An exhibition at the Mississippi Museum of Art sheds new light on the intimate and enduring bonds formed through the quilts sewn by Black women in the South.
Gee’s Bend is just the tip of the iceberg. Quilting by Black women in the American South spreads far and wide, with an ongoing history that is not always well understood. From plantation life to the present, quilting has allowed Black women both to find personal liberation and to come together “to forge sisterhood, share resources, and hold space for one another’s needs.”
Much of what is known about the tradition is thanks to photographer Roland L. Freeman, who, as a stringer for Time and Magnum Photos and director of the Mississippi Folklife Project, traveled through the American South beginning in the early 1960s, photographing and documenting African-American quilters and guilds and collecting their quilts, eventually amassing more than 120. In A Communion of the Spirits (1996), his second book on the subject, he wrote of quilts’ almost magical “power to create a virtual web of connections—individual, generational, professional, physical, spiritual, cultural, and historical.” His method of documentation emphasized that the lived experience of the maker could not be disconnected from her work.
Freeman’s web of connections comes into its own in Of Salt and Spirit: Black Quilters in the American South, at the Mississippi Museum of Art. Guest curator Sharbreon Plummer, an independent researcher and writer on textile traditions, artistic production, and folkways connected to Black life, especially in the South, puts quilting another way, describing it as: “a rhizome whose continuously expanding roots house the origin stories of Black life in the United States. Quilts are a material representation of the memories, legacies, and labor of those who sustained and shaped Black communities. Each square and seam tells a story—stories of place, love, loss, and simply existing. Black quilters of the South have remained the archivists of everyday life. As active observers of their surroundings, their work brings together color and composition to create a visual language that speaks to the beauty of Black life.”
Take a look at Mary “Mayfair” Matthews’s Folk Scenes quilt illustrated here, and included in the exhibition. Known for experimenting across multiple mediums, from painting to doll-making to quilting, Matthews used whatever spoke to her to depict her memories of life in rural Mississippi and her personal dreams and aspirations. Here she gives us a peek at her everyday life, and experiences that range from the amusing to the unfortunate, all executed in assorted materials, such as metallic thread, lace, and buttons, that suggest that Matthews did not want to be bound by traditional definitions of quilting.
Very often the connecting thread in quilts, through generations, is the family itself. Besides repurposing articles of family members’ clothing, Freeman observed how some makers invoked memories of loved ones through stylistic choices and techniques that originated with their ancestors. “Mothers and daughters morphed into teachers and students,” Plummer says, “blending their individual creative practices into quilts that showcased years of shared learning. This act of exchanging visual language and familial knowledge represents more than art-making. It becomes a way of ensuring that home, and its memories and lessons, will not be forgotten.”
Beyond their beauty and capacity to connect, quilts’ most palpable quality, of course, is their coziness. In Freeman’s interview with Maya Angelou in 1992, she spoke of growing up with family quilts and even of finding comfort from them when she wrote. Freeman’s photographs of Angelou were incorporated a few years later within a quilted border by Anita Knox. It, too, is included in Of Salt and Spirit, as are some fifty other quilts, including several from Freeman’s collection and a number of his photographs now in the Mississippi Museum of Art’s collection. The show opens on November 16 and runs to April 13, 2025.
