The concept is incredibly well-conceived in my opinion. So, here is a picture of the symbols of their meanings and a picture of what could be a real quilt code:
Saturday, April 21, 2018
Quilt Codes
I was really intrigued by Elizabeth and Margot's presentation on quilt codes in class the other day, so I looked it up later. According to Dobard, one of the authors of Hidden in Plain View: A Secret Story of Quilts and the Underground Railroad, the code "was a way to say something to a person in the presence of many others without the others knowing. It was a way of giving direction without saying, 'Go northwest.'"
The concept is incredibly well-conceived in my opinion. So, here is a picture of the symbols of their meanings and a picture of what could be a real quilt code:
The concept is incredibly well-conceived in my opinion. So, here is a picture of the symbols of their meanings and a picture of what could be a real quilt code:
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2 comments:
I really liked the concept of the codes as well. The visuals really help, and show how discreet and clever the codes are. I think it is also a fantastic example of communication in art, and especially how some art's message can especially resonate with a single community.
Adding on to this, I think it's important to point out that the use of quilts as secret codes is the subject of some historical debate. Other historians have criticized proponents of the theory, saying evidence is mostly from folklore. One piece of evidence is that there are no existing examples of contemporary slave narratives that mention the use of quilts. Also, no examples of quilts from the time period are confirmed to still exist. So while the coded quilt messages are a possibility and an interesting theory, it is possible that they didn't function exactly as a sort of code. This also sadly speaks to the difficulty of historical research of slavery, as there is little evidence that survives to the present day of specific parts of slave life.
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