The Freedom Quilting Bee: Folk Art and the Civil Rights Movement in Alabama by Nancy Callahan (The University of Alabama Press, $20)
"Because my grandmother and other family members were quilters, all my life I had been exposed to and interested in quilts as an art and craft. But those at Stillman (College in Tuscaloosa) attracted me as no others ever had. They were adventurous, those Stars and Monkey Wrenches and Courthouse Steps (created by the Freedom Quilting Bee). They were brilliant and beautiful, but in a way far different from those I had known. For instance, the color black, which I had never before seen in quilts, was frequently employed. The schemes of color--black mixed with white, black with yellow, and red on white--provided stark contrasts. In addition, rich use was made of the pure, primary hues, quite unlike the softer pastels of my past.
But those quilts also told much about their makers--members all in the struggle for civil rights. They were obviously women of enormous confidence and courage, whose daring spirits provided the sustenance by which they had prevailed. What I did not realize then but came to learn years later was the powerful history behind each showpiece in the exhibit.
Some of the quilts sold; the others went home to the Black Belt. And, for more than a decade, the back side of my soul felt a magnetic pull toward the Freedom Quilting Bee…" --excerpted from the preface in this reprint of the book
