Have you have ever paid
trees any attention? Some of them are light green,
dark green, greener green, yellowish green. Have you ever paid how
the leaves are blowing? They have a glimmer in it. And I called it silver
because it be wavy. (SINGING) I don’t want
nobody to praise me when I’m gone. Mm. Then some time at night, when
I’m laying down in the bed, I’m dreaming about something. And I have my pencil and
my paper beside the bed. And I just sketch
that out on paper. (SINGING) Lord, I don’t
want nobody to praise me when I’m gone. Whoa. It’s just something to
keep your mind occupied. That’s all. And then you quilt
for your children. (SINGING) — whiles
I yet live. (SINGING) If you
want to put it on — Make me a quilt. (SINGING) Lord, to help me. Yes, if I — At first I wanted
to leave home. But then when I
got older, I began to like it a little more. And then I began to
fall in love with it. The biggest of my
challenges was farming. I picked cotton. I didn’t like it, not at all. But it was life. We had to do what we had
to do to make a living. When my parents
finished their farm then we go over and helped our
neighbor get their farm. We just worked together. [humming] I started cooking
at age of 6. Would you believe that? I was the only girl, but my
mom gave all of my brothers a chore in the kitchen. She made them learn how to
cook because she told them you might not get a
wife and at least you’ll know how to cook. [laughter] Don’t that make
perfectly good sense? Gee’s Bend, Alabama,
is a rural community. How’d Zeus manage
to get over there? [goats bleating] I opened the gate. You have to go
50 miles to shop. But to live in a
community where everybody knows everybody,
that’s a good thing. [goats bleating] I am Essie Pettway. Everybody call me Toot. China Pettway. My name is Mary
Lee Bendolph. My real name is Rita Mae, but
most people call me Rabbit. If one not related
to the other one, they’re related
to the other one. And we all know one another. We are kin people. My mamma died
when I was 4. And my grandparents, they
didn’t want to raise me. My granddaddy said
when I started walking, I just jumped up
and went a-running. And so that’s why
they called me Rabbit, because I was so fast. My grandmother taught
me how to quilt. It’s keep me occupied from
doing other things that I might not need to be doing. Sew it like that. That’s what you call
the housetop. I was born and raised here. I went to New York and
stayed for two weeks, but I came back. Mhm. And I’ve been
here ever since. I remember when my mom and my
grandmom and their neighbors used to come by
to quilt together. And I used to just sit there
and look up under the quilt and wonder how they was going
up and down, up and down with that needle. They wasn’t even sticking
their fingers, but — I said, I’d have stuck
my finger to death. But it was real exciting
to see that as a child. And I say when
I get older, I’m going make me lots
of quilts so I can have them to keep my kids warm. [humming] They would teach us when we
was under the quilt listening to them, praying and talking
to God about their children, how they wanted them to grow
up and be mens and womens. (SINGING) Lord, have mercy. To love their children
and to teach them the value of life. (SINGING) Lord, have mercy. They understood what
it was about family. (SINGING) Save my soul. You could feel the love. Sometimes you’re walking
along the highway, you see a little
piece of material. You pick it up and run home
and give it to my mamma. And she put it in a quilt. Somehow are our
old blue jeans. And I just took them and
cut them up and made this, turn it into a quilt. Look at what your
mamma made me. That’s the way you do it. I do all my sewing
by hand and so — I have a sewing
machine, but I don’t — I use it when I have to use. And then go to stitching it. When I’m doing my quilt,
my mind is totally into it, and I don’t have
to be perfect. It give you a piece of mind. You can take time out and
talk to God and say thank you. (SINGING) Father, I stray. My hand to thee. O.K. There we go. There we go. I get to make the
decision of whether I want to put this in
there or take it out. And if nobody else
like it, so what? It going on my bed
because it’s mine. (SINGING) Swing low,
sweet old chariot, coming to carry me home. Swing low, sweet old chariot,
coming to carry me home. I looked over Jordan;
then what did I see — whoa — coming to
carry me home? When we were young,
we worked a whole lot. Sure. I worked at school
at the lunchroom. But the rest of the people
were working in fields and picking cotton
and stuff like that. We was living on a white
man’s place at that time. We didn’t want to live
in the same old rut. We wanted to move. I did. Don’t know what everybody
else wanted to do, but I wanted to
do better things. When I went to march in
the civil rights movement, I didn’t know the police
and everything was there, taking people to
jail, beating them, and all that kind of stuff. I didn’t know. But I really wanted to
become a registered voter. You know, when you
become a voter, you could do something. It’s O.K. now, but not
like it should be. I was always
held back because of where I came from,
who my mother were, who my father were. But I realized I am somebody. I can do anything that
I put my mind to doing. It make me feel great. I never thought quilts would
be in no museum, no way. That’s mine, that
picture right there. Mhm. That’s the first
year I started. There’s my quilt there. There’s a quilt there. And this is Essie, her quilt. It just was a joy to see. It’s just like something just
burst open because I never thought that a quilt would
be an artwork, people would think that was beautiful,
that something we’d done could be shown
all over the world and people get joy out of it. Oh, girl, I just loved it. You can look at a quilt. It can give you a
feeling of something. You know, it gives you love. You can see love. You can see peace. You can see joy in
different quilts. I just loved to see my
beautiful quilt hanging up there. And I don’t know what
happened to them, but — (SINGING) Oh, please. Oh, please. He asked me, was it all right
for him to sell my quilt? I tell him, yeah, because
you sent me some money, but he ain’t told me
nothing else since then (SINGING) Oh, please. Oh, please. We’re going leave this
all behind one day. It’s not ours in
the beginning. We just only borrowing it
for the time we are here (SINGING) Oh, thank God. Oh, thank God.
