I concur; research I conducted for a doctoral class found only one
documented source. As a quilter I love the stories, as a collector of
family stories, I love the stories.
Lynda N. Short, LMS
Paul Laurence Dunbar High School
1600 Man O'War Blvd.
Lexington, KY 40513
Lynda.Short@fayette.kyschools.us
859-381-3546 x 2122
FAX 859-381-3549
"When you absolutely positively have to know, ask a librarian." -
American Library Association (ALA)
-----Original Message-----
From: School Library Media & Network Communications
[mailto:LM_NET@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU] On Behalf Of McCulloch, Lisa -
Librarian
Sent: Tuesday, February 20, 2007 9:47 AM
To: LM_NET@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Subject: Re: Underground railroad and quilts
I am a quilter and my teacher/quilt shop owner assures me that the
Underground RR stories are just that - stories. There would be quilts
to show it and there are not.
Lisa McCulloch, Librarian
Richland High School
5201 Holiday Lane
North Richland Hills, TX 76180
Where learners become effective users of ideas and information.
-----Original Message-----
From: School Library Media & Network Communications
[mailto:LM_NET@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU] On Behalf Of Mary Ludwick
Sent: Monday, February 19, 2007 8:43 PM
To: LM_NET@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Subject: [LM_NET] Underground railroad and quilts
Fergus Bordewich disputes the information that quilts were used to lead
the
way on the Underground Railroad. Here is part of a recent article:
Legend has it that displaying a quilt with a black square in the center
designated a safe house. But there is scant evidence to back this up. So
it's not surprising that the intriguing (if only recently invented) tale
of
escape maps encoded in antebellum quilts - soon to be enshrined in a
Central
Park memorial to Frederick Douglass, as well as in a metastasizing
library
of children's books and teachers' lesson plans - should also seize the
popular imagination.But faked history serves no one, especially when it
buries important truths that have been hidden far too long. The "freedom
quilt" myth is just the newest acquisition in a congeries of bogus,
often
bizarre, legends attached to the Underground Railroad. Despite a lack of
documentation, tales of actual tunnels through which fugitives
supposedly
fled persist in communities from the Canadian border to the Mason-Dixon
Line.
Legend has elevated to near superhuman status the underground conductor
Harriet Tubman, typically claiming that she led north more than 300
slaves.
The actual number was closer to 70, according to a Tubman biographer,
Kate
Clifford Larson. The truth takes nothing away from Ms. Tubman, a
remarkable
woman by any measure, but her deification has obscured the work of many
lesser-known African-American activists - among them New York's David
Ruggles, who organized the city's underground in the 1830s and helped
more
than 600 former slaves to freedom.
Such fictions rely for their plausibility on the premise that the
operations
of the Underground Railroad were so secret that the truth is essentially
unknowable. In fact, there is abundant documentation of the
underground's
activities to be found in antebellum antislavery newspapers, narratives
of
escape written by former slaves and the recollections of participants
recorded after the Civil War. None mention quilts, tunnels or, with the
rarest of exceptions, any hiding place more exotic than a barn or attic.
.........article continues at:
http://tinyurl.com/2hn5ur
The article says Mr. Bordewich has written a book: Bound for Canaan:
The
Undergroudn Railroad and the War for the Soul of America.
Mary Croix Ludwick, Librarian K-5
Thomas Haley Elem, Irving, Texas (near Dallas)
ludwick@swbell.net (home address)
mludwick@irvingisd.net (school address)
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