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| I’ve found the Internet
has an abundance of lesson plans connecting quilting to
the school curriculum. Since the 1999 publication of Hidden
in Plain View: A Secret Story of Quilts and the
Underground Railroad, written by Jacqueline Tobin
and Raymond Dobard (Doubleday, NY, NY) the topic,
“Did people use quilts to help slaves escape?”
has been pondered. Slaves created pictures and patterns
on quilt blocks, each with a hidden meaning. In the
children’s book Sweet Clara and the Freedom
Quilt Clara’s carefully stitched quilt was a
map of sorts, with hidden messages used to lead slaves
along the Underground Railroad to freedom in the North.
At http://www.mcps.k12.md.us/curriculum/socialstd/grade5/Sweet_Clara.html
- an Economics Lesson for grades K-5, Sweet Clara and
the Freedom Quilt, can be found. This story is based
on a true, little-known chapter in African American
history. Clara is a seamstress in the Big House. Clara
dreams of running north to freedom to reunite with her
mother. Then Clara hears two slaves talking about how
they could find the Underground Railroad if only they had
a map.Clara sews a map of the land - a freedom quilt -
that no master will ever suspect is a map to freedom. More plans correlating slavery to quilting can be found at http://www.ptamerica.com/quilts.htm. Here Dr. Gladys-Marie Fry gives us new insight into the lives and creativity of slave women. Slave Quilts: Stitched From the Soul is a colorful story that reflects the cultures that have come together to form the American patchwork. And at http://www.education-world.com/a_tsl/archives/00-2/lesson0029.shtml is The African American Experience: A Research Quilt. This activity introduces students to the research process as they investigate the contributions of African American leaders of the 1900s. Each student constructs a quilt square highlighting the achievements of an individual. |
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| Bibliography Hopkinson, Deborah. Sweet Clara and the Freedom Quilt. New York: Knopf, 1993. Hopkinson, Deborah. Under the Quilt of Night. New York: Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2001. Tobin, Jacqueline and Raymond Dobard. Hidden in Plain View: A Secret Story of Quilts and the Underground Railroad. New York: Doubleday, 1999. National Underground Freedom Center. February 11, 2002. <http://www.undergroundrailroad.org/> Seman, Rob. “Quilt Messages Lead Slaves to Freedom”. February 11, 2002. <http://www.dailyrecord.com/news/02/01/17/news7-under.htm> |
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