by Christine G.

Created on: February 16, 2008

In 1998, the book "Hidden in Plain View: A Secret Story of Quilts and the Underground Railroad" created a sensation. The authors, historian Jacqueline Tobin and African American art historian and quilter Raymond G. Dobard, added a fascinating, previously unknown, chapter to black history.

The story of the use of 'freedom quilts' to carry secret messages to aid runaway slaves captured the public imagination. The quilt code became the subject of black history displays, school curriculum units, and children's books such as The Secret to Freedom by Marcia Vaughan (2201) and the Patchwork Path by Bettye Stroud (2005).

The source of this information was Ozella McDaniel Williams, a descendant of slaves who made and sold quilts in South Carolina. She was suffering from cancer, and wanted to pass on the oral tradition, which she had heard from her grandmother and mother, before she died. Mrs. Williams, who had a law degree from Howard University, died before the book was published.

According to Ozella Williams, the quilts that were hung out to air served a secret purpose to assist passengers on the Underground Railroad. Not only did the patterns of the blocks carry messages, but the knotting, stitching, colors and fabrics provided information about escape routes and safe houses.

Ozella William's secret code, which is widely quoted, is a mnemonic device using quilt blocks:
"There are five square knots on the quilt every two inches apart. They escaped on the fifth knot on the tenth pattern and went to Ontario, Canada.
The monkey wrench turns the wagon wheel toward Canada on a bear's paw trail to the crossroads.
Once they got to the crossroads they dug a log cabin on the ground. Shoofly told them to dress up in cotton and satin bow ties and go to the cathedral church, get married, and exchange double wedding rings.
Flying geese stay on the drunkard's path and follow the stars."

The code "was a way to say something to a person in the presence of many others without the others knowing," said Dobard, a history professor at Howard University in Washington, D.C. "It was a way of giving direction without saying, 'Go northwest.'"

According to Ozella Williams, a plantation seamstress would sew a sampler quilt which the slaves would use to memorize the code. Then the seamstress would sew ten quilts, one of each of the patterns, which were hung out one at a time to reinforce the slaves' memory of the pattern and its meaning. When they made their escape, the information would guide them safely

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