The "Ross Code"
As evidence of a "quilt code", the authors of Hidden in Plain View
point to what is known among historians as the "Ross
Code". This system of code words, well-documented as
having been used by UGRR conductors, was named after white abolitionist
Alexander Ross. who described it in his 1875 and 1893 memoirs.
But in their lengthy discussion of the "Ross Code", Tobin
and Dobard never cite Ross. Instead, they resort to two
20th century sources - a book written in 1958 by an author
known for her "historical novels," and a 1993
children's book - one of fourteen children's books in the only list of sources Hidden in Plain View contains:
Ross code used numbers, pious phrases, and the times of the
day to instruct slaves in running away.... Ross utilized
numbers and poetic descriptions in formulating his code. We
are told that Pennsylvania was recognized as number 20:
Media, Ohio, was number 27; Cleveland, Ohio, was called
"Hope"; Sandusky, Ohio, was known as
"Sunrise," and Detroit, Michigan, was dubbed
"midnight." The entryways into Canada were
described by words of praise and thanksgiving to the
Almighty: "Glory to God" meant Windsor, Ontario,
and "God be praised," stood for Port Stanley (Buckmaster,
p. 249). As such, one proposed message reads: " We hope
to rise at sunrise; they we rest by midnight,"
(Hamilton, Many Thousand Gone, p. 117).
Translated, the message states: Cleveland to Sandusky
to Detroit. The final destination was Ontario ("Glory
to God and God be praised"). Buckmaster and others
missed a probable reference to the Buxton- Chatham area in
Canada where several early Black settlements existed...
Tobin and Dobard bothered to read either of Ross's firsthand accounts,
they would have discovered that among all the code words he mentions, not
one is for a city or location. The "city codes"
first materialize in Buckmaster's book without any indication of her
source, much like Fry's claim about Log Cabin quilts. Hamilton in turn
apparently based her book on Buckmaster (who cheerfully admits to a
"slight partisanship"). Since Hidden in Plain
View cites only Buckmaster and Hamilton, not Ross, one wonders
whether Tobin and Dobard neglected to check these books' accuracy
against the primary source or whether, upon learning that Ross's own
words do not support Buckmaster's assertions, they simply chose to
ignore Ross's firsthand account. (I am very grateful to Christopher
Densmore for his excellent analysis of this subject, which you can
read by clicking here.)
from the Soul
Also cited by
Tobin and Dobard is Gladys-Marie
Fry's 1990 book Stitched
from the Soul.
there are indications that the author - a folklorist, not a textile historian -
accepted without question whatever oral tradition she was
given without substantiating it with independent research.
It is worth noting that Fry personally examined textiles only "when possible" and that (rather amazingly, since Fry is not a quilt historian), oral histories regarding the age of the quilts were often taken at face value.
Apparently Fry did not think it necessary to routinely corroborate the ages claimed for the quilts by using a very simple process: examine the printed fabrics the quilts contain. That is the first step a legitimate quilt appraiser takes in dating a quilt, since
printing and dye technology has changed in measurable ways over the past 200 years, and obviously a quilt cannot be any older than the fabrics it contains.
That omission in methodology may explain why, for example, the five quilts described as "made by Phyllis, a slave imported from the Congo in 1818 as a twelve- or thirteen-year-old girl" are quite visibly made from fabrics
dating to the 1930s and 1940s (if the maker had been well over 125 years old, would Fry not have noted it?), and why those made by "slave Nancy Vaugn Ford" (described as "good examples of the utilitarian quilts slaves made by slaves for their own use
in their own time") contain an op-art heart print in several colorways and a cheery apple kitchen curtain fabric, both from the 1960s.
But Fry's confusion is not limited to quilts with only oral histories.
the quilts in Stitched from the Soul is an unusual
figural appliqué quilt which Fry says was made c.1850 by
"Jane Batson" and "her niece". The
quilt also appears in quilt historian and curator Sandi Fox's
book Wrapped in Glory. Fox discusses it in
detail, with a very different conclusion about its age. In
1988, the owner of the quilt identified it as being made by Mary
Jane Batson and her granddaughter Mariah Chapman, who
passed it on to her own niece Malinda Spain in 1922.
Names aside, as to the
quilt dating from c.1850, Fox observes:
to what oral traditional suggests about the quilt's
provenance, the surface of the piece provides evidence
(in detail and design) that the blocks could not
have been worked in the antebellum period. Beneath
one small foot the background fabric (a handwoven
linen, slightly foxed) reveals that a small line of
sewing machine stitching has been removed from what
might have been an old garment [used to make the
quilt]. The most telling evidence, however, is in
the silhouette of the costumed ladies, who all wear
bustles and hats dateable to the late 1870s or 80s...almost
all of the articles of clothing on this quilt were
available from 1870s mail order catalogs, and [the
bowtie on one male figure, rather than a loose
antebellum-style cravat] may represent a commercially
available cravat....the shoes [on one female figure]
are very clearly seen to be an 1870s style with
tongues...she wars a cape similar to those popular in
Fry simply took the word of folklorist John Michael Vlach, who in
his 1978 catalog for The African-American Tradition in
Decorative Arts misdates the Batson quilt. Vlach also
declares unequivocally that "[t]here is nothing African or
Afro-American about this quilt except its maker." The
Batson quilt does not fit neatly into the ten criteria Vlach
devises for African-American quilts. Thus, we are
told, a masterpiece made by two generations of African-American
women isn't truly African-American because to a white male
academic, it just doesn't "look" black
of other "antebellum" quilts in
Fry's book appear to
be made from 20th century fabric. If Fry simply took whatever
the quilts' owners told her at face value, how reliable is the
rest of the information in her book - particularly when (as
with her claim about Log Cabin quilts), she cites no source?
