|
HUAN 5 |
| Ideally, we would
have several of the special slave-made quilts containing the patterns and the stitching
mentioned in Ozella's story-code to analyze. Unfortunately, the fragile nature of
textiles, the hard use to which these quilts were exposed, the lye soap washing, the
possible taking along of quilt-maps on the arduous journey North, and the lapse of over a
century have mitigated against the survival of many slave-made quilts. Compounding this
dearth of extant quilts was the popular misconception that precise geometrically patterned
quilts were not made by Blacks and were therefore dismissed during the cataloging of
African American quilts. We have thus found ourselves obliged to reverse conventional
procedures, having to present a theory before finding a wealth of tangible evidence. We do
believe that with the publication of this book, however, many "hidden" African
American quilts and perhaps even other Underground Railroad quilt codes will surface.
|
|
HUAN 5 |
