It's February and, as is our tradition, we're festooning the library with quilts. Why quilts? It's cold and gray and we could all use some warmth and color.

But, more importantly, it's Black History Month, and quilting has played an important part of telling the story of the African diaspora in America. Lola Longley first brightened our Februaries with her imaginative quilts and now that she can no longer do so, the Quilting Sisters of Fairfield have stepped in.

African-Americans have quilted all the way from slavery to today. Skilled in the textile arts of West Africa, slaves were made to sew the European designs of their owners, but, if they had the opportunity and the material, they would create their own, sometimes incorporating designs from Africa. Maybe they had only strips of cloth, the remains of garments past all mending and bits of an old flour sack, but they stitched those together and made something beautiful.

It has been discovered that quilting, because it involves both hemispheres of the brain working at the same time on one thing, is therapeutic for sufferers of post-traumatic stress disorder. Perhaps African-American quilters found healing in the act of quilting, in dealing with the grinding oppression that was their lot. We do know that their stories are in their quilts, literally. The story quilt, a tale told in quilted blocks like a cartoon strip, was a form that Harriet Powers, the "Mother of African American quilting," used. Only a few of her quilts remain, but they are treasured and studied.


Quilting allowed those denied the opportunity to read and write a way to pass on a story. Today, artists like Faith Ringgold, keep the art of the story quilt alive.

Perhaps the best known African-American quilters were those at Gee's Bend, an isolated community in Wilcox County, Ala., made of the descendants of one plantation's slaves.

Generations of women made quilts of such originality and vitality they've been described as "jazz on cloth." Original they were, yet with design elements from an Africa that none of those quilters had seen. But Gee's Bend quilts didn't just reflect their makers' history -- they made history.

In 1966, in the midst of the battle for civil rights, the black citizens of Wilcox County dared to register to vote. Economic retribution from the white community was harsh. With some help from friends, the Freedom Quilting Bee was born, as African quilters came together, and sold their work to customers nationwide. That income kept their community afloat, made its struggle known to the world and brought a new interest in the ever-fascinating art of quilting.

In this age of abundance, throwaway clothes and central heating, we don't need pieced quilts anymore. Yet quilters still quilt, buying special fabrics woven specifically to be cut into pieces and sewn together again. Modern quilts are wonderful, as quilters continue to innovate.

But there's something about those precious old American quilts, especially those pieced by the descendants of slaves. The women and men who made them didn't know they were artists. They were just trying to keep their families warm, use any bit of cloth they had, and bring a little beauty into a hard and unjust world. But, as they were piecing together strips and scraps of cotton with stitch after patient stitch, they put in the shapes of their world, their stories and motifs that had been passed down to them from Mother Africa. That's history and that's art. Those quilts which have survived are in museums today.

Thanks to the generosity of Quilting Sisters and the legacy of Lola Longley, quilts are in libraries, too.

Check out to see Black History Month events in libraries around the county.


Nancy Vitavec is a librarian at Vacaville Public Library-Cultural Center.