analytical style is further illustrated in this
video clip. Among her claims are that floral garlands
surrounding a quilt's center motif are "cleverly disguised
snakes." Apparently Fry is blissfully unaware of the
19th century popularity of broderie perse, in which floral motifs cut from
expensive printed chintz fabric were rearranged into decorative
designs including serpentine borders, particularly on
center-medallion quilts - for
example, the one made by a well-to-do Maryland woman 50 years
before Fry's example. (Note as well the handles on the
vase.) Such quilts are based on the images in the first palampore coverlets imported from India in the early 17th century, such as this one from Textiles in America. Fry even sees "snakes" in the way four
letters of the recipient's name are slightly slanted, apparently
never considering that the maker might have worked without
drafting tools. (Video at 2:59) As "proof" of her
analysis she holds up what she says is a modern, sequined
"voodoo flag". What might Fry say about the images in this coverlet, made by a white Tennessean of German ancestry in 1792, or this
one, made by a white Connecticut woman in 1813?
then turns herbalist (video at about 5:00), describing the
"medicinal plants" embroidered on another quilt she says
was made by "a 16-year-old slave boy practicing to be a
medical doctor". She points out "Star
of Bethlehem" as "good for stomach ailments"
(in fact, it causes digestive distress and heart arrhythmia),
inexplicably confounds the irritant "Mother-in-Law's
with "Rabbit Tobacco" (Cudweed)
as "a tea for herbs and salves", and identifies a
carefully embroidered, five-fingered lady's gauntlet glove and White
Oak leaf as immature and mature sassafras
(sassafras leaves sometimes resemble a mitten, and have up
to three lobes or "fingers").
it, HIPV could not have been written"
One of the
enthusiastic introductions to
Hidden in Plain View was written by Maude Southwell
Wahlman, a white professor of art history and author of Signs & Symbols: African
Images in African American Quilts. Tobin returns the favor with a lavish
encomium for the 2001 edition of Signs
& Symbols, claiming that without
Wahlman's "research and documentation, Hidden in Plain View could not have
It is notable that Ozella approached Tobin with her "quilt code"
story not long after Signs & Symbols appeared in
book started out as a thesis, and then became a journal article; subsequent versions vary somewhat from the original edition of the book, so page references below may not be accurate in all cases. It is 141 pages long and
contains hundreds of footnotes, but although its subject is
quilts, citations of quilt historians
are all but nonexistent. (The author does, however,
reference both Stitched from the Soul and Sweet Clara and the
Freedom Quilt.) Rather than reinforcing Wahlman's
assertions, the few footnotes citing quilt historian Cuesta
Benberry actually raise doubts.
In the end, the authority whom Wahlman
points to most frequently is herself. And although Wahlman
repeatedly states that quilts "could have" or
"might have" been used as signals on the Underground
Railroad, she never provides any supporting evidence other
than the unsubstantiated claims of Fry and Joyce Scott.
Cultural retentions - America vs. Caribbean and Brazil
dispute that every transplanted ethnic group hands down a
variety of cultural preferences in everything from what is
considered "tasty" to how closely people stand to each
other when they are talking. Surely African-Americans are no
exception. But as generations pass, these cultural norms tend to dilute,
not intensify. Quiltmaking among the Old Order Amish is a prime example.
The Amish did not bring this craft with them when they emigrated
to America, but learned it through contact with non-Amish
neighbors in the years following the Civil War (the earliest reliably-dated
Amish quilt dates to around 1870). They adapted the craft
to their own needs, and for generations, Amish quilts were
produced in a remarkably homogeneous, insular setting with strict design
rules based in religious faith and a conscious desire for
conformity. Since WWII, however, Amish quilts have gradually
devolved, thanks to greater contact with outsiders, particularly
tourists. Collectors who want a "typical" Amish
quilt now have to specifically request the makers use
"old" colors and patterns, or they will receive one
indistinguishable from quilts made by "mainstream"
Americans. (For more information on traditional Amish quilts, click here.)
But unlike the insular Amish, African slaves and their descendants were constantly exposed to the dominant, white (and primarily Anglo-)American culture. As Jonathan Holstein observes:
The Lancaster Amish had
remained since their arrival in the New World in discrete groups
gathered in specific living areas, and their quilt aesthetics
showed until recently a high degree of cultural homogeneity and
conformity. African-Americans had lived everywhere in the United
States and were as varied in circumstances, attitude and condition
as any other Americans.
As examples of her "signs and symbols," Wahlman points to folk art from Haiti and Brazil, implying that since Africanisms are often found in, e.g., the drapo vodou of Haiti, they must also exist in
African-American quilts. But slavery in the US differed significantly from that in Brazil and the Caribbean in ways that had a direct impact on the transmission of Africanisms:
- Demographics. High mortality and low birth rates among slaves in South America and the islands demanded a constant influx of African-born slaves to replace them; such imports continued until 1860.
American slaves lived longer and had a high birth rate, and while some smuggling from the Caribbean into New Orleans and the Florida Panhandle did occur, importation was banned in 1808. Thus Afro-Caribbeans have a much more recent, more direct experience of
African culture than do African-Americans.
- Degree of cultural isolation.
