African-American

Quilts:Two

PerspectivesSTACY C HOLLANDER

Recently there has been anexplosion of interest inAmerican quilting. Schol-ars have explored quilts bychronology, region, con-struction, and materials.They have looked at theoverall history, they have

focused on singular traditions. Oneimportant and complex area of inquirythat has emerged over the last decade isthe study of quilts and other textilesmade by African Americans. FromMay 12 to 16, 1993, as part of "TheGreat American Quilt Festival 4" atPier 92 on the Hudson River, theMuseum of American Folk Art willpresent two important exhibitionsdevoted to quilts made by African-American quiltmakers. Both exhibi-tions represent many years of researchon the part of their respective curators —Dr. Maude Southwell Wahlman andCuesta Benberry— and offer differentaspects of the history of African-American quilting in the United States.While one exhibition explores the Afri-can antecedents of some African-American quilting traditions, the otherpresents the broad spectrum of quiltingby African-American quiltmakers fromthe nineteenth century through thepresent day.

It is not the purpose of this arti-cle to paraphrase the thoughts andwritings of two scholars eminentlyqualified to represent their own find-ings. Nor is it my aim to endorse oneperspective over another. It is my hopethat this brief discussion will encour-age people to take advantage of thisunprecedented opportunity to experi-ence for themselves the dialogue thatcontinues to evolve in this field.

As an observer with an interestin American quilt history, I am left,after reviewing the thoughtful materialof both historians, with a strong con-viction that neither line of inquiry ulti-mately negates the other. The finefocus applied by one is part of the storytold by the other. However, the atten-tion paid to the African design quali-ties of some quilts has captured theimagination of the quilt world almostto the exclusion of all other aspects ofAfrican-American quiltmaking. Butthere remain questions and inconsis-tencies that suggest there is more thanone way to view a quilt and a great dealof work still to be done. The more

information we bring to this material,the deeper is our understanding andappreciation of the incredible com-plexity of historical, cultural, and emo-tional forces that shape every aspect ofthe creation of these quilts and ourresponse to them.

In 1976, Gladys-Marie Frywrote a monograph on the life of Har-riet Powers, whose two Bible quiltsmust be included among the UnitedStates' greatest cultural treasures. Shediscovered a corollary between the

Wahlman has been one

of the most eloquent

proponents of the study

of African design

derivations...

technique and imagery of these twoquilts and the appliqué tradition of theFon people of Dahomey, West Africa,now the Republic of Benin. During thefollowing two years John MichaelVlach and Mary Twining noted theseeming retention of two African tex-tile techniques in work by AfricanAmericans, namely strip piecing andappliqué.' By 1980, the first exhibitionof African-American quilts had beenorganized by Maude Wahlman andJohn Scully for the Yale School of ArtGallery. The purpose of the exhibitionwas to pinpoint specific characteristicsof quilts made by African-Americanquiltmakers that were similar toAfrican-made textiles. In the enthusi-asm that followed, the visual charac-teristics quickly came to be generallyviewed as the criteria for definingan African-American quilt. Africandesigns, techniques, and symbolism asantecedents for the quilting aestheticof African-American quilters becamethe primary focus for ensuing articles,exhibitions, catalogs, and symposia.

Dr. Wahlman, who has been oneof the most eloquent proponents of thestudy of African design derivations inthis body of work, writes in the intro-duction to her forthcoming book, Signsand Symbols: African Images in African-American Quilts:

Similar designs in Africanquilted textiles and African-

BIBLE SCENES QUILT

Made by a member of the

Drake family

Thomaston, Georgia

1900-1910

Appliquéd cotton

?6½x 71"

Collection of Shelly Zegart

44 SPRING 1993 FOLK ART

SPRING 1993 FOLK ART 45

American quilts are coinciden-

tal, due to the technical process

of piecing which reduces cloth

to geometric shapes—squares

and triangles. All these

techniques—piecing, appliqué,

and quilting—were known in

Africa, Europe, and the United

States, yet these African-

American quilts are often pro-

foundly different from Euro-

pean or Anglo-American quilts.

