Storyteller, Author Uses Quilts to Teach History

SWAINTON – Quilts had various and important uses in the lives of 19th-century slaves in the United States, even to the point of saving a life or starting a new life in freedom. 
Kathleen “Miss Kat” Lindsey, 73, gave her presentation, “Guided Quilts to Freedom,” to an audience at the historic John Wesley United Methodist Church in Swainton, Oct. 15.
A resident of Clayton, Lindsey is an author, storyteller and quilter who travels the East Coast, presenting her children’s books that tell the story of a quest for freedom, among other stories. She is also an award-winning quilt maker. She appeared in period costume, showing how a slave would have dressed in the mid-19th century. 
Lindsey said the way words were used, both in speech and in the songs that were sung, and the specific patterns used in quilts were used to help get slaves to freedom. 
The quilt already played a big part in the lives of slaves. The women would make quilts for the missus in the “big house” and for her children. Slaves were also responsible for making hundreds of quilts carried off to war by soldiers. Slaves, she said, would use quilts as bedding, use a folded quilt as a cushion, or use it as a coat in cold weather. Quilts that were well-worn might be used as floor coverings. While a lot of their traveling took place at night, a runaway slave might use a quilt to shield him or herself from the sun. 
The quilts themselves, or quilted squares, contained patterns that told a message. Lindsey had a quilt on display showing a variety of the patterns that might be used, including a wheel, indicating a wagon was available to carry them on their way; a boat, meaning a river was near; or the North Star, to indicate which direction was north. 
A pattern of triangles in different shades was pointing in four directions. The darkest triangles would point to the north. A zig-zag pattern would tell slaves to change directions often to elude slave catchers; a log cabin meant they should lay low because the area was being watched; the Jacob’s Ladder pattern indicated a safe house. The quilts or squares could be displayed in a window or hung outside. Safehouses would also leave a candle in a window at night to alert slaves to their existence.  
The Big Dipper, which contains the North Star, was not only a pattern used in quilts but also referred to in song, such as in, “Follow the Drinking Gourd.” 
The song “Wade Through the Water” is a reference to the freed Hebrew slaves crossing the Jordan River into the Promised Land, but it was also instructions for on-the-run slaves to cross rivers and streams so dogs would lose their scent. 
The quilts were just another tool for slaves to communicate with each other or with abolitionists. Lindsey said, in Africa, drums told a message. They would alert of an approaching lion, announce that someone was sick or had died, or herald that there was a new baby or marriage. As it was the custom to separate slaves from the same African village and place them on different plantations, the slaves would use drums to communicate with other plantations. 
“It took over 100 years for the masters to figure that out,” Lindsey said.
The masters unwittingly provide another way for slaves to communicate and share messages. Slaves from different plantations would often go to church with the master and sit together on the balcony. They might speak to each other saying such things as, “The wind is blowing from the north today,” meaning an abolitionist was coming, for example. 
Lindsey, who has been presenting her show for over 30 years, told a story that helped describe life under slavery, which she said was “the worst form of bullying this country created.” 
Lindsey went on to say that literally every nation in the world has enslaved people. African kings, she said, would rid the tribe of certain people, such as ill-mannered children, or people with disabilities, by selling them to European countries. She said at some point the European countries figured out they could simply go take the people they wanted and enslave them. She said life was very hard for those who survived the three-month voyage to America. Every aspect of a slave’s life was controlled by the plantation master, his missus and even their children. 
A bugle blast would often be used to announce that it was time to get up and get ready for a long day at work. The slaves slept in communal cabins where they were assigned. They would often start the day with a breakfast of grits made from cornmeal, or cornmeal fried in grease from fatback. Many times, they would eat corn in some form twice a day. 
During cotton picking season, field slaves often worked 10 to 16-hour days, sometimes working by the light of the moon. There was a big push to get the cotton out of the fields before it rained. Children were put to work carrying water to the field workers or feeding chickens, pigs, and cows. The children were also sent into the tobacco fields to pick worms off the tobacco plants before they were ruined. 
The life of a field slave was hard but being a house slave had its own problems and perils. A house slave was essentially on duty 24 hours a day. Those who took care of the children, even acting as wet nurses, would be the ones who got up with a crying child in the middle of the night. Lindsey said, all the while, house slaves could not make eye contact with their owners, who essentially told them what they could eat, drink, say, and when and where they could sleep. The masters could decide when and to whom they would be married. 
Lindsey said slavery spread up and down the East Coast, but abolitionist sentiment began to develop in the north. In the south, the cash crops of tobacco, rice, and “king” cotton seemed to ensure slavery would continue to exist. Lindsey said New Jersey had slavery for 55 years before it was abolished in 1840. 
She said the Slave Act of 1850 was created to be a deterrent to Quakers and other abolitionists who were helping slaves escape to freedom. That included the Underground Railroad. The law created strict penalties for those aiding and abetting escaped slaves. However, the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, ratified on Dec. 6, 1865, officially abolished slavery in the United States. 
Email csouth@cmcherald.com or call him at 609-886-8600 ext. 128.