The average Brazilian plantation had hundreds slaves who lived in virtual isolation from whites. After its 1804 revolution, Haiti was virtually all black; it then banned Catholic priests
(and thus their significant cultural influence) until 1860. Well into the 18th century, Brazilian slaveowners were importing fabric from West Africa for their slaves. Conversely, the average American plantation had fewer than 25 slaves, who had daily contact with the dominant culture and were actively discouraged from expressing their
own, by 1860, 99% of slaves in America were born in the US. The only African-American
subgroup which can reasonably be compared to that of Afro-Caribbeans is the Gullah culture of the islands on South Carolina's coast, where African slaves and their descendants were much more free to continue African traditions without interference. Among the
Gullah, Africanisms persist in abundance; no scholarly reinterpretation is required to find them.
Wahlman seems merely to be addressing the roots of aesthetics which
influence some (but by no means
all) quilts made by blacks. In her introduction, she even points out that
while some African-American quilts have a different
aesthetic from those made by their white counterparts,
designs in African quilted textiles and African American quilts might be
coincidental, due to the technical process of piecing that reduces cloth
to geometric shapes.
words, since a quilt's "building blocks" are squares, circles, and triangles,
even if people have different cultural heritages they are likely
to come up with similar designs.
having admitted the similarity might be entirely coincidental, Wahlman devotes her book to what she says are specific "signs
and symbols" from Africa which black Americans have somehow
passed down through ten generations. This
comes as a surprise to the nonprofessionals in her book,
who are blissfully unaware of the hidden messages in
their quilts. Until Wahlman enlightens them, they think they are
just being creative. (Some, like Charlie
Logan, sound insulted by Wahlman's assertions:
"I taught myself. It doesn't mean
also come as a surprise to Australian quilters. The
traditional Australian "wagga" coverlet, made for generations by
British and European settlers and their descendants,
blends in perfectly with the quilts Wahlman points to as
uniquely African-American. (For a look at more
traditional Australian quilts, click here.) Equally comparable in strip-pieced format, "spontaniety" and use of color are the "old way" quilts made by non-Anglos in New
Mexicans in the first part of the 20th century.
Anglo-Australian quilt, c.1920-40
An unrepresentative sample
claims to own 5,000 slides of "African American quilters, their quilts and their
environments." But of the 103 quilts Wahlman selects as evidence,
only thirteen date from before 1975. A mere six quilts from 1900-74
are pictured. Just seven date from the 19th century -
presumably when African motifs would have been
fresher in quiltmakers' memories than they would be a century
later. In fact, almost 90
percent of the quilts in Wahlman's copiously illustrated book date
from after the birth of the "art quilt," the African independence movement of the mid-20th century, and the 1960s surge in the US of interest in
Wahlman claims to have interviewed more
than 500 black quilters, but all but a handful of the quilts in her book were made
by two dozen individuals within the past 25 years. Several have art
degrees or call themselves "fiber
artists." (One has a series of quilts on
"the aftermath of nuclear holocaust". Another is
paradoxically described as "an educated teacher who is a
sophisticated folk artist." Another is an art professor and
former painter whose first quilts "were inspired by Tibetan art".) Three
did not begin quilting until the late 1970s; others say they made traditional
quilts for decades before developing what Wahlman sees as their
"African" style - one only after she began to lose her eyesight. These
late 20th century quilts have much in common with African and
postmodern "gallery" art, but they share little with the few
pre-WWII quilts Wahlman selects for her book.
It might be
presumed that this imbalance results from a lack of documented
African American quilts from earlier years, but Kyra Banks's
survey in Black Threads: An African American Quilting
Sourcebook shows this is not true. Of 585 quilts in museums alone
that are attributed to African
Americans, at least two dozen date
before 1865, and more than a hundred are from between
It would seem Wahlman's examples are not even representative of late-20th century African-American quilts. In the 1993 issue of Uncoverings, Women of Color Quilters' Network founder Sadra K. German reported the results of her demographic survey of African-American quilters. She noted that more than
two-thirds "utilize traditional European American patchwork and applique styles and standards"; only ten percent "worked in the improvisational style promulgated by [Eli] Leon as a standard trait of African American quilts. Clearly, these findings
discredit some of the assertions that helped launch the current stereotype avalanche." Her findings are borne out by statewide Quilt Heritage Projects, in which quilt historians surveyed extant pre-WWII quilts in their state for evidence of trends in
style and construction techniques. Just as Cuesta Benberry had earlier observed, researchers in Mississippi noted that pre-WWII "quilts made by women of color look just the same as quilts made by white women - the same patterns were used, the same
materials, and the same way of working." So did researchers in New Jersey (see below). So why does Wahlman virtually ignore examples from the first 175 years of African-American quilting?
Quilt history, or armchair psychology?
shares with Fry a puzzling unawareness of quilt pattern
history. Her description of one 1985 quilt (p.47):
manipulating small triangles often used to create
symmetrical geometric patterns, Alean Pearson has created
a bold, modern design called Rattlesnake.
might be forgiven for pointing out that the "bold, modern design" is
in fact an unmodified rendition of "Pickle Dish" (Brackman
Wedding Ring variation first published by the Kansas City
Star in 1931. The only other quilt shown by this maker
is in another "mainstream" pattern known as Ocean Waves.
strings," says the author, "are sometimes used in Anglo-American
quilts, but as one of many geometric patterns," and the pattern of a
1983 quilt (p.37) "derives directly from West African textiles made
by sewing narrow strips of woven cloth". These statements might be surprising to those familiar with Log Cabin
quilts (which apparently originated in the North), Amish "bars" and "Chinese
coin" quilts, and the ubiquitous frugal "string" quilts of
the Depression era.
