other. Yet Cox\u2019s artful eye and mastery of both machine and hand stitching organizes each whole into\u00a0visually pleasing rhythmic counterpoint.<\/p>\n

On Gallery Night, the quilts\u2019 visual musicality echoed the variations spun by saxophonist Moore, or drummer Kim Zick\u2019s sharp partitions of sound and silence in her \u201cTake Five\u201d solo.<\/p>\n

And within each quilt pattern lies a visual symbol that, according to the African-American oral tradition, signaled or instructed escaped black plantation laborers on how to reach freedom.<\/p>\n

Although the story of “code quilts” has persisted in the black oral tradition at least since the 1800s, it gained little wider visibility or credence until the 1999 book Hidden In Plain View: A Secret Story Of Quilts And The Underground Railroad<\/em>, which informed and inspired Cox\u2019s quilts.<\/p>\n

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Pages from the book “Hidden in Plain View.”\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

The book was written by art historian and Howard University professor, Raymond Dobard, Jr. and Jacqueline Tobin, a Colorado college instructor. Dobard based her interpretations of the quilt blocks on oral testimony of former attorney and quilt vendor Ozella McDaniel Williams, from her family\u2019s oral lore. Williams recited a poem revealing the code to Tobin over a period of three years, (until the total “code” was revealed). Here\u2019s an example of the covert information Tobin received from Williams:<\/p>\n

“The monkey wrench<\/strong> (shifting spanner) turns the wagon wheel toward Canada on a bear’s paw<\/strong> trail to the crossroads<\/strong>.”<\/p>\n

“Once they got to the crossroads they dug a log cabin<\/strong> on the ground. (bypass) told them to dress up in cotton and satin bow ties<\/strong> and go to the cathedral church<\/strong>, to \u00a0get married, and exchange double wedding rings<\/strong><\/p>\n

Flying geese<\/strong> stay on the drunkard\u2019s path<\/strong> and follow the stars<\/strong>.”<\/p>\n

Each boldfaced term above was illustrated as a quilt-code symbol. After the monkey wrench signal, an important ensuing symbol was the \u201cbears claw,\u201d which directed fugitives to follow bear tracks to water, to sustain them along the exodus.<\/p>\n

An accomplished seamstress from childhood, Cox studied fashion design and business at Mount Mary College and learned quilting at an adult enrichment class offered by Milwaukee Public Schools.<\/p>\n

\u201cI gravitated to many of these symbols because I liked them before I even knew they were Underground Railroad symbols,\u201d Cox explains.<\/p>\n

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Underground Railroad Monument, Battle Creek, Michigan http:\/\/www.avisca.com\/Html\/Avisca_2028.htm<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Some historians dispute the\u00a0coded quilts as mere legend because there is no written record before Dobard and Tobin\u2019s book and — following the code of secrecy — many of the stories remained untold.<\/p>\n

Yet the dire circumstances of the enslaved Africans\u2019 situation make the story of the coded quilts a plausible reality of necessity, the mother of invention. Southern chattel slavery’s hardships and\u00a0cruelty\u00a0stain America’s soul, and were famously dramatized in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel\u00a0Uncle Tom’s Cabin<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Cox reminds us that slave owners forbade Africans to keep many of their traditions, and functional literacy was outlawed for the enslaved.<\/p>\n

But an ancient tradition persisted. \u201cThe African griot\u2019s job in life was to memorize and pass on orally information to a whole village,\u201d Cox says. \u201cBecause it’s not written down, Europeans don’t give it credence.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd some of the quilt symbols came from Africa. Unwittingly the slave holders allowed them make these quilt patterns. This gave you information on what to do and not do, without putting anyone in danger or tipping your hand. And they would not discuss the information among people they did not trust,\u201d Cox added.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow would they know where to go when they spent all their lives on a plantation? They needed a means of communication, because it was against the law for them to read and write.\u201d<\/p>\n

It’s rare that\u00a0decorative art is so fraught with such dark and heroic history. Like a stroke of genius in an espionage caper, the secret symbols worked while hidden — in plain view. They say art imitates life but, in this case, cunning art\u00a0helped liberate life.<\/p>\n

________<\/p>\n

The King Drive Gallery quilt exhibit\u00a0is sponsored by The Martin Luther King Jr. Economic Development Corporation.<\/strong> <\/strong><\/p>\n

* <\/strong>Cox explains that the term \u201censlaved Africans\u201d is preferred to \u201cslave\u201d because they did not simply \u201cgive up or give in to their oppressors; they resisted by every means possible.\u201d<\/p>\n

1 http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Fugitive_Slave_Act_of_1850<\/a><\/p>\n

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                  Rita Cox and her version of a monkey-wrench code quilt. ____________ If These Quilts Could Talk\u2026African American Quilting Traditions. Quilts by Rita Cox and others. King Drive Commons Gallery and Studio, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1063","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-www-kevernacular-com"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hJWE-h9","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1063","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1063"}],"version-history":[{"count":37,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1063\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1111,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1063\/revisions\/1111"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1063"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1063"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1063"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}