We, Too, Sing America

Artist:

Vera P. Hall

*credit Melanie Zacek Photography

Year:

Early 2000s

Dimensions:

photo replica

Materials:

hand pieced and appliqued

Quilt Story:

Kim F. Hall: Vera began this quilt after winning the Civil War themed blocks in the second border for a guild Block of the Month activity. She wanted to show that commemorating the Civil War has a different meaning for African Americans and started reading widely to create a quilt that refuted the too-common notion that blacks "were freed" by the Civil War. Dr. Benjamin Quarles' The Negro in the Making of America was a great influence in the story of this quilt. Two binders of notes, photos and sketches testified to her voracious reading and information gathering. Since there were not as many Black history resources as there are now, she took notes from museum exhibits and collected newspaper and magazine articles. The map in the middle depicts the North/South divide and key battle sites of the war. Blocks around the map represent the different ways blacks fought for their own freedom from the Middle Passage through the Civil War. The title is from Langston Hughes’ poem “I, too, sing America.”

We Didn't Wait for Freedom is a series of Black History quilts that challenge the idea that enslaved Black people passively waited to be emancipated by the US North. Vera uses her skills as an educator and teacher to translate what she learns from historians, books, museums, and historic sites into visual stories about enslavement and freedom. The series began in 2007 when Vera won Civil War themed blocks during a guild meeting and decided to use them to help teach largely unknown histories of Black people. That quilt, We, Too, Sing America, tells a larger history of how both famous and unnamed people made their way out of enslavement. Other quilts focus on nineteenth century figures who fought for and earned their own freedom.