A 1981 quilt by Lucinda Toomer is
classic example of improvisation [in which the maker has] taken the
basic pattern for Drunkard's Path and manipulated it to suit her own
unique vision, yet it is constructed from strips, as in West Africa.
Forty years earlier, this
"unique" pattern appeared in the Kansas City Star as "Chain Quilt" (Brackman 1455).
An undated (probably
c.1980) quilt on p.61 has "forty-eight variations of the Cattle Guard
pattern". The "variations" in the 48 Half Log Cabin blocks result
from their being made of an assortment of fabric scraps.
the art historian, a cigar is never just a cigar. A 1979 split
4-patch made of men's pajama and shirting material (p.100) is
sophisticated if one interprets the various symbols appliquéd
and incorporated from selected printed fabrics,
which could refer to secret African scripts...The large
light and dark circles, as in Harriet Powers's quilts,
could be derived from a memory of the Kongo sun of life
and the midnight sun of the ancestral world....The small
hand may be a reference to the African American charm
called a mojo or hand.
appearing with the "small hand" are a guitar and
microphone. This is because the fabric is part of a "Hootenanny"
style men's shirting print. Wahlman does not discuss the
symbolism of the guitar or mike.
Of the two
quilts Wahlman shows from the 1930s, one (p.78) is an elaborately appliquéd
pictorial quilt made by "Mrs. Cecil White,
Hartford, Connecticut." Described by Wahlman as "one of
the liveliest and best-known examples of American folk art in the
quilt medium," the quilt contains more than 125 human
figures. All but a handful are white; the African-American
and Native American figures are grotesque caricatures in
stereotypical poses. Yet Wahlman claims that "some" (unnamed) scholars
"believe the maker was black." One who Wahlman says does not is
quilt historian Julie Silber. Silber had good reason. According to the 1930 US Census, Mr. and Mrs. Cecil White of Hartford, Connecticut, are white; both were born in Maine. (Another couple by the same
name lives in nearby Enfield; both are white, born in "French Canada".)
Wahlman has mistakenly identified this quilt as African-American based on its aesthetics, how reliable is her ability to determine just what aesthetics are uniquely African?
few pre-1920 quilts Wahlman includes:
appliqué "Bible cloth" pictured in Florence Peto's 1939 book Historic
Quilts, says Wahlman (p.71), has appliqués' whose "raw" edges
recall those she claims are on "many" African-American quilts and
"the leather cutouts" found on "Yoruba egungun
costumes," one of which appears - upside-down - on her website
(it should look like this).
But appliqué in Africa uses a variety of methods; on kuba
cloth, for example, the edges are carefully turned under. And Peto
describes the panel's appliqués being "outlined with a thin, round,
black-and-white braid or cord held in place with couching
Compare the "Bible cloth" in Peto's book (above, right) with two quilts made in
southern Germany during the same period (above, left), pictured in Schnuppe
von Gwinner's The History of the Patchwork Quilt. Click to enlarge.
also says the panel is "from" New Orleans and points
to Peto's statement that it was made by a Creole woman. In fact,
Peto says only that it is "said to derive" from that
city and notes that "no
available history" exists on it; to Peto, it has "a Latin, old-world appearance" that "suggest[s] the fingers
of a Creole woman". (italics mine)
"Creole" is vague, but it seems unlikely Peto was using the word as
a euphemism for "black," since she follows by noting that the needlework
"recalls the technique used in Europe.". Peto's instincts
seem to have been correct. Two date-inscribed applique quilts
remarkably similar in style are pictured in von Gwinner's The
History of the Patchwork Quilt (pp.61-62); one of them also
appears Baird's Quilts (p.8-9), where the author
describes how the appliqués' edges are "covered with
cord". Both are from the same period as the "Bible
cloth," and were made in southern Germany.
admits there is "no way to
prove" that the "Bible cloth's" maker was black, but includes the quilt in Signs
& Symbols anyway.
appliqué quilt made c.1854
(p.75) has provenance to a New Jersey black woman, Sara Ann Wilson. But it is a classic example of a mainstream
American style known today as "Baltimore
Album". Other than its human figures being made from black cloth,
the quilt is indistinguishable from other "mainstream" album quilts
(compare the "Farrington" quilt on p.180 of Bishop's America's
Quilts and Coverlets, made the same year). Wahlman includes the quilt
but never discusses it.
Although the maker of
a Virginia quilt c.1865 (p.74) is unknown and
the figures at its center appear white, Wahlman claims it as
African-American. Her argument? Since "it cannot be proved"
the maker was black, "that possibility cannot be denied."
(Skeptics might read that as "You can't show me it's not, so I'll say
what I want.") Wahlman points to what she says is the
quilt's "Haitian vevé" design; students of quilt
history might observe the pattern is remarkably like the "Pomegranate"
design appearing in myriad variations in hundreds of mid-19th-century appliqué
A quilt made
c.1870 (p.76) by Elizabeth Keckley, seamstress to Mary Todd Lincoln, is made of
in a perfect rendering of the traditional English medallion style. Not even
Wahlman finds anything uniquely "African" about the design, and in fact the 20th
century quilts pictured in the book have nothing in common with its careful
mid-Victorian symmetry. She mentions the quilt only in passing.
