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The quilting sisters, Constance Ellison (left) and Harryette Pickens Homage to a Hidden Heritage: Black Women Quilt-Makers Joyce Bickerstaff 57 I have always known and felt that there was something distinct and extraordinary about the place of my childhood, particularly about the women who taught me the ways about womanhood. My journey back to Appalachia has been inspired by a driving interest in the folk culture of African American women in the mountain region. The immediate search for the African American in Appalachian quilt-making has taken me to museum halls, roadside stands, traveling exhibits, college art galleries, old trunks, and attics , and now has me moored at Main Street, Benham, Kentucky (a stretch that recently became Bernie Bickerstaff Boulevard), a stone's throw from the house of my birth. As a young girl sitting at the feet of "Mother Dear" ("Muh Dea" in the Appalachian vernacular), usually I found the quilt-making scene a "soulful" experience —last night's gossip, Doc Watts's hymns, colorful scraps to play with, tea cakes to nibble, and always the iron pot of collard greens and ham knuckles on the fire, the aroma bidding a loud and friendly "come on in" as a neighbor nears the front door. My first encounter with quilt-making was at House Number Thirty, in Benham, Kentucky—the house of my birth. The powerful, vigilant hands of Mother Georgia who attended my birth and gave me the first slap of life were the hands that gave me my birthright , my first family heirloom—a masterly quilt fashioned by a masterly quiltmaker . Georgia Bickerstaff was among the hundreds of "Negro" families that migrated from northern Alabama to the 1920s company coal-mining towns of Southeastern Kentucky. Twenty years later, upon the announcement of my forthcoming marriage, I became the envied heiress to nearly a dozen handmade quilts. Though the marriage unraveled in just a few years, Mother Georgia's stitchery remains. She named one of the quilts, "Roads to the White House"; it is my special treasure and travels with me wherever I go. It fits perfectly the African American design aesthetic. But that is not its significance. Rather, this masterpiece symbolizes and embraces the high aspirations, strong moral values, family traditions, and strength of character and community that loomed so large in Muh Dea's teachings and was woven into the fabric of her life for as far back as I can remember. Though my personal Odyssey did not lead me to the White House, except on the coattails of my cousin Bernie's 1978 NBA championship year with the Washington Bullets (see Bernie Bickerstaff story in this issue), it is no surprise that at some point during my journey back (this time as a scholar) to my African American and Appalachian roots, I would again find my place in the resurgence of black women's quilt-making. Within the last decade there has been a heightened interest in African American quilt-making. This strong and steady academic interest is evident mostly through major museum exhibitions, seminal research monographs, and renewed interest in black folk art as an aesthetic. Black contemporary quilt-making as aesthetic creative expression is known foremost through the works of a contemporary artist, Faith Ringgold, a New Yorker and a feminist, who has been the subject of numerous one-person exhibitions during the past decade. Although she is not of Appalachian roots, her work includes many traditional values of the Appalachian heritage and the black family . Ms. Ringgold is noted for combining traditions of oral storytelling and African American quilt-making in her painted "story quilts." The work of several other scholars and curators ought to be mentioned in view of their importance to the revival of black American quilt-making. Gladys-Marie Fry's meticulous documentation and collection of historical data brings a new consciousness to the meaning of quilts in the lives of slave men and women. Her monographs on slave-made quilts and her more recent exhibition catalog, Stitched from the Soul: Slave Quilts from the Antebellum South, combine the skills of the 58 scholar, the historiographer, the anthropologist , the art historian, and the folklorist . Other notable figures are the...

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