The difference lies in histor-

ically different aesthetic princi-

ples, with both technical and

religious dimensions.2

Dr. Wahlman's research began

in 1977 when she was a graduate stu-

dent at Yale. She had already published

one book on contemporary African art

that included an examination of Afri-

can textiles. With the support of Rob-ert Farris Thompson, her advisor atYale, Wahlman began an exploration ofpossible connections between those

textile traditions and quilts made by

African Americans. In the course ofher continuing investigations she hasinterviewed at least 500 quilters andseen thousands of quilts. The resultshave formed the basis for her manycontributions to the study of the Afri-can roots of quilts made by AfricanAmericans.

In 1989, Dr. Wahlman publishedtwo articles in The Clarion that

detailed some of the results of herresearch.3 At that time, Dr. RobertBishop approached her with the idea oforganizing an exhibition for the

'Museum of American Folk Art using

quilts by living African-Americanquiltmakers that she would identify forthe Museum's collection. The purchaseof the quilts would be supported by amatching grant from the NationalEndowment for the Arts.

This past year I had the oppor-tunity to view Cuesta Benberry'sexhibition "Always There: The African-American Presence in AmericanQuilts," which was organized under theauspices of The Kentucky Quilt Proj-

ect, Inc. Louisville, Kentucky. In theexhibition and accompanying catalog,Benberry was the first to publicly ques-tion the existence of the "African-American" quilt as the only or even themajor quilt expression of AfricanAmericans. She proposed that therewas no "typical" African-Americanquilt, but a diverse body of work influ-enced by factors that included region,education, training, socioeconomicgroup, and period. She furtheradvocated that the work of AfricanAmericans was not separate from themainstream of American quilting andthat African Americans, present inAmerica since the first slaves arrived inthe seventeenth century, had in factparticipated in the formation of thatmainstream. As a result of the exhibi-tion organized by Cuesta Benberry, theMuseum recognized a unique oppor-tunity to bring together these two dif-ferent areas of focus for the first time inone space.

Quilt history has been CuestaBenberry's "absorbing interest" for

FREEDOM QUILT

Jessie Telfair

Parrot, Georgia;

1980

Pieced and appliqued

cotton and synthetic fabrics

73x 85"

Collection of Shelly Zegart

PIG PEN

Log Cabin variation

Pecolia Warner

Yazoo City, Mississippi

C. 1982

Cotton, linen, and

synthetic fabrics

81 x 81"

Museum of American Folk Art

Gift of Maude Wahlman

1991.32.3

48 SPRING 1993 FOLK ART

" -

i• a ........---03;,,,,,.....,..„,,,0, 0-71i • i 1.aa . .

1 ' 1 1:g• gi ' I'M • Vil • M

• 1V • M

‘

I. m 1. itiPli • gli • 11 • a • al10; - .go • ii

SPRING 1993 FOLK ART 47

over thirty years. During that time shehas collected an astounding archive ofmaterial relating to quilting and hasgenerously shared her knowledge withcurators, quilt historians, quilters, andthe public. She writes that her interestbecame a "passion" when she beganher investigations into African-American quilt history many yearsago. In the introduction to the catalogthat accompanied her exhibition, Ben-berry indicts the single-mindedness ofthe direction of earlier research:

Scholars located a small groupof quilts profoundly differentvisually from the accepted aes-thetic of traditional Americanpatchwork quilts. These idio-syncratic quilts from blackwomen of rural southern andsimilar backgrounds wereexamined closely for stylisticvariances, construction tech-niques, fabric color choices andsymbolic design references.Most exciting of all was a link-age between the black Ameri-can quilts and African designtraditions, believed to indicatean unconscious cultural mem-ory in the quiltmakers of theirfar-away motherland. African-American quilts became one ofAmerica's newest forms ofexotica. Continued scrutiniza-tion of the quilts resulted in thepromulgation of a number oftheories which were imme-diately accepted as fact. Visualcriteria for recognizing African-American quilts (stitch length,asymmetrical organization ofquilt patches, size of thepatches, frequent use of brightcolors) were devised. Long-established canons of quilt his-tory research, such as determin-ing the quiltmaker's identity, thequilt's provenance, date of mak-ing and fabric content, were nolonger deemed essential. Oneneeded only apply the recently-created visual criteria to iden-tify with certainty quilts ofAfrican-American origin.4

