Hidden in Plain View
A Secret Story of Quilts and the Underground Railroad
Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group · Print & ebook · January 18, 2000
The fascinating story of a friendship, a lost tradition, and an incredible discovery, revealing how enslaved men and women made encoded quilts and then used them to navigate their escape on the Underground Railroad.
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- Who it’s for
- A friendship-led account brings quilt traditions into a story of the Underground Railroad.
- Themes
- Encoded quilts and escape, The Underground Railroad, Friendship and discovery
- Genres
- Black History, Quilting, Civil War Era
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Start with this bookAbout this book
The fascinating story of a friendship, a lost tradition, and an incredible discovery, revealing how enslaved men and women made encoded quilts and then used them to navigate their escape on the Underground Railroad. In Hidden in Plain View, historian Jacqueline Tobin and scholar Raymond Dobard offer the first proof that certain quilt patterns, including a prominent one called the Charleston Code, were, in fact, essential tools for escape along the Underground Railroad.
Continue reading
In 1993, historian Jacqueline Tobin met African American quilter Ozella Williams amid piles of beautiful handmade quilts in the Old Market Building of Charleston, South Carolina. With the admonition to "write this down," Williams began to describe how slaves made coded quilts and used them to navigate their escape on the Underground Railroad. But just as quickly as she started, Williams stopped, informing Tobin that she would learn the rest when she was "ready." During the three years it took for Williams's narrative to unfold—and as the friendship and trust between the two women grew—Tobin enlisted Raymond Dobard, Ph.D., an art history professor and well-known African American quilter, to help unravel the mystery. Part adventure and part history, Hidden in Plain View traces the origin of the Charleston Code from Africa to the Carolinas, from the low-country island Gullah peoples to free blacks living in the cities of the North, and shows how three people from completely different backgrounds pieced together one amazing American story. With a new afterword. Illlustrations and photographs throughout, including a full-color photo insert.
Quilts and Discovery
A friendship-led account brings quilt traditions into a story of the Underground Railroad.
Come here for
- The meeting point of handmade quilts and Underground Railroad history
- A discovery story shaped by growing trust between two women
Expect
- Personal narrative alongside historical tracing from Africa to the Carolinas
- Illustrations and photographs, including a full-color insert
Where it sits
| Civil War Era | 69% |
|---|---|
| Black History | 46% |
| Quilting | 42% |
Percentages are BookFrontier’s reading of the book.
Publisher categories
- Quilting
- Civil War Era
- African American Studies
- Authors
- Jacqueline L. Tobin, Raymond G. Dobard
- Publisher
- Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
- Published
- January 18, 2000
- Format
- Print & ebook
- Theme
- Encoded quilts and escape · The Underground Railroad · Friendship and discovery
- Reading lane
- Quilting