Sandra Daniel doesn’t know how her ancestors became free people. But she takes solace in the idea that one of her passions, quilting, played a role in leading them to it.
According to some quilters and historians, quilts played a role in the Underground Railroad. A quilt hung outside a safe-house cabin would contain a symbolic block that helped the escapees. Quilt historians Jacqueline Tobin and Raymond Dobard wrote “Hidden in Plain View: A Secret Story of Quilts and the Underground Railroad” that detailed how these could have been used. The blocks included the monkey wrench, a flock of geese and bear tracks.
When Daniel, who owns Country Barn Quilt Co., came across the book, she was fascinated. The monkey wrench block would have been the first to appear to escaping slaves.
“You have this guy, an enslaved blacksmith, who could travel from plantation to plantation,” Daniel explained. “He kind of knows the road and when to travel. So when the quilt is made with the monkey wrench block, he’s telling the slave, go ahead and prepare yourself.”
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A bear paw indicated travelers should take an animal’s path through the forest. Tobin and Dobard learned the meaning of each quilt block from a woman whose parents were slaves. They had passed down an oral story about the blocks, a common way for unlettered people to keep their history alive.
Daniel, whose status as a Black business owner makes her part of just 5% of all business owners in Georgia, wanted to honor Black History Month. She wanted to give customers an approachable way to talk about it.
“We don’t want our customers to feel standoffish about it," she said.
For her, the blocks offered a glimpse of how people communicated back in the day. She decided to make the story part of a “mystery block” event.
At the end of one of her evening sewing gatherings, known as “Bring Your Own Bobbin Night,” she gave each attendee a fabric packet, “but you wouldn’t know what that block is until you sew it together.” When they returned, they had all made an Underground Railroad Quilt block, and Daniel told its story.
Multiple historians have discredited the veracity of the Quilts of the Underground Railroad, pointing to a lack of physical, written or oral evidence. But the idea of the quilt as a tool for communication remains appealing to many.
“I take that there is some truth to it,” said Peggy Martin, vice president of Outreach Brown Sugar Stitchers Quilt Guild. “But the truth of how these were used may not be exactly as it was told to us.”