This criticism of the methodologybehind some of the early researchhighlights a few of the problems asso-ciated with this topic and rightfully

condemns the application of these cri-teria as the sole determining factors ofAfrican-American quilts. But it doesnot, nor is it meant to, invalidate theexistence of this "profoundly dif-ferent" group of quilts. The large num-bers of quilts that share this aesthetic,including nineteenth-century exam-ples, and the insight that Dr. Wahlmanhas shown regarding the making ofthese quilts lend credence to the argu-ment for a specific cultural tradition atplay in certain quilts. Furthermore, Dr.Wahlman writes in the introduction toher own forthcoming book about Afri-can-American quilts:

These aesthetic criteria were astarting point and in no way wasI trying to pigeonhole this inno-vative art. Yet others picked upon these criteria and used themto determine which quilts were'real' African-American quilts....My thesis is that most African-American quiltmaking derivesits aesthetic from various Afri-can traditions, both technologi-cal and ideological ones. ThusI deliberately study African-American quilts which exhibitsimilar aesthetic tendencies withAfrican textiles. Cuesta Ben-berry has recently clarified thissituation by correctly pointingout the great diversity of quiltingmade over the last two centuriesby African Americans.5

Dr. Wahhnan describes seventraits that appear consistently in theAfrican-American quilts she has stud-ied: vertical stripes, bright colors, largedesigns, asymmetry, improvisation,multiple patterning, and symbolicforms. She has also noted deeperaffinities between these quilts andAfrican textiles, primarily in the use ofsymbolic patterns.

Long narrow strips are the pri-mary construction technique in WestAfrican and Caribbean textiles, andmost cloth found in West Africa wasmade by joining these strips to formcloth. Loose, or "flying," strips werealso used as part of ceremonial cos-tumes in societies such as the YorubaEgungun in Nigeria, which were orga-nized to honor ancestors. The piecingof strips to form a textile is related topatchwork and in the hands of African

craftsmen, this piecing often inten-tionally results in asymmetrical andunpredictable patterns that stop the eyeas it travels across the cloth. Weavingsby women on wide stationary loomsutilized vertical designs that simulatedthe fabrics made from pieced stripsthat were woven by men on narrow,portable looms.

Color has traditionally playedan important role in African textiles.The earliest cloth was blue and white,providing a strong contrast that could

Benberry cautions

repeatedly against

drawing general

conclusions on the basis

of scant visual evidence.

be seen from a distance. Later, colorfulcloths were produced using Europeancloth that had been unraveled andrewoven. Multiple patterning, improv-isation, asymmetry, and color all con-tribute to the important function ofAfrican textiles in communicating thesocial status of the wearer in terms ofwealth, prestige, and education. RobertFarris Thompson has also suggestedthat they serve the further function ofprotection, confusing evil spirits thattravel in straight lines.6 Dr. Wahlmantraces these characteristics to fourAfrican civilizations: the Mande-speaking people of West Africa, theYoruba and Fon people, the Ejaghampeople, and the Kongo and Kongo-influenced people. As slaves werebrought to the New World, this mixturewas further blended with Latin-Amer-ican, Native-American, and Europeaninfluences.

Although men were the primarytextile artists in Africa, in the UnitedStates slave women became the princi-ple weavers, seamstresses, and quilters,conforming to an established genderdivision of labor. Yet these samewomen were also expected to performmany of the same hard physical tasksfor which the men were responsible.

