Hidden in Plain View: A Secret Story of Quilts and the Underground Railroad

This book is a breath of fresh air in terms of presenting oral histories as valid, and folk history as usable in an academic setting. Forms of record-keeping which are not written using methods recognized by dominant cultures, whether academia, today, or the former empires of England, Spain, etc, are almost always discounted, or destroyed, as the Quipus of the Incan empire.

These quilts are essentially, it sounds, like an updated form of Quipu (Khipu) made from fabric rather than strands of yarn or twine cordage.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quipu

Page 29 made me think of the strain sometimes found between differing cultural interpretations and valuations of oral history and what makes a fact a fact, or something 'obvious,' well, show more obvious. In other words, the academic methodology versus intuitive oral tradition. As a phd student, I was horrified at the first presentation I attended by a fellow doctoral student. She presented her preliminary findings based on two years of research, and I found myself thinking that if any of my family could see this, they would all tell me I was wasting my time and money in doing research, if I would end up presenting findings as blindingly obviousl as hers. But, as on Page 31, the fear of ridicule forces one to follow a methodology that can be at odds with what one's gut instincts say are obvious. And when those two ways of thinking clash, it is the dominant culture that wins.

Thanks to these many authors for making non-dominant cultural histories valid again.
Shira Destinie
Willaim-James-MEOW Date: 27 August, 12014 H.E. show less

I came to this book cold turkey, never having heard of it before or the controversy it created. The authors make it clear in the several prefaces and forwards that this is a book about a story told to them by an elderly woman, which supposedly taught that quilting patterns had secret meanings and were used as means of communication for the Underground Railroad. The authors could find had no facts to back it up. It is all their own theory based on her tale. Then they repeated themselves throughout the book on and on not only with their suppositions, but with other details. This book could have been a fine pamphlet to present at an historical fair or something. It is peppered throughout with words and phrases such as; "we believe" show more "possible" "could have been" "could it be?" "might it?" "most probably," and many more. They had more ways of saying "we are guessing" than I've ever read before. I get it, they had no facts to back up their story, but they had already told us that. A lot. I think their theory could have been more interestingly presented in the form of historical fiction rather than trying (and failing) to present a scientific paper. The more they elaborated on their theory, the less probable it sounded to me.

Quilts seemed like a very awkward method of communicating important information which by its very nature could change from moment to moment. The leaps of logic they made interpreting the designs on the quilts also seemed improbable, and the fact that it was all so secret that only a few knew the meanings and most of them had been lost seemed impractical if you were trying to move people secretly without talking. How were they supposed to know what it all meant?

As I was reading about how the authors got this tale (from one woman who had not been alive during slavery, but she had been a school teacher and a very intelligent lady), I wondered if the lady was having a bit of fun with the author. Ozella McDaniel Williams could have been telling snippets of her own family history, but no one in her family was interested or participated or contributed.

Giles R. Wright wrote a critique of this book that summed up my thoughts in an intellectual and scholarly way. He even mentioned his doubts about the sincerity of Ms. Williams, though for the benefit of doubt, she certainly may have heard the tale she told from her family, and perhaps it even happened in her family. Personally, I think quilts are an excellent way to preserve the history of ones family in symbols.

I did enjoy the authors comparing African symbols with American and African American quilting symbols and Masonic symbols and all of their meanings, which seem to be similar. It was an interesting read. show less

In 1994,Jacqueline was visiting historic Charleston when she stopped at the famous Old Marketplace and was drawn to a stand selling beautiful quilts. She bought one and the vendor, an elderly African American woman, started to tell her a story about how quilts were used by slaves to communicate on the Underground Railroad. This was something Jacqueline had never heard before but several months passed before she began what was to become a long, and fascinating quest to learn about the secret codes of the quilts. With the help of many historian and quilters, she traced African cultural history, cultural memory, oral history and the stories of codes, spirituals, and secret societies both in Africa and in the USA. Mrs. Ozella McDaniel show more Williams, the woman who initially sold Jacqueline the quilt and started her on her journey, was a *griot*, an African term for a storyteller and keeper of cultural and heritage, usually passed down from generation to generation. Gradually, the quilt code patterns were revealed. The various patterns used in quilting, from the designs, to the colours, to the stitching, each represented a message, a direction or a directive, guiding the slaves in their attempts to escape slavery and make their way north to Canada and freedom. Since slaves in the 1800s were not legally allowed to learn to read or write, their songs, or spirituals also often contained coded messages, thus rendering songs and quilts - all *hidden in plain view* - a sort of audio-visual form of communication between them.

