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The Barnes & Noble Review

Weaving a Story

"There are five square knots on the quilt every two inches apart. They escaped on the fifth knot on the tenth pattern and went to Ontario, Canada. The monkey wrench turns the wagon wheel toward Canada on a bear's paw trail to the crossroads...."

In the dead dark night, through deep woods and unsettled wilderness, thousands of slaves escaped their bondage and found freedom in the northern states and Canada. And though much has been written about the Underground Railroad, the covert network of cooperation that kept fleeing slaves safe and fed on their way north, little was known of the secrets coded into quilts that relayed travel instructions between those going north and those over whose land they crossed. Now, through the oral history of Ozella McDaniel Williams and the scholarship of Jacqueline Tobin and Raymond Dobard, Hidden In Plain View exposes the secrets held in the quilts of the slave families.

It's an amazing story that draws on the textile traditions of the slaves' African heritage and merges it with the American quilting art to create a complex system of communication and resistance. Hidden In Plain View is a social history of African-American traditions and an adventure story of the relentless pursuit of freedom.

Synopsis
Hidden In Plain View tells the fascinating history of how southern slaves used secret codes sewn into quilts to navigate the treacherous Underground Railroad routes out of slavery to the northern states and Canada. Told here for the first time, it's a powerful adventure story of resistance and cooperation.

From the Publisher
In 1993, author Jacqueline Tobin visited the Old Market Building in the historic district of Charleston, South Carolina, where local craftspeople sell their wares. Amid piles of beautiful handmade quilts, Tobin met African American quilter Ozella Williams and the two struck up a conversation. With the admonition to "write this down," Williams began to tell a fascinating story that had been handed down from her mother and grandmother before her. Now, based on Williams's story and their own research, Tobin and Dobard, in what they call "Ozella's Underground Railroad Quilt Code," offer proof that some slaves were involved in a sophisticated network that melded African textile traditions with American quilt practices and created a potent result: African American quilts with patterns that conveyed messages that were, in fact, essential tools for escape along the Underground Railroad.

From the Critics
From Andrea Higbie - The New York Times Book Review  
...[M]esmerizing....Five square knots...invoked the protection of God and the ancestors, something the slaves needed most of all.
 
From Library Journal  
"There are five square knots on the quilt every two inches apart. They escaped on the fifth knot on the tenth pattern and went to Ontario, Canada. The monkey wrench turns the wagon wheel toward Canada on a bear's paw trail to the crossroads." This is the starting point from which Tobin (The Tao Women, Humanics, 1995) begins her examination of the role of quilts in the Underground Railroad. Based on a tale handed down in the family of Ozella McDaniel Williams and the expertise of African American quilt scholar Dobard (art history, Howard Univ.), this oral history examines the role quilts played in the communication of messages. For example, if a monkey wrench quilt hung on a fence, the escaping slaves should prepare to go north by wagon. Knots sometimes acted as a topographical map of the surrounding area. A needed and valuable contribution to the literature of African American culture; recommended for all libraries.--Jenny Presnell, Miami Univ. Libs., Oxford, OH