Wyse Talk with Jan Doyle; Quilts In The Underground Railroad: Fact or Fiction

quilts in the Underground Railroad fact or fiction you decide I'm John Doyle and we'll be right back [Music] [Music] the Underground Railroad is mentioned in every children's social studies book in elementary school but they really only my experience has been they really only give it a quarter to a half a page at most a page and then it's passed by and you go on to other topics of that era but when I was an elementary school teacher for some reason I really was drawn to this particular topic and then I ended up my years as a teacher teaching literacy and I discovered this book as a literacy teacher it's called the secret to freedom and one reason why I particularly liked the book was besides being us a story about the Underground Railroad on the back of it they had quilt patterns and these are patterns that might have appeared in quilts and children had it more of a close-up view of them but even better than that and the back cover they talked about what these patterns meant so I just became more and more interested in the topic of this quilts and the Underground Railroad then when I retired a friend of mine showed me this book it's a book for quilters called the Underground Railroad and what this book advocates is making one block of several different blocks and making what's called a sampler quilt I decided I liked the topic so much that I was going to go back into the school systems and give presentations with new information that I learned that teachers don't have readily available to them because they don't have the time to do the research and so I started making Underground Railroad quilts this is one of them and this one outlining what would be one block of that quilt now this quit and then what you do is you put the blocks together and you and you just keep on doing that keep on making the blocks and you have what's called you know this is a lab size quo when I go into classrooms and we start one of the things we talk about is the name of the quilt and does anybody have any idea what you would call this quilt well one name used in the Underground Railroad is monkey wrench and it comes from the term using a monkey wrench if you notice I can put this next to and there's a similarity between the block and the monkey wrench and the monkey wrench was actually the name of one of the slaves who worked as a blacksmith and he was one of the most important slaves on the plantation because the slave owner could rent him out to other plantations and make money off him besides the fact of doing the work at the home plantation but it had an interesting by-product from being rented out this one person got to know the lay of the land most slaves stayed right where they were born so he's going out to other plantations talking to other slaves and learning things that really was not available to people who stayed on the plantation and that's where they started spreading the information and the knowledge about the Underground Railroad so if the presentations that I do with children we talk about that but I also make sure they understand Monkeywrench warning isn't the only name for this quilt it has other names another's name that is called Lincoln's platform which makes a lot of sense because Lincoln was president during the time of the start of the Civil War in fact I'm gonna be talking a little bit more about that later other names I really don't get is churn - that doesn't make any sense to me or hold in the barn door I do get that one hole in the barn door but I think what I came from came around from this is that a quilt and it's also actually confusing to a lot of people a quilt can be known by many many name another quote that I I just want to talk but since it's right up here another quote that I enjoy is this one it's called drunkards path and the drunkards path quilt is a quilt that if someone held it on the barn door or their house around the fence post it meant when you were escaping to freedom to go in a crooked way excuse me not the same not the same direction and I forgot to mention that when this is displayed this was a warning quilt to people on the plantation that they were going to be taking off that night at the beginning of the broadcast I mentioned that there's a controversy and you might be thinking well what is this controversy about well believe it or not it's a huge one and it's really kind of stemming from this 1994 book hidden in plain view a woman by the name of mozella Williams started talking to a reporter initially as an historian about how she knew that quilts were in the Underground Railroad and because of that book and because of all the information in here it spawned many many children's books and I have a few of them here including the one I showed you earlier and they're great books I suggest if you have any interest you might want to get them one is called under the quilt of night which is fun the patchwork path which kind of goes along with the drunkards path another one is sweet Clara in the freedom quilt and they also bring up other ideas that a quilt doesn't have to be just one pattern but more like the beginnings of a map where they actually have locations and trails that they can go on so there's not there's not even one way to do an underground railroad quilt well the problem with this particular book and with historians is that they say it cannot be collaborated in any way it's just one person and