HIDDEN IN PLAIN VIEW A SECRET STORY OF QUILTS and the UNDERGROUND RAILROAD is the title of this book written by Jacqueline L. Tobin and Raymond G. Dobard, Ph.D., the title of my review is: The importance of sewing in the history of Black Americans, also known as African-Americans.
I hesitated reading this book because I wanted to read about quilting done by Black people. The narrative, as it was presented by the authors, wove the history of quilting beginning with how Africans created with textiles before coming to America, how slaves communicated despite not reading or writing and the relationship between quilts and the underground railroad. There are lots of images of quilts in the book but I found myself more interested in the hows and whys of quilts being used in history than I was with the images, I will have to go back in the book and look at the ones I skipped over.
This book presents Black history in a way that I am very much interested in, sometimes I find modern history books angry and hopeless. I know my ancestors came from some country in Africa and they were enslaved unjustly in America. I know that my freed ancestors endured the hardships of working on a sharecropper farm and I also know that they eventually became educated, productive members of society, many of whom are landowners. I don’t want dates and names, I want the stories behind the names with the dates and we get this through Mrs Ozella McDaniel Williams, what the author identifies as a Griot an oral historian but. Mrs Ozella is the catalyzt for the author Jacqueline L Tobin beginning her quest into the story behind the quilts and why she reached out to Dr. Raymond G. Dobard.
This book is not a “How to” make quilts but a “why this pattern” story. That is what I wanted to know and that is what I learned; the quilting blocks of the underground railroad and their history.
HIDDEN IN PLAIN VIEW A SECRET STORY OF QUILTS and the UNDERGROUND RAILROAD is 179 pages not including: the Historical Time; Ozella”s Underground Railroad Quilt Code Patterns; and Chart Comparing African symbols with American Quilt Patterns, like the “double wedding ring, and Masonic Emblems. This book is an excellent resource for those interested in the history of the art of quilting. Of course I recommend it, to everyone.
Written by Marsha L Floyd
I purchased this book and have not been compensated for it.