These additional skills weredesirable and increased the femaleslave's worth to her owners. However,they also increased the burden thatslave women bore. Long after men

STARS

Nora Ezell

Green City, Alabama

1977

Cotton and synthetic fabrics

94074'

Museum of American Folk Art

This purchase was made

possible in part by a grant

from the National Endowment

for the Arts.

1991.13.1

48 SPRING 1993 FOLK ART

SPRING 1993 FOLK ART 49

were able to rest at night, women wouldstill be required to produce a certainstint of weaving as well as the textileneeds of their families.7

Cuesta Benberry states, "Afri-cans brought to America wereunfamiliar with the bed quilt but hadknowledge both of the techniques usedin making a quilt (piecing, appliqué,embroidery) and in weaving cloth."8The transition to quilting was thusfacilitated. However, the fact that Afri-cans already possessed these skillswould suggest that, as in other immi-grant cultures, they also possessed anaesthetic concomitant with these skillsthat could be newly interpreted andadapted to the new forms. Whetherthat aesthetic was applied by the samequiltmakers who created the pieced,appliquéd, embroidered, whole cloth,broderie perse, and reverse appliquédquilts that conformed to the dominantaesthetic is not yet conclusively known.

Benberry repeatedly cautionsagainst drawing general conclusions onthe basis of scant visual evidence. Thisis important to keep in mind as onereads earlier writings on this topic. Inhis important and acclaimed work Bythe Work of Their Hands: Studies inAfro-American Folklife, for instance,John Michael Vlach briefly discussesAfrican-American textiles. He makesseveral interesting points in hisdescription of a blanket woven byLuiza Combs, an African woman whowas brought to the United States nearthe beginning of the Civil War. Herweaving, a wool blanket with a stripepattern, was probably made during theera of Reconstruction. Vlach empha-sizes that all the steps of production,including color and design, wereentirely within her command. Basedon this one example he states that,although more comparative study isneeded, the color choices conform toan African aesthetic. He points out thatthe stripe design, though familiar in"Anglo-American" weaving, was also acommon African design. But then heconcludes that the one blanket gives a"hint of the kinds of textiles that mighthave been made by slaves under thesupervision of white owners. Thosecoverlets, blankets, and fabrics mayhave been African and Americansimultaneously." 9

Even postulated as tentatively asVlach has done, can the inference be

made that a blanket woven duringReconstruction for family use might beindicative of a textile produced underthe supervision of a white owner? Ben-berry points out that to use the term"Anglo-American" suggests that noother groups participated in the forma-tion of "American" textile traditions.Yet Africans, to name just one group,were vital contributors to the weavingand textile community that was form-ing these traditions. The limitations ofthe form make stripes a natural designchoice from a technical standpoint andstriped weavings are found in manycultures. Until more evidence is found,is the argument for an Anglo derivationmore compelling than that for an Afri-can influence imported with slavessince the seventeenth century? It is,after all, the aesthetic and technicalmanipulation of the form, as well as itsuse, that indicates cultural preference.

One of Cuesta Benberry's aimsin both her exhibition and publicationwas to establish the presence of Afri-can Americans throughout the annalsof quilt history in the United States.She hoped to achieve this through theanalysis of historical fact and visualevidence. Where there did not seem tobe ample material to draw conclusions,she chose not to speculate, but simplyto state what was historically known.That quiltmaking among AfricanAmericans was widespread is sup-ported by surviving examples from allformer slave-holding states. Most ofthese quilts have descended in the fam-ilies of the slave owners and are consid-ered by some to be representative ofthe work produced by slaves for theirwhite owners. The number of extantquilts made by slaves for their own useis small, yet statements have been pub-lished assigning general design charac-teristics to this category of quilts. Thequilts that are documented were mademostly in traditional patterns such as"Nine-Patch," "Log Cabin," and "RobPeter to Pay Paul.") Benberry asksrhetorically whether she can then con-clude that these examples did not differfrom those made for the slave owners.