The last 19th century quilt is shown at top left. Wahlman
dates to 1898, and says it exemplifies the "African American principle
of protective multiple patterning, because evil spirits would have to decode
the complex mixture of many patterns before they could do any
harm." Quilters will immediately recognize this quilt as a
"sampler", made by cobbling together an assortment of
"sample" and leftover blocks of various sizes in whichever way
they fit. All of the blocks in the quilt are readily
identifiable from 1890s Ladies Art Company quilt pattern books. Compare Covington's quilt, top left, with that made by a white woman from same region a few decades earlier. (Also see p.150 of Brackman's Clues in the Calico, made by M.
Hettinger of Pine Grove Mills, Centre Co., Pennsylvania - probably Martha, born c.1866, who was white).
"evidence" of African symbolism, Wahlman points out an appliquéd
hand and foot - shapes that, along with scissors, often show up in 19th century appliqué and crazy quilts made by women of all
races. The templates, after all, were right at hand.
It could be argued that Harriet Powers's
famous "Bible" quilts (p.72-73) are so unusual that we should look
elsewhere for an example of
typical late 19th
century African-American quilting. Even if Powers's style was
common, Wahlman is not content
with Powers's own detailed descriptions of her quilts' subjects. Instead Wahlman plays armchair
psychoanalyst to the long-dead quilter, using the "evidence" of
the "creole Bible textile" described above. Powers was reportedly
a devout Christian and had no known connection to the occult, but according to
Wahlman her quilts' themes are only nominally Biblical. Instead, says
Wahlman, Powers "was a powerful person who was encoding
important cultural information into an art form that was acceptable for the
1880s and was not threatening to white people". This "information" included African cosmology, secret Masonic signs
(which Wahlman strangely presumes must be African; she also thinks the apron Powers is wearing in one photo
indicates she was a
"conjurewoman"), and "the workings of the Underground
Railroad" without any evidence that Powers ever participated in it or
knew anyone who did. But how could Powers be a "conjurewoman"
conveying "important cultural information" if, as Wahlman then
claims, by the time Powers
was quilting, "the [symbols'] original meanings were forgotten"? As to Wahlman's claim that Powers might have been "an elder of a Masonic lodge" (echoed by Raymond Dobard), Prince Hall Masons historian James Abron said that the applique on
Powers's apron resembles no Masonic or Eastern Star motif he has ever seen. Wahlman's use of the term "elder" suggests she is not very familiar with Masonry.
In the end Wahlman presents two contradictory views of Powers. One is
of a powerful "conjurewoman" cleverly making quilts containing secret African messages whose nominally Christian form would "pass"
among oblivious whites. This requires the reader to accept that the Bible
quilt Powers made for the president of Union Theological Seminary
was actually a symbolic prank. Wahlman's other view puts Powers in the passive role of living Ouija board: she
only thought she was making a quilt depicting important scenes from the
Bible, while in reality she was unwittingly transmitting powerful secret
African messages (whose meaning had nonetheless been lost in time until
revealed by Wahlman). Seemingly unsatisfied with dry historical
record, Wahlman also writes that she is working on a "documentary
interpretation" of events that "might have" occurred when Powers
was making her quilts.
words, of the handful of pre-1920 quilts Wahlman bothers to
include in her book, two are in a style apparently unique to
one African-American quilter (but not unique enough for Wahlman
to let them stand on their own merits); four are
indistinguishable from the work of white quilters; and the
remaining two may not have been made by black quilters at
Cultural retentions: Liberian quilts
in the 1820s and continuing through the Civil War, the African
nation of Liberia was settled by freed African-Americans only
a few generations after their ancestors were first enslaved.
Returning to Africa, these repatriates had a unique
opportunity to preserve and reinforce the traditional culture
Wahlman says was handed down from their native African
grandparents. At the very least, it would be interesting to see how their quilts, and those of their descendants, compare to quilts made by blacks who remained in the US. But they are absent from from Wahlman's book.
quilt Wahlman could have included
was made in 1892 by Martha Ann Ricks, who certainly had very close
connections to her African roots. Her grandmother was brought
to America as a slave; Ricks, her parents and grandmother
emigrated to Africa in 1830, when she was just 13. Yet her quilt has nothing obvious in common with the
African fabrics, garments, and ceremonial items Wahlman shows in her
book, nor does it meet any of her "African-American"
(For more on the Martha Ricks quilt,
please click here.)
Ricks's taste in design seems to have
remained the norm among
Liberian quilters. The October 1995 issue of Quilters
Newsletter Magazine features five contemporary Liberian quilts
their makers say are typical; the designs were passed down
from their ancestors who brought them from America. Like
Ricks's quilt made a century before, they
could easily be mistaken for "mainstream"
mid-19th century American appliqué quilts. Even though they
chose to return to Africa just a few generations after
enslavement in America, Liberian repatriate quilters and their
descendants seem never to have resumed using the
"signs and symbols" Wahlman assumes are so much a part of African-Americans' cultural
even today they cannot resist using them, if only
phenomenon was not limited to Liberian expatriates.
Consider the appliquéd
19th century quilts in Always There, the exhibit and
companion book of African-American quilts curated by Cuesta Benberry.
These are known to have been made by black women - but they do
not fit Wahlman's stereotype of African-American quilts, and are conspicuously absent from her
book. And the authors of New Jersey
Quilts, in describing the quilts surveyed for the New Jersey Quilt Research Project,
makers of all but one of [the quilts made by African-Americans
documented by the Project] came from Southern states from
Florida to Mississippi....Whether made before or after leaving
the South, whether made for family or friends, all of the
quilts recorded used well-defined blocks, familiar designs, and
careful workmanship, rather than being of the
"improvisational" style with the spontaneous and
irregular construction that scholars and museum exhibition
curators have sometimes presented as the "African-American
style" of quiltmaking.
