By the Work of their Hands: The Women of Gee’s Bend All across the world, African Americans are widely known for their music, dancing , literature and fashion. Pop stars like Michael Jackson and Beyoncé are household names and almost everyone knows about Lil Wayne and Kayne West. Furthermore, they are known for exceptional writers such as Langston Hughes, Alice Walker, and poets like Nikki Giovanni and Maya Angelo who have been instrumental in relaying the black experience. They are celebrated for their vivacious hairstyles of locks, braids, and fros full of Afro Sheen. They are known worldly for rap, hip hop, and rhythm and blues. Why is it that African American artistic contributions to the cultural heritage of our nation been overlooked …show more content…
Some of the first quilters in fact were seamstresses on Southern plantations. After the passing of the Emancipation Proclamation, the black Pettway’s continued to live as they had during slavery in their shotgun shacks and working the land all the while continuing their tradition that had been passed down from the generation of the motherland creating their quilts
Like their ancestors, the women of Gee’s Bend used the quilting technique of string quilting to make quilts faster, this often involved stitching together long strips of rags. Much like their African ancestors, the quilters worked without patterns and used irregular shapes.
. Callahan describes how the women organized a quilting bee headed up by Estelle Witherspoon, who was the driving force behind the development of the bee. Mary Boykin Robinson, was the director of the day care center which was attached the Freedom Quilting Bee’s sewing center. Nettie Pettway Young and China Grove Myles were also listed as founding members of this organization and are known for their unique quilting style known as “pine burr …show more content…
As an active quilter, women who previously made $1200 a year could double their income. They used their imagination to create these quilts unlike other artist, even rags had meaning for these quilters. For example, one quilter used her deceased husband’s old work clothes to make a quilt to honor his memory. Growing up when I would travel to visit my grandmother, Ida Mae Jackson, in Alberta, AL which is not far from Gee’s Bend, she would tell me stories of her time in the quilting bee. She told me stories of how many of these women where the children of former slaves, had minimal education, and the mothers of ten to fifteen children. In her stories, she shared how the work with the quilting bee trickled over into other areas of their