Interestingly, these are the verytypes of patterns that Wahlman cites inher discussion of African antecedentsin African-American quilts. Log Cabinis essentially a strip-pieced pattern anda design that continues to be popularwith contemporary African-American

quilters. Both Log Cabin and theNine-Patch pattern incorporate smallsquares that share affinities with thecloth charm known as a "Mojo" or a"Hand." These charms, derived fromWest and Central African charm con-cepts, embody a healing medicine withthe power to protect. In addition totheir decorative qualities, they symbol-ize safety for the person using them."

In the paragraph that follows,Benberry raises another interestingquestion, one that highlights the com-

That quiltmaking among

African Americans was

widespread is supported

by surviving examples

from all former slave-

holding states.

plexity of tracing the origins of quiltstyles and techniques. The Americanpatchwork quilt is usually associatedwith the geometric block configura-tion. In recent years this has increas-ingly been referred to as an Anglo-American style. According to quilt his-torians, among them Barbara Brack-man, this configuration did not becomestandard in American quilting until themiddle of the nineteenth century.12Previously, there had been more flex-ibility in the patterns that quiltmakerschose, the most popular being themedallion style; both block and stripconstruction appear as minor tech-niques. As the block construction didnot arrive in the New World intact froma European source, but seems to havedeveloped in the United States, it can-not be accurately labeled "Anglo-American." Such a term precludes thepossibility of contributions to the evo-lution of the form by people of a non-European background.

Cuesta Benberry's text positionsthe creation of quilts within the socialand historical context of African-American life and quilt history. Fromthis chronological presentation thereemerges a picture of African-American life from the AntebellumSouth to the Freedom Marches of theCivil Rights era to today. She writes ofslave women who purchased their free-

50 SPRING 1993 FOLK ART

dom and the freedom of their familiesthrough their needlework skills and offree black women in the anti-slaverymovement who supported theirendeavors partially through the sale oftheir quilts. She writes of the FreedomRides and Freedom Marches of the1960s and early 1970s; of JessieTelfair's quilt that reads simply, "Free-dom," over and over across its surface;and of the Freedom Quilting Bee, aquiltmaking cooperative that remainsin existence today as the Martin LutherKing, Jr., Freedom Quilting Bee.

African Americans made auto-graph quilts, commemorative quilts,crazy quilts, fancy quilts, and scrapquilts. In the twentieth century theyhave continued to quilt individually, fortheir own use, and as a group, to sup-port community values. Many trainedartists have turned to the medium as aflexible alternative to more orthodoxmaterials. Some of these artists haveutilized African visual traditions toexpress their sense of continuity. Car-ole Harris of Detroit felt that tradi-tional African designs offered her "theanswer to questions I didn't know Ihad."13 After making a quilt that fea-tured colorful hanging strips, Harrisdiscovered pictures of dance costumesfrom Western Yoruba to which herquilt bore a striking resemblance.Quiltmaking has been so much a partof the African-American tradition thatcreative African Americans working inall the arts have incorporated quiltimagery into their written and visualexpressions.

One of the most importantgroups of quilts included in Benberry'sexhibition are those made by severalgenerations of the Perkins family.These quilts represent a rare chance todocument the quilting practices of asingle family over a period of time andin both rural and urban settings. Theyrange from decorative quilts on which agreat deal of care and technical exper-tise were lavished to quickly madeutility quilts. The technical skill,composition, and construction appearto be directly related to the quilt'sintended function. The quilts demon-

strate a participation in the prevalent

trends of quiltmaking of the period and

illustrate the adaptation of skills to

both use and socioeconomic factors.

