A Crooked Stitch? “It’s My Love”
Elvira Wyatt has made some 120-150 quilts.
"The one on the left bottom, it tells the whole story about the Underground Railroad," Wyatt said.
Instructions and even warnings hidden in plain sight.
"There was directions in the quilt, that could tell you, how to get to a safe house," she said.
Thanks to JD Thomas for sharing this story. https://www.kiiitv.com/article/news/local/local-quilter-elvira-wyatt/503-32a32e51-ac97-45da-a684-9430dbf8505
Carolyn Gibbs https://yaledailynews.com/blog/2007/02/01/prof-debunks-douglass-myth/
Africans from many nations prior to America’s colonial and Caribbean human trafficking, sailed the oceans and the seas. They charted the stars. I cannot imagine anyone entailed in the institution of the colonial and U.S., enslavement system needing to rely on a quilt to give them direction and guidance. On the surface, it is a fantastical tale. Harriet Tubman had a network of over 1200 contacts in which the Underground Railroad depended on. Many in the chain of workers had no knowledge of one another. If one attempted escape at night, how would one read the quilt? By candle? By lantern? Fredrick Douglass wrote passes for himself and other enslaved persons. When the informer in their midst told. They ate the passes with shared biscuits, thus there was no evidence of the passes written by Douglass.
https://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/douglas01.asp