A collection of quilt
tops made by a black Texan from about 1890 through the
Depression is equally "mainstream".
Does the artistic vision of such black women somehow not
count? Compare these
quilts made by blacks and whites in the 20th century, all
but one before WWII. Based on appearance
alone, can we safely assume a quilter's race? If we cannot,
how can we reliably assign to a quilt's pattern or aesthetics a particular ethnic identity
- or particular symbolism?
a detailed discussion of Diaspora-era African textiles,
Wahlman says that African-American quilts can be identified by their "strip" or "bar" arrangements; this, she claims, is a dim memory of African textiles such as kente, made
by the Asante and Ewe of Ghana by joining long
strips of fabric into irregular, asymmetrical patterns. But in Wrapped in Pride: Ghanaian Kente and African-American Identity (in which four pre-1850 kente are pictured), Doran Ross notes such asymmetry is not a universal feature in kente. It is actually a
particular style called mmaban; equally common are kente whose visual effect is that of a checkerboard or
tartan, achieved by careful matching. And sometimes the asymmetry is the result of a repair: damaged strips in a symmetrical kente would be removed, and the
remainder reassembled, sometimes with less than perfect results. It is also worth noting that not all the indigenous textiles from this region are made of narrow strips: "women's
cloth" is made by and for women on a different,
wider loom, and generally consists of one or two
comparatively wide panels which are striped
lengthwise. And other strip-woven African fabrics are printed with overall
designs that completely ignore how the cloth is assembled.
Mid-20th century Ewe "kente" cloth made from
vertical strips of fabric. Click picture for closeup
The universal presumption today seems to be that kente was used throughout West Africa and looks the same now as it did centuries ago. But it originated in just one region as the property of
royalty, and neither developed in a vacuum nor remained static in design. The earliest kente are believed to have been indigo and white; they got their
later, vivid colors by trading with North Africa, then with
Europeans. Ghanaian kente weavers - all male - would unravel the imported fabric (ironically, often
received in exchange for slaves), then weave its
exotically-colored threads into their own textiles.
Not until the late 19th century were kente worn by average people. Even in the 20th century, an authentic kente can take months to create, and are quite expensive; they are reserved for special occasions, the Asante and Ewe version of the
tuxedo. Outside those regions in Africa, broad familiarity with kente dates to the 1950s, when Ghanaian Kwame Nkrumah (who was neither Asante nor Ewe) began deliberately wearing them as a symbol of Ghanian independence; between 1952 and 1966, Ebony magazine
published 77 pictures of people wearing kente in 34 different issues.
All but one
of the quilts in Wahlman's book are vividly multicolor, like
modern kente cloth. But
as Wahlman herself notes, traditional West African textiles were
monochromatic - indigo on white, black on cream, or the
combination of russet/brown/black on cream seen in kuba and
mudcloth. (The everyday Yoruba kijipa, for example, is simply striped in indigo and white.) Wahlman argues that African-American quilts
echo what she claims is the "high contrast" of such traditional West African
textiles; they are, she says, "best seen from a
distance," compared to "New England quilts," which
she says are both "meant to be inspected in
intimate settings" (as opposed to African-American quilts?) and - inexplicably - "pastel". If she is right, why is only one of
the quilts in Signs & Symbols monochromatic, and why
are the block patterns of so many of the multicolor quilts
obscured by prints or similar tonal values?
All but one of Wahlman's African textiles (when she bothers to provide a date at all) were made in the 20th century. But can we really get a good idea of 18th and early 19th century aesthetics - the ones enslaved Africans would have brought to America - by looking at West Africa more than a century and a half after they
left? During the years of slave trade to the US, how common were multicolored strip-pieced textiles among those who ended up enslaved? Even presuming they were the norm, their appearance seems to have evolved as, beginning in the 16th century, African weavers obtained
new products from other cultures - just as intercontinental trade had a dramatic effect on European textiles and clothing.
It has been centuries since West Africans produced their textiles in isolation. In The Art of African Textiles, author Duncan Clarke notes they have a long history
of exposure to fabrics from other regions and continents. In fact, as early as the 17th century, European dealers complained they were having trouble keeping up with market trends: by the time they brought a new shipment of European fabrics to
Africa, fashionable West Africans had moved on to some other design. And in a cultural fusion that sounds positively 21st century, by the 1800s Manchester, England was producing imitation Madras cloth for sale to West Africans as a substitute for the genuine
Indian Madras originally brought there by British merchants.
wax" prints we associate today with African
clothing also began as imports in the mid-19th century. Dutch textile mills started producing a fabric
they hoped approximated Javanese batik for export to Indonesia - only to discover that Indonesians preferred the home-grown product. So Dutch traders tried marketing it on the Africa's Gold Coast, where Indonesian batik had been popular for years. The new look was an instant
hit. One of the Dutch fabrics reproduced a stylized Javanese design of Garuda, an Indonesian sacred bird with long, curling tail feathers. West Africans adopted it as their own, renaming it "Bunch of Bananas".
Other changes in West African textiles and costume during and after the Diaspora include:
Adinkra cloth's hand-printed designs are claimed by the authors of Hidden in Plain View as models for the "Quilt Code". But according to the Asante themselves, adinkra's
production dates only as far back as 1818.
Adire is a patterned indigo fabric made by the Yoruba; some draw a connection between its elaborate resist and stencil designs as resembling American patchwork. But adire produced
with those techniques date to the 20th century, after the introduction of machine-woven imported cotton; before then, adire were made in simple tie-dye patterns on loosely-woven, locally-produced "country cloth".