At the risk of being criticized byboth curators, however, I would not be

entirely fair to this discussion if! didn'tpoint out a few motifs that seemedambiguous, especially in the crazy

quilt. One block, strikingly differentfrom the rest, bears a design that lookslike a strip-pieced quilt. This isexplained only as having particular sig-nificance for the family. Crazy quiltsare usually embellished with embroi-dered and appliquéd motifs, and thisexample is no exception. The crossedcroquet mallets express the family'senjoyment of this activity, and thewheeled star is an effective decorativedevice. But these designs also bearstrong similarities to symbols in theideographic writing system of theEjagham peoples of Nigeria known asNsibidi, which Wahlman feels hasplayed a significant role in the languageof African-American quilts. Could theembroidered hands be the record of a

child, as Benberry states, and also haveprotective connotations? The verynature of the crazy quilt—complex,asymmetrical, multi-patterned—in-

vites the quiltmaker to encode layers ofmeaning, whether that meaning is per-sonal to the maker and her family orsignifies wider cultural messages.

Among the most interestingAmerican quilts, both for their power-

ful imagery and rich historical and cul-tural references, are Bible quilts, madepredominantly by Southern African-American women. Through theirvisual appliquéd narrative imagerythese quilts parallel a strong Africanoral tradition that transmits values andreligious beliefs, as well as educationaland cultural teachings.

The appliquéd images found onthe late-nineteenth-century quiltsmade by Harriet Powers have inspiredresearch for some time, and their debt

to the appliquéd banners of the Fon

people of Dahomey is not in question.Wahlman has taken a new look at Har-riet Powers' quilts and believes thatthey might have strong fraternal asso-ciations. Benberry, too, notes the

importance of fraternal organizationsto African-American families from thepostbellum era into the twentieth cen-

tury. She suggests fraternal associa-

tions as another possible source for theenigmatic imagery sometimes foundon Bible and other quilts. These organ-izations offered one of the avenuesavailable to African Americans forhealth insurance and other benefits

that were otherwise frequently deniedthem. They also afforded opportunitiesfor social activities and achievementsof office within the society.

In the literature on African-American quiltmaking there has de-veloped an exciting and thought-provoking discussion that has widenedthe scope of scholarly investigations.Hopefully, the result will be the contin-ued discovery of material and informa-tion that sheds light on all aspects ofthe African-American contribution tothe history of American quiltmaking. *

Stacy C. Hollander is the Curator of theMuseum of American Folk Art. She is theauthor of Harry Lieberman: A Journey ofRemembrance (Dutton Studio Books, 1991).

NOTES

I would like to thank Dr. Wahlman for mak-ing her manuscript available to me prior topublication.1 Dr. Maude Southwell Wahlman, Signsand Symbols: African Images in African-American Quilts (New York: E.P. Dutton inCooperation with the Museum of Ameri-can Folk Art, 1993).2 Ibid.3 Dr. Maude Southwell Wahlman,"African-American Quilts: Tracing theAesthetic Principles," The Clarion 14,no. 2 (Spring 1989), pp. 44-54; Waldman,"Religious Symbolism in African-American Quilts," The Clarion 14, no. 3(Summer 1989), pp. 36-44.4 Cuesta Benberry, Always There: TheAfrican-American Presence in AmericanQuilts (Louisville, Ky.: The Kentucky QuiltProject, Inc., 1990), p. 15.5 Wahlman, Signs and Symbols.6 Ibid.7 Deborah Gray White, "Female Slaves inthe Plantation South," in Before FreedomCame: African-American Life in the Ante-bellum South, eds. Edward D.C. Campbell,Jr., and Kym S. Rice (Richmond, Va.: TheMuseum of the Confederacy and UniversityPress of Virginia, 1991), p. 109.8 Benberry, Always There, p. 23.9 John Michael Vlach, By the Work ofTheir Hands: Studies in Afro-AmericanFolklife (Virginia: University Press ofVirginia, 1991), p. 3610 Benberry, Always There, p. 2811 Wahlman, Signs and Symbols, p. 81.12 Barbara Bradman, "The StripTradition in European-American Quilts,"The Clarion 14, no 4. (Fall 1989), p. 45.13 Benberry, Always There, p. 62.

SPRING 1993 FOLK ART 51