it's oral history but if you do any research in this oral history oral tradition is very very is a very valid point but there's no independent collaboration and from talking to some people some people are very much into this topic they need to separate accounts other than this book other than tradition I don't know how you're going to get it if it's just oral and slaves would have a tendency to use up their quilts they wouldn't be decorative and hanging around and because they were you latarian they were what I make a quote for like this this will never see my bedspread this will never be used for warmth or comfort and so therefore obviously it's gonna probably out with me and so but that wasn't the case during that time of the Underground Railroad so I really hope you give it thought what do you think I have an intellectual thought I understand it and I also have a feeling in my heart what I want to be true and sometimes they do battle and sometimes they don't but it really is up to you I'm not and of course there's a slew of books non-fiction books scholastic is always a good name to pick up and this says if you traveled on the Underground Railroad so I highly recommend so there's a lot of and if you're an adult looking at me watching this children's books are often overlooked as a wonderful source of information they're quick fast and easy reads for adults and you get right down to the pithy the pithy now is that you really want I use this book the secret to freedom as a inspiration for a storytelling feature I do when I go into classrooms I give the historical part and then I do struggle I do storytelling and I have to tell you I use my hat and I I made this hat actually I really love it and I put it on and I tell the kids when I put this hat on I'm no longer John Doyle but now I'm auntie Jan and I knew I had the kids in the storytelling part of the presentation because many times when I take it off I hear kids asked me well who are you now so I wouldn't wear this hat out in public but I do love it other quilts I have here to show you is this pretty I couldn't put them all up on the stand but this particular quilt is called the Underground Railroad quilt and if when you hold it up you'll notice that there it's directional and I'll have the children come up and we point out the direction and if this was displayed on a clothesline or on a fence post or on a building that's supposed to be the way the people who are escaping go but if you take it and you turn it the direction changes and so we have a discussion about that one of my favorite quilts that I enjoy is this one and it's called the bear claw now is a and when I hold it up you probably can see how it could possibly be the bear claw but I have to tell you a story years ago I went to Alaska I wanted to photograph the salmon swimming upstream and we were told by the guide that when we walk through the woods to get to this particular spot as we go through the woods we go like this hey bear hey bear hey bear and that will scare off bears I was very very comfortable in that knowledge and I thought well no bears gonna come after me and it wasn't until I got home that I realized how naive I was because that's not going to scare off any bear all it did was make me feel better which I suppose was their point but the bear claw quilt the reason that's important is because a lot of escapes happen during the spring what else happens during the spring the Bears are coming out of hibernation so if there's a lot of beers in a particular area that is displayed to give a warning for it another quote that's enjoyable and also has a lot of meaning is this one and it's called the wagon we also just about half of it and as you look on the monitor or as I look on the monitor you can see circular and it has a middle in here right in here and sometimes quilts quilters will call this The Dresden Plate and which is a valid name but for the Underground Railroad it's the wagon wheel and the purpose of that is that if they if that was displayed then if someone's coming into the plantation they knew most likely that person was sympathetic and there would be a fake bottom they could hide on the fake bottom underneath the wagon wheel underneath the wagon they could hide on the flatbed of the wagon and things we put over them or somebody a woman was particularly fair-skinned they could sit in as a passenger and have a bonnet that maybe covered most of their face and they could go out that way so the wagon wheel was a particularly important quilt one quilt that I like to show the children that I never finished because I wanted them to see the sewing was the crossroads quilt this quilt and we talked about what the crossroads are and what the significance and meaning is how they can go either way but I like them to see I like children to see the back of the quilt so they can just sort of get a sense of how much sewing goes into this I've always have been sorry that in most school systems Hoback has been eliminated and I understand why they have to make room for the Computer Sciences which are very important but children today are not getting the experience of sewing on a button of doing hand stitching creating creating outfits from fabric and it's really really important so if you're a parent or grandparent you might want to pick up one of these books and start teaching your children how to sew how to make patch works how you can take old clothes and and cut them up and and put them into