The New York Times called the Gee's Bend quilts "some of the most miraculous works of modern art America has produced."
You have probably seen the Gee's Bend Quilts stamps that came out in 2006, but how much do you know about them? Since it is Black History Month, we here at Postmarks thought that you might like to learn more about Gee's Bend, Alabama; the quilts; and the women who make them: it's indeed a story of true talent and creativity, generations of hardship, and ultimately, triumph and well-deserved recognition.
Gee's Bend (now named Boykin) is located 30 miles southwest of Selma; it is almost an island, surrounded on three sides by the Alabama River. After emancipation in 1850, many freed slaves took the last name of their former owner (Pettway) and remained on the land as planters or sharecroppers. Many people alive in the area today still retain the surname Pettway.
In the 1932 during the Great Depression, all of the Gee's Bend residents owed money to a local merchant. When the merchant died, his wife foreclosed on the debt and seized all of the possessions of every resident, the belongings of 62 families, 300 people--furniture, animals, food, EVERYTHING.
Gee's Bend was deemed the poorest community in the poorest county in America.
Assistance from the Red Cross and from the government arrived, and with it came the outside world. In 1937, Reverend Renwick Kennedy wrote stories about Gee's Bend for The Christian Century. "Gee's Bend represents another civilization. Gee's Bend is an Alabama Africa. There is no more concentrated and racially exclusive Negro population in any rural community in the South than in Gee's Bend," Kennedy wrote. Even today, there is only one road that leads into and out of Gee's Bend.
At about the same time, photographer Arthur Rothstein was hired by the Resettlement Administration to document life in Gee's Bend. Rothstein's assignment was to take before pictures, so that the Administration could later show how much progress it had brought to the area. Although Rothstein's pictures are now famous, they also remain controversial: many historians believe that they were patronizing, improperly staged or framed, and conveyed the widely-held racist beliefs of the time.
Arthur Rothstein, Negroes, descendants of former slaves of the Pettway Plantation, Gees Bend, Alabama, 1937. Courtesy of The Library of Congress, LC-DIG-fsa-8b35851
Arthur Rothstein, Sewing a quilt. Gees Bend, Alabama, 1937. Courtesy of The Library of Congress,
fsa 8b35946 http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/fsa.8b35946
In the 1970's, the Birmingham Public Library hired John Reese to take more photographs in Gee's Bend (the pictures are copyrighted and can't be reproduced, but they can be seen here.).
As a result of this publicity, the world outside of Gee's Bend became fascinated with the people there. Over the next 50 years, people came to record their music, recitations, festivals, and of course to buy their quilts, but the residents themselves saw little improvement in their own lives. At the very most, a quilt sold for $20. In 1985, a local historian reported that the residents said about all of the attention, "'Ain't nothing ever happened.'"
Everything changed in 2002 when the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston held an exhibition of 70 of the quilts. Now, the work of the Gee's Bend women was perceived as valuable (monetarily and culturally), collectable modern art. Books, a gospel cd, a touring exhibit, the USPS stamp release, and a documentary (The Quiltmakers of Gee's Bend) soon followed. A non-profit agency helped the women form a collective so that they could control their products and finally profit from them. Finally, respect was given and gained.
Additionally, Elyzabeth Gregory Wilde wrote an award-winning play entitled Gee's Bend, and there have been two children's books written about Gee's Bend: Stitchin' and Pullin': A Gee's Bend Quilt (picture book) and Leaving Gee's Bend.
Poster made for Alabama Gets Caught Reading:
To see examples of more the the Gee's Bend quilts, click here.
To watch a clip from the documentary The Quiltmakers of Gee's Bend, click here.
The Birmingham Public Library will be displaying the Gee's Bend quilts of Tinnie Pettway in the exhibit "That's Sew Gee's Bend" from August 2 - September 10, 2010. Admission: free.
Update: At the Bernice Steinbaum Gallery in Miami, 10 of the Gee's Bend quilts will be auctioned off on March 13, 2010 to provide assistance to victims of the earthquake in Haiti. The reserve price for each quilt ranges from $10,000 to $30,000.