A final problem in comparing quilts and clothing textiles is the aesthetic image everyday users mentally record of them. Can we really compare a textile intended to be viewed on a smooth, horizontal surface
with one designed be draped and gathered around a body? This draping significantly obscures or changes both symmetry (or lack thereof) and pattern. So do the colors typically used in modern West African textiles: while they are often vivid, complementary hues,
their tonal value is so similar that whether "seen from a distance" or up close, the effect is less one of discernible pattern than a sweep of sparkling color.
Another hurdle for Wahlman's assertion is that strip-piecing quilt tops was hardly limited to Americans of African descent. Many of the earliest Anglo-American quilts were made of long strips or "bars" of fabric, a technique
they brought from England, where it still can be found. (These were the first quilts the Amish saw; conservative Amish communities retained the style, while more liberal ones eventually adopted piecing.) Seam allowances use up precious fabric, an important consideration when fabric is scarce or
expensive. Quilt historians note that in the 20th century, the strip format (and related "string" piecing) seems to be evidence of hard-times frugality more than of race. In
1984, historian John Rice Irwin interviewed white quiltmakers in
rural Appalachia for his book A People and Their Quilts.
Three born between 1885-1913 describe the quilts they made when
they were young:
make no patterns like people does now. I’d just get me some
cloth and tear it in strips, maybe that wide, and as long as I
wanted the quilt to be; and I’d change colors and sew them
They call them
comforts - they’re tacked in. Well they wasn’t no pattern to
them, just sew them in strips.
the old clothing that we had, we’d get down and tear it up,
you know, and save ever little piece, and then we’d separate
it into different piles, you know. And then like if we had
enough to make a whole strip for the quilt, then we’d make
look at Appalachian "plain" strip and bar quilts from
Irwin's book, click here.
Second-guessing and pop-culture ignorance
Rather than treat the work of her artists as the creation of individuals, Wahlman persists in dehumanizing them in exactly the way contemporary African artists complain the West has treated their work: as products of
"the tribe" rather than of an individual. Olu Oguibe angrily writes in Reading the Contemporary: African Art in the Marketplace:
The figure of individual genius, that element which more than any other defines enlightenment and modernity, was reserved for Europe while the rest of humanity was identified with the collective, anonymous production
pattern that inscribes primitivism. Until recently, works of classical African art were dutifully attributed to the "tribe," rather than to the individual artist, thus effectively erasing the latter from the narrative spaces of art history. In
contemporary discourses....novel strategies are employed to anonymize African art by either disconnecting the work from the artist, thus deleting the author-ity of the latter; or by constructing the artist away from the normativities of contemporary practice.
As noted earlier, Signs
and Symbols had earlier incarnations as a
paper, then as a 1986 article (African Arts, vol. XX,
1: 68-76, 99). Among the ideas it contained:
In an interview in William
Ferris Thompson's Afro-American Folk Arts and Crafts, octogenarian PecoliaWarner talks at length about her deep Christian faith. Born and then living in rural Mississippi, she had also lived
in three large US cities including Chicago in the 1960s. Like rural Southern whites her age, she has two styles of quilts: "plain" (utility) quilts assembled "real quick," such as "string quilts" made of every available
scrap, and "fancy" quilts, such as her favorite star, whose piecing must be precise. Some of her designs she has "kept in her mind" after borrowing quilt books: "That's why I knew how to name them." Others are her own: "You
make it up by looking at something and imitating it."
She describes how she designs and names her quilts:
And like that [tape recorder] wheel going around there - I can look at that wheel and imagine a quilt from it. I can take me some paper and cut out a pattern and piece me up a quilt just like
that...I guess I'd call it a Tape Recorder quilt. That would be my name of it, since that's it's name, ain't it? Many of my quilts I've pieced up just by looking at things that way. Now I did one of the initial of my name, Pecolia. I was just sitting around
one time and didn't have nothing else to do. So I said, "I just believe I'll make me a piece that will be the start of my name." I call it a P quilt.
Warner makes a "US flag quilt"; she says she dreamed of the design after seeing the flag at her post
office. But this explanation is insufficient for Wahlman:
In her hands it has become an Afro-American version of the protective Haitian mayo, featuring strips, asymmetry, large designs, asymmetry, at least two patterns, and stars
resembling the Ejagham symbol for speech.
Elsewhere Wahlman explains that the mayo is a striped shirt worn in Haiti
"as a protection against evil magic".
For this she cites a single line in an art curator's brief description of a 1962 painting (the
shirt in the painting is particolor, not striped, and
the word mayo is never used). To date I
have found no other reference to this custom; it appears "mayo" may simply be a generic term for any casual shirt.
Pecolia Warner's "US flag quilt"
Worth noting is that according to a 2001 Observer
article, in 1960 the US disposed of several million yards of outdated US flag fabric by selling it to Haiti. Resourceful Haitians stitched it up into shirts - and bedsheets, dresses, and tablecloths. Perhaps the "protective charm"
Wahlman sees was simply an exercise in practicality.
yo-yo was known in the US as a "whirligig"
until 1928, when manufacturer Pedro Flores sold a dozen
of them labeled with the name they had in his native
Philippines. Within a year Flores was employing 600
workers in two factories.
Capitalizing on America's latest fad, in 1932 the W.L.M.