a recycle repurpose them into a wonderful design it's it's just a skill if you can sew on a button and when you're 8 years old you won't forget it when you're 80 it's really an important skill one of the cool it's that I really was not going to make because I didn't like it I didn't care for the pattern I thought it was very very basic was this particular quilt and it's the ships and I didn't like this quilt because it's a it means the children it's a children's like a preschool quilt you make it for somebody who's having a child and you give it to him but this quilt as I studied more and did more information of course I knew that the slaves came over on a boat and were brought ashore and and sold and auctioned off of course I knew that but in my studies I learned that in Africa they actually had warehouses where they would capture slaves and warehouse them in for up to two or three years until someone came and wanted them and that was just an interesting I didn't realize it I thought it was they just grabbed him from the fields throw him and threw him in a boat I also learned from my investigations that even though slaves appeared on boats and had many times how to do the the hard manual work on a boat they would help other escaping slaves so when that word got around that a particular boat and slaves were sympathetic it was also another way to escape from down south to up north look there are other quilts that I use when I started with the children this is a very small quilt it's called tumbling blocks this could this could be the beginning of if you post it on a fence that the kids would take off one thing I like to share with the children and this is something that you can find at the local fabric stores I think it's really really important that they have a sense of place and this excuse me this I had to make into a it's a map of the United States and this was quilted I hope I have it right-side up and you can follow the direction we the storytelling feature starts in the south and we can follow it to Ohio and then how they go to how that's a very significant midsection and how they go north from that but one particularly you is this particular book it's Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe and the interesting thing about this book is that when I was a in college I was told not to read this book that it was very very very poorly written it's boring and don't bother well of course I listen to that and I also even if you go online and google it now you're also good to see the same review for that book I started reading this book and I found this to be the first book that put my head and my heart together and I could feel what happened during that time Harriet Beecher Stowe captured our hearts and it was a best-seller during her time only selling less than the Bible if you do nothing else you might want to read this book and then you might want to take a ride up to Hartford Connecticut and see her home there's nothing more enjoyable for me anyway to have read a book have a sense of feeling of place and being able to walk through that person's real life house to see where she slept to see where she ate to see where she entertained guests on the wall in the kitchen or in the walkways you are the hall as you go in there's a sign that's framed and said and this is from President Lincoln you're the little lady that started the Civil War very very interesting and while you're there don't forget to go next door it's right next door hop skip and a jump to go see Mark Twain's house very very interesting his house is more elaborate his house is more captures the attention more of people her house is plain simple New England like but it was she was extremely extremely important in our history one last thing I like to show you is that I have fun showing the children and talking to the children about if their mamas have to complain about doing the laundry how would they like to do the laundry on this apparatus it's a washboard so when I give the talks to children they get a little of the flavor of the history they have a chance to touch some of the artifacts adults have an opportunity to hear the real story behind and hear a little bit about the fact or fiction and I try not to give an answer and I'm not going to give you an answer today I'd like you to if you have an interest in this do some more reading on your own if you have grandchildren these are wonderful books to pick up for grandchildren or your own children and if you have any inclination if you what you think you might want to so you might want to go to a local quilt guild they're absolutely phenomenal people in these guilds and you'll pick up valuable valuable information and you'll learn everything you need to learn by workshops and demonstrations how you two can make a quilt so quilts in the Underground Railroad fact or fiction you decide Thanks [Music] you

Channel: Jan Doyle

Views: 2,217

Keywords: Underground Railroad; Quilts in the Underground Railroad, Hidden in Plain View, Mozella Williams, Oral History, The Secret to Freedom, Monkey Wrench Warning, Bear Paw Pattern, Underground Railroad Pattern, Eleanor Burns Patterns, Drunkards Path Pattern, Boats to Freedom Pattern, Uncle Tom's Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe, If You Traveled on the Underground Railroad, Sweet Clara and the Freedom Quilt, The Patchwork Path

Id: 2dJs6HIuANk

Length: 19min 48sec (1188 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 09 2017