Fabric of history

Author defends controversial book concerning the use of quilts to aid the Underground Railroad

Friday, Dec. 25, 2009

Click here to enlarge this photo Staff photo by BOB RENNEISEN Author Raymond Dobard displays a quilt to the audience at the Calvert Library Prince Frederick. E-Mail This Article | Print This Story Click here to enlarge this photo Raymond Dobard, co-author of "Hidden in Plain View," discusses his controversial book.

When Raymond Dobard and Jacqueline Tobin published their book "Hidden in Plain View: A Secret Story of Quilts and the Underground Railroad" 10 years ago, they had no idea that it would become a source of continuing controversy.

The book, which relates a family legend that quilt patterns were used to provide directions for slaves who wanted to escape to Canada, has become well-known after being featured on the "The Oprah Winfrey Show," and is often taken as proven fact in various museum exhibits, lesson plans and on the Web.

However, the premise has been under constant criticism from many historians.

"Few aspects of the American past have inspired more colorful mythology than the Underground Railroad," wrote author Fergus M. Bordewich, in a 2007 Op-Ed piece in the New York Times. "It's probably fair to say that most Americans view it as a thrilling tapestry of midnight flights, hairbreadth escapes, mysterious codes and strange hiding places."

Bordewich, author of "Bound for Canaan: The Underground Railroad and the War for the Soul of America," went on to say, "… it's not surprising that the intriguing (if only recently invented) tale of escape maps encoded in antebellum quilts — enshrined in a metastasizing library of children's books and teachers' lesson plans and perhaps even in a Central Park memorial to Frederick Douglass — should also seize the popular imagination.

"But faked history serves no one, especially when it buries important truths that have been hidden far too long. The ‘freedom quilt' myth is just the newest acquisition in a congeries of bogus, often bizarre, legends attached to the Underground Railroad."

Dobard, a professor of art history at Howard University in Washington, D.C., and a long-time quilter, discussed the book and the controversy last Thursday evening at the Calvert County Library in Prince Frederick.

"The book is not infallible and there are mistakes in there," he said. "Oral histories change over time."

"Hidden in Plain View" is based upon a family oral history related to Dobard and Tobin by a woman named Ozella McDaniel Williams, now deceased, of Charleston, S.C.

"She said her information came from her mother and grandmother — that her grandmother sitting under a tree would often recite this [story] to her," Dobard said.

The story relates how various quilt patterns such as log cabins, monkey wrenches and wagon wheels served as directions in a code that helped slaves plan their escapes.

"She [Ozella] had tried to tell the story to others in the past, but no one took it seriously."

"It was an oral-visual system," Dobard continued, "intended to provide directions, not detailed instructions [to slaves planning an escape]. All directions were given on the plantation before they left. There was a time, perhaps, when the quilts were placed on the fence of the seamstress to reinforce what was said. They didn't take the quilt with them; it served as a visual aid to help their memory."

However, Dobard was candid in explaining that the book is based upon the oral history handed down in only one family, and, although possible, it is not necessarily indicative of common practice throughout the old South.

"It was just her family," he said. "This is not ‘the' code for everyone trying to escape; this not ‘the' quilt, it is a quilt."

Asked where this book should appear on the library shelf, non-fiction or fiction, Dobard responded, "I think it should be in between, but more in the non-fiction, because there are facts in here. There are portions in this book that are definitely non-fiction, but we don't know everything about Ozella — she's an enigmatic figure and there are some enigmatic elements in the book. "There are questions to be asked, and I think that's important."

rrenneisen@somdnews.com