The Quilts of Gee's Bend
January 12 Humcore Lecture
- Four modes of African-American artistry
- Blues, jazz, rock and roll, and spirituals
- Singing songs in these genres validated white people while hiding the true struggles of African-Americans; shows ingenuity
- Language of quilts used in the Underground Railroad was not written down because having evidence of such things was punishable by death, was only taught through oral history
- Quilts can act as portals through different migrations
- First migration was Africans going to America as a part of the slave trade
- Second migration was the Great Migration, Africans moving out of the South to different regions of the country in order to find work
- Next migration, or portal, is to a world where African-Americans can live without racism and anti-black sentiment
- Ties in with Afrofuturism and ideas of black people literally traveling to new worlds