One particular example I found fascinating was that each *safe* station along the way had a code name. For example Detroit, Michigan was *Midnight*, and Dresden, Ontario (Canada) was *Dawn*. The coded message *from Midnight to Dawn* meant to travel from Detroit to Dresden. This was given as a sample of a specific coded message but it struck me particularly because I happen to also have another book by Jacqueline Tobin, published 8 years after Hidden in Plain View. Its title? From Midnight to Dawn - The Last Tracks of the Underground Railroad. Suddenly, that title took on a whole new meaning for me.

Hidden in Plain View has illustrations, photos, a glossary and a timeline, and is fascinating reading, giving new insight into a part of history we thought we knew but are still learning about. show less

This book had such promise and started out so well and then fell so flat.

The premise of the book is the story of Ozella and her ancestors, as told to the author in Ozella's quilt booth at a vendor's market. It's the story we want to hear when we pick up the book and the author tells us she has now heard the story. Just when we think we are going to hear the story as Ozella told it, which would have been what gave this book strength and potency, we veer off instead into what the authors made of the different little pieces of the story instead of hearing the actual story as it was told.

This weakened the book and left me as the reader feeling as if the story was still being kept hidden. There was a lot of conjecture and research presented show more instead and whilst it was interesting at times and I did learn some things that were fascinating, I still found myself feeling like what I really wanted was to hear Ozella's story retold from that moment when Jacqueline was sitting at her feet surrounded by quilts for three hours. If the authors had done that and *then* presented their research, this book would have been much more satisfying and impactful to read. Instead, it felt like the story was kept secret with just little pieces of it exposed here and there.

It had potential but didn't deliver. show less

This book is a breath of fresh air in terms of presenting oral histories as valid, and folk history as usable in an academic setting. Forms of record-keeping which are not written using methods recognized by dominant cultures, whether academia, today, or the former empires of England, Spain, etc, are almost always discounted, or destroyed, as the Quipus of the Incan empire.

These quilts are essentially, it sounds, like an updated form of Quipu (Khipu) made from fabric rather than strands of yarn or twine cordage.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quipu

Page 29 made me think of the strain sometimes found between differing cultural interpretations and valuations of oral history and what makes a fact a fact, or something 'obvious,' well, show more obvious. In other words, the academic methodology versus intuitive oral tradition. As a phd student, I was horrified at the first presentation I attended by a fellow doctoral student. She presented her preliminary findings based on two years of research, and I found myself thinking that if any of my family could see this, they would all tell me I was wasting my time and money in doing research, if I would end up presenting findings as blindingly obviousl as hers. But, as on Page 31, the fear of ridicule forces one to follow a methodology that can be at odds with what one's gut instincts say are obvious. And when those two ways of thinking clash, it is the dominant culture that wins.

Thanks to these many authors for making non-dominant cultural histories valid again.
Shira Destinie
Willaim-James-MEOW Date: 27 August, 12014 H.E. show less

This book's basic premise is that quilt messages were part of the Underground Railroad. It does more to support the sharing of escape knowledge and routes via song than quilts, so while it is an engaging tale that knits together African print designs, freemasonry, and quilt patterns in mind it remains as Snopes would say, "unproven".

I bought this book at the gift shop at New Market Battlefield in Virginia. It purports to explain secret codes embedded in quilts and spirituals, supposedly used to convey messages to escaping slaves, but much of it is highly speculative. Neither the contemporary quilts nor the humans involved are around to document or verify the practice of passing information in this fashion. It is well illustrated, but the writing is pretty dry, like a term paper for a required subject. The book does contain worthwhile historical information on quilting patterns and techniques, African fabrics, plantation life, Underground Railroad routes and so on. It includes an excellent time-line of 4 centuries of significant events in the history of slavery. show more There must be better sources for this information, however. show less