May 2024

Layers of Seeing

 

     Central to any study of slavery should be the stories, voices, visions, of the enslaved. But how do we access these voices when their records, their archives were not valued enough to be preserved? How do we know more than facts about those who were unable to write their own narratives, and how do we separate truth from perception in those narratives dictated to amanuenses and shaped by audience expectations? To gain access to the interiors of the enslaved and formerly enslaved--what they felt about their places in the world--a quilt might be more useful than a book. 

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     In the Bible Quilt and the Pictorial Quilt, Harriett Powers* left an evocative archive. Their religious and astronomical visions, along with her a page-length statement and the recollections of her son in a WPA narrative are resources that when viewed not solely as artifacts or testaments, but as expression, reveal the vitality of black creativity.

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(*I use the spelling of Harriett that appears on her tombstone in Athens and in Clarke County records.)