Today, quilting is often seen as a stress-relieving pastime that promotes creativity, but at one point in U.S. history, quilts were the difference between life and death for enslaved African Americans, according to retired educator Connie Martin.
“They were used to help people get from one destination to another safely before they would get to Canada to freedom. The quilt codes were developed by people in the north and travelled down into the south,” said Martin.
For more than a decade, Martin, an Illinois Humanities Road Scholar, has been travelling around the state, teaching audiences about quilt codes, pictorial messages sewn into fabrics that she said guided slaves to safety as they traversed the Underground Railroad. She most recently presented to a crowd at Naper Settlement.
A family legacy preserved through generations
The quilt codes are a core part of Martin’s family’s history, she said, as her ancestors collected and replicated the quilts used by slaves before the Civil War.
“My mother’s family started collecting the quilts. Every time they saw a quilt, they used the quilt sampler to replicate each quilt. So once you got a quilt sampler, you had the road map to freedom,” she said. “The quilt sampler has many different codes in that same piece of fabric, each one having a message.”
The quilts her earliest relatives collected were passed down from generation to generation. Martin’s great-grandmother, Lizzie, the first freeborn person in her family, gave them to her mother, Dr. Clarice Boswell, after she graduated from university. Along with the quilts, she also received a Bible in which her relatives documented key people, moments and milestones, Martin said.
Boswell created replicas of her family’s original quilts and began giving presentations on quilt codes around the year 2000. She also wrote a book titled “Lizzie’s Story: A Slave Family’s Journey to Freedom,” which Martin noted is currently being adapted into a movie.
When Boswell decided to stop the lectures, Martin took over to keep the piece of history alive.
“When I retired from teaching, she passed this presentation on to me after she’d been doing it for 16 years. She created the core presentation and said, ‘Connie, you know our family history, you want to continue doing it?’ And as the only teacher in the family, I agreed to do it,” said Martin.
Codes for survival
During her presentation at Naper Settlement, Martin explained that her great-great-great-grandparents, Eli and Leah, were the first to be introduced to quilt codes in the 1850s when they were slaves on a plantation in Kentucky. A blacksmith named Job and a midwife, Pearlie, who’d long been there before their arrival, shared the codes with them.
Together, along with abolitionists, they would help “freedom seekers” passing through on the Underground Railroad. Abolitionists and their collaborators, she said, would display quilts with unique messages inconspicuously near safe houses along the railroad, in areas where slaves knew to look.
One crucial quilt code was “Crossroads,” which featured a repeating X pattern on a quilt, advising slaves on the safest direction of travel.
“If the stitching went in one direction, it told you to go that direction because there were slave catchers the other way,” said Martin.
Another quilt code, “Bear Paw,” was said to have told slaves to follow animal trails to find food and water. “Log Cabin” was the only code that used both its pattern and its color to send a message, Martin said. A red center on a log cabin quilt meant the area was dangerous, while a black or neutral center meant it was safe, and slaves could approach a designated safehouse.
Veracity of the quilt stories disputed by some historians
Some historians have questioned the veracity of the stories of quilts being used in this way in the Underground Railroad.
Yale University historian David Blight was quoted in a 2007 New York Times article as calling it “mythology,” with the topic prompting discussion about folklore versus fact. Tracy Vaughn-Manley, a Black Studies Professor at Northwestern University, said in a 2024 NPR article that there was “no evidence of it at all.”
Martin argues that those historians are disregarding “the value of oral history.”
“Enslaved people could not learn how to read and write. They could not document it down on paper. If they did and that was found, they’d be killed or sold away,” Martin said. “Same thing with white abolitionists. They’d burn their houses down if they found out they had quilt codes.”
She said the oral history passed down generation to generation in many cases is “all African American people have.”
Martin talks the importance of historical reflection
There were various safe houses in Illinois along the Underground Railroad, such as Blanchard Hall at Wheaton College and the Lovejoy Homestead in Princeton Ill.
While Martin’s ancestors were not “freedom seekers,” she said they still experienced the perils of slavery and risked their lives to help those escaping.
“They sacrificed their time and really risked their lives helping people. You were not supposed to help anybody who was supposed to be a freedom seeker,” she said.
She said no matter the month, it’s important to reflect on Black history, as it is also American history.
“The stories need to be told. History will repeat itself if you don’t learn what the history was before, to be able to appreciate it in the future,” said Martin.
“My children appreciate the history that has been told to them by me, my mother, and my grandmother when she was alive. No one else is going to tell you what your family history is unless you get it from your own family. So start asking questions,” said Martin.
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