Clark company issued a pattern for a "yo-yo" quilt, made of gathered circles of fabric. Wahlman
barely nods at the toy's existence, then suggests that
for African-Americans, the name and the quilt are
vestigal memories of "a 'Mojo' charm", the mayo
referred to above, or the incantation "Go, yo
Dingle first appeared in magazines in 1912 as a paper
doll. In 1981, 87-year-old Pearlie Posey made a
quilt containing figures which bear a striking
resemblance to Dolly Dingle. That is how museum catalogs
refer to the quilt, presumably (as with her other
quilts) because that is the name Posey gave it.
Wahlman spells the name "Dolly Dimple," oblivious to the possibility that Posey was inspired by
the doll popular in her youth. Instead, she declares the quilt's figures
"imply the survival of the form" of Kongo mbaka
(or Haitian baka) and what she refers to as the
American "Vodun" or "voodoo"
doll which is "activated by pins".
But by all
accounts mbaka and baka are not
interchangeable; neither are Vodun (a West African religion) andVodou (sometimes written "voodoo") is Haitian, rooted in Vodun
but incorporating Catholic and Amerindian components.
(A very rough analogy: Roman Catholicism's
connection to Judaism.) I can find no reliable source that
says either religion uses the dolls Wahlman
describes. Hoodoo, on the other hand,
does; it is a form of folk magic, not a religion, and
originated in the Protestant southern US. It draws
from both the Congo in central Africa, and from
Europe, whose medieval "poppet", say
practitioners, is the source of the dolls. Some claim the word "voodoo" originated among whites as a disparaging
catch-all for Vodun, Vodou and hoodoo. It seems
that as far as practitioners of Vodou and hoodoo are concerned, "voodoo" is the purview of
Hollywood, and attributing the dolls of hoodoo to Vodun
or "voodoo" is akin to claiming that
Americans who wear a Sicilian "evil eye" charm
are expressing their Christian faith. Wahlman's
failure to distinguish among these beliefs, or demonstrate
that Posey was familiar with any of them, raises questions about how she determined they were the real
inspiration for Posey's quilt.
Further demonstrating her limited knowledge of quilt and textile history, Wahlman asserts that the "bold colors and large designs of Afro-American textiles" derivei from African textiles whose "strong color
contrasts...insure [sic] a cloth'' readability at a distance and in strong sunlight", compared to "pastel New England quilts meant to be inspected in intimate settings". Thus in one sentence, Wahlman reduces two centuries of "New England" quilt
history to the decades of the Great Depression, when "pastel" cotton fabrics first became available. Also notable is that what Wahlman describes as "strong color contrasts" are not that at
all; they are different hues of the same value. At a distance, the
quilt's patterns become a blur of color; they are not "readable" at all.
How can we trace cultural retentions?
It would be unreasonable to say people express none of the aesthetic norms of the culture their ancestors left two centuries earlier; that would demand we ignore this nation's regional differences. But claiming to have
found evidence of an ancestral culture by comparing a selected group of modern, exceptional examples with modern examples in the ancestral country, or to examples in other Diaspora cultures with radically different histories, runs contrary to the rules of
careful methodology. Such analysis would require we look at all documented African-American quilts. We might then ask, for example:
What do African-American quilts look like before the conscious revival of African culture among American blacks in the mid-20th century?
Can any differences among these quilts be correlated to age, socioeconomics, education, rural vs. urban, source of quilting knowledge, or prevailing quiltmaking fashion at
Can any examples be found of quilts made by successive generations of the same family? What differences in such a group can be traced to changes in fashion? Which are the result of
personal creativity, and which can be traced to family custom?
What did quilts of whites in these same regions look like? Do any differences correlate to age, socioeconomics, education, etc.? Do their quilts have anything in common with
quilts made in their ancestral countries of origin? What about quilts made by whites and blacks in other regions?
What similarities exist between quilts made by blacks and whites from similar regions, socioeconomics, etc.? Did these quilters have significant contact with each other?
Are there features that appear only in pre-1950s African-American quilts that cannot be explained by socioeconomics, etc.?
What did West African textiles look like during the time slaves were brought to America? What did the average West African wear? (I'll be exploring this in depth
But Wahlman never asks these questions. Instead, she repeatedly (and mistakenly) assumes commercial quilt patterns are
original designs expressing a quilter's African roots. She presents a quilt
as African-American even though she knows doubts were raised
about its maker's race. She ignores documented
African-American quilts that do not fit her stereotype in
favor of those that do: overwhelmingly, those less than 30 years
old, many made by professional "fiber artists".
She appears unaware that what she considers
"African-American" attributes are also common to other, non-African traditional quilting cultures - one of
which has no history of
contact with Africans. She claims deep, African
meaning in objects their makers insist have none, and sets aside
their makers' descriptions in favor of her own interpretations (which, not surprisingly, support her claims). She apparently either disregards or is
unfamiliar with the popular culture in which her subjects lived,
or perhaps believes they were somehow impervious to it. She repeatedly suggests a connection between quilts and the Underground Railroad,
but never offers any evidence. And all of the African
textiles in Signs & Symbols are 20th century; they
date to more than 150
years after the ancestors of American slaves were
last taken from their homeland.
As eye-appealing as Wahlman's book is, it is hard
not to see in it the kind of
work a distinguished scholar once described as consisting
of "poor methodology, a tendency to leap from unwarranted
assumptions to foregone conclusions, and assertions stated without
substantiation, many of which are contradicted by actual
Tobin claims Signs & Symbols as a critical source for the premises in her own book, gushing that "without it, Hidden in Plain View could not have been written."