In 1999, authors Jacqueline Tobin and Raymond Dobard published a remarkable book. Half a dozen years earlier, Tobin wrote, she had been approached by an elderly black woman in Charleston, South Carolina with a surprising story: during the half century before the Civil War, quilts had been used by African-Americans as a means of conveying messages concerning escape on the Underground Railroad. Not surprisingly, the "Underground Railroad Quilt Code," as it came to be known, quickly captured the popular imagination: for generations, a secret code originating in Africa had been "hidden in plain view" in everyday quilts! Quilt stores now sell "Code" books, tour guides and antique dealers use the "Code" to sell antiques, and educators struggling to make sense of Black History Month use "Code" storybooks to teach variations of the story to children in Social Studies classes.
Meanwhile, professional historians and an increasingly vocal group of laymen and women - students of quilt history and the history of African-Americans - have decried the "Quilt Code" as without factual basis, accusing its proponents of sloppy scholarship at best and sheer hucksterism at worst. They wonder why none of the people asserting they learned the "Code" from family oral history claims a single ancestor who actually escaped North. And they complain that just as the history of African-Americans had gained acceptance as worthy of serious study, documented stories of black accomplishments and heroism were being ignored in favor of a convenient pop-culture tale whose dubiousness insults the very culture it ostensibly celebrates.
Which view is correct? Does the "Underground Railroad Quilt Code" have any basis in fact?
In the years since the publication of Hidden in Plain View this writer has studied the "Quilt Code" in depth. Research included conversations with Serena Wilson, niece of Ozella Williams, and lengthy correspondence with Teresa Kemp, Wilson’s daughter, who also promotes the "Quilt Code". I was disappointed that although her emails to me totaled more than 6,000 words, and she not only repeatedly stated that she wanted to answer in detail any questions I had but offered to send me documentary evidence she said her family had kept for generations, when I sent her specific questions regarding the individual quilt blocks described below, Kemp’s emails to me abruptly stopped.
In late July 2004 Kemp again made contact with me, blaming a computer virus for her two-year silence. Over a period of about 10 days she sent me another dozen emails totaling another 3,000 words, none of which answered any of my questions about the "Quilt Code". She did, however, make a number of new claims, including that the Daughters of the Confederacy are somehow behind objections to the "Quilt Code" myth, and that historians reject the "Quilt Code" because they "did not bother to check or get other information".
As she did in 2002, Kemp repeatedly promised to answer specific questions I sent her about the "Quilt Code". She even agreed to send me copies of the evidence she claims to have unearthed. She never sent me anything, nor did she ever reply to follow-up emails asking for their whereabouts. But while Kemp may have abandoned her correspondence with me, she continues to send out notices of lectures and other appearances, and applied for a Federal government grant to teach the "Code".. In 2005 she announced she had opened a "museum" in Atlanta, for which she charges admission.
