What is the African or Underground Railroad quilt code?

Answer 1

Answer:

The African quilt code is another name for the "Underground Railroad Quilt Code," a method of using icons placed on quilts as signposts for travelers on this pathway. There has a varying degree of of belief in this concept among historians. Some have presented this as a myth being propagated by creative writers. A recently published book written in 2009 entitled "The Content of Their Character, the History of an Antique Quilt and the African American Family That made it" may provide some assistance. It reveals a readily translatable code on a quilt made in 1887 by former escaped slaves. The history of these slaves is well documented as far back as 1830. The author has kept the quilt in excellent condition and loans it out to museums for review of this code on site. This recent work now puts the quilt code in a frame of reference will perhaps make it more worthy of acceptance.

Although the "code" is part of many families' oral tradition, there are at least 15 contradictory stories about the various meanings (some involving patterns that weren't designed until the 1930s), no one has yet identified an ancestor who used the code to move North.

The earliest known mention of the "quilt code" comes from a documentary on women's studies from 1987. There have been several fictionalized accounts of this code, such as in the 1993 children's book Sweet Clara and the Freedom Quilt, by Deborah Hopkinson (a white woman).

Oprah Winfrey helped popularize another book, Hidden in Plain View, by Jacqueline Tobin, based on Tobin's interviews with an older woman, Ozella Williams, whose family ran a thriving cottage industry selling quilt kits, and used tales of the "code" as a marketing tool. The book was published after Williams' death, so the stories can't be verified.

Although no historian has ever documented an "Underground Railroad Quilt Code," the myth is sometimes taught as fact to elementary and middle-school students.

Answer:

The wagon wheel quilt was supposed to mean the slave should pack their belongings and get ready for the long journey ahead.

I assume you are talking about the information contained in the book Hidden in Plain View. Please be aware that most quilting historians and Underground Railroad historians agree that there is no evidence to support the book. While slaves certainly made quilts, it's unlikely that they were used in the method suggested in this book.

There's an excellent book on the subject by Barbara Brackman (a noted quilt historian), titled Facts and Fabrications. You can also search online for "underground railroad quilt myth" and find extensive information.

Despite the fact that even our schools have bought into the idea of quilts as a secret code, it has no basis in truth and undermines the accomplishments of escaping slaves and others who participated in the Underground Railroad.