Quilts Of The Underground Railroad
In 1999 a theory surfaced indicating a possibility slaves used quilt blocks to alert other slaves about escape plans during the time of the Underground Railroad (approximately 1780-1860). Some historians support this theory while other historians dispute this as myth.
Read more about Quilts Of The Underground Railroad: Presentation of The Quilt Code, Lack of Support For The Theory, Historians and Writers
Famous quotes containing the words underground railroad, quilts, underground and/or railroad:
“The only free road, the Underground Railroad, is owned and managed by the Vigilant Committee. They have tunneled under the whole breadth of the land.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“In the quilts I had found good objects—hospitable, warm, with soft edges yet resistant, with boundaries yet suggesting a continuous safe expanse, a field that could be bundled, a bundle that could be unfurled, portable equipment, light, washable, long-lasting, colorful, versatile, functional and ornamental, private and universal, mine and thine.”
—Radka Donnell-Vogt, U.S. quiltmaker. As quoted in Lives and Works, by Lynn F. Miller and Sally S. Swenson (1981)
“An underground grower, blind and a common brown;
Got a misshapen look, it’s nudged where it could;
Simple as soil yet crowded as earth with all.”
—Richard Wilbur (b. 1921)
“Though the railroad and the telegraph have been established on the shores of Maine, the Indian still looks out from her interior mountains over all these to the sea.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)