HARRIET POWERS: COURIER THROUGH THE CENTURIES
I was late getting back to our Washington D.C. family
tour bus in 1997. With toddler age,
wiggling grandchildren, my own children were not happy with Mimi holding up the
bus. But I had been held in total
amazement by the Smithsonian Institution Quilt Collection Show, especially
Harriet Powers’ Bible Quilt.
During her slave years and beyond, she had pursued and
persisted in creatively designing a Bible Quilt with metaphor, alliteration and
scraps. As Jan Richardson in The Mysteries of Making, points out
“Powers quilts are not the size of typical bed covers; they are significantly
wider than they are long. This fact,
together with Power’s own words about her work, suggests that she created them
as a form of proclamation.” (Richardson, p. 216) Quilts were her platform for speaking her mind
and displaying deep knowledge of the Bible.
“The little we know about Harriet
Power’s life reminds us of how the histories of so many women have disappeared.
It reminds us too that mystery always attends the process of making. No matter
how much we may know about an artist, what an artist creates can never be fully
explained. This is both a gift and a
challenge of the creative process: there is a tension between what is revealed
and what is concealed.” (Richardson, p
216)
The Bible Quilt was first displayed at the Cotton Fair,
most likely the Northeast Georgia Fair, of 1886. It was seen by an art teacher,
Jennie Smith who wanted to buy it. Powers said no but four years later
contacted Smith and said it was for sale, “ownin ter de hardness of de times”
(Smith essay, 1891 in Hicks, 28)
Smith continues in the essay, “After giving me a full
description of each scene with great earnestness and deep piety, she departed,
but has been back several time to visit the darling offspring of her brain. She
was only in measure consoled for its loss when I promised to save her all my
scraps.” (Hicks, 28)
It is through Powers’ scene descriptions to Smith, quilt
viewers recognize just how artistically creative and symbolic she was. The
square I copied for my Couriers’ quilt, “The Baptism of Christ” has a dove
identified by Powers, as the Holy Spirit, descending on Jesus. Mary
E. Lyons in her book, Stitching Stars, says
“Doves appear three times in Harriet’s quilts. The dove was also the most
frequent bird in slave spirituals because it could easily fly away to freedom.”
(Lyons, 15) When Jennie died the man who settled her estate gave the quilt to
the Smithsonian.
Powers designed an even more elaborate story quilt which “is
like reading a book of the weather, and real events” (Evans, 25) but even in the
Bible quilt on the Judas square, Harriet
describes, “the star that appeared in 1886 for the first time in three hundred
years,”(Evans, 16)
The second story quilt went through a number of owners
but eventually was donated to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston in 1964.
Two incidents almost 100 years apart illustrate how misconceptions
often infiltrate our American art scene. In 1895 Jennie organized a display of her
student’s art work at the Cotton States and International Exposition in
Atlanta, Georgia. Smith also arranged
for the Bible Quilt, which she now owned, to be displayed in the segregated
Negro Building. Clara R. Jemison
reported on the fair for Tuscaloosa Times
and was particularly taken by the Bible Quilt, “‘Have you seen the Biblical
quilt? It was made long ago by a poor ignorant slave who could not read, and
whose knowledge of the Bible was the stories told her by other more fortunate.’
Jemison provided no evidence why she wrote as fact that Harriet Powers was
poor, uneducated and illiterate.” (Hicks, 30) Not only does Jemison believe
Harriet had to have someone else relate and interpret the stories but she just
assumes Powers is illiterate.
Lorene Diver, from Iowa, also was amazed by the quilt at
the fair and took pictures, writing descriptions on the back. She tried to buy the quilt from Jennie but
was not successful. She did however
learn Powers mailing address and contacted her. “Contrary to Clara R. Jemison’s
published assessment of Powers status, intelligence and literary skills, Mrs. Powers wrote back.” (Hicks, 37)
This letter was discovered in 2009 with Diver’s file was opened at the Lee
County Historical Society. In the letter Powers talks about her life, her quilts
(more than the two known) and “reading the Bible more than ever.” She ends with
“This I accomplish…”(Hicks, 38)
Another much later controversy began in 1991. “One
of the largest and most important controversies in the recent history of the
American quilt community took place when the Smithsonian’s National Museum of
American History granted a license for replication of several of their
important historic nineteenth century quilts.” (Freeman, 101) The Smithsonian
often did this for art artifacts but did not realize to the quilt community
“quilts were much more than mere artifacts.” (Freeman, 101)
Reproduction was arranged to happen in China and would
allow sales of 200 to 500 quilts which was at most one third their cost if handmade
in US. Harriet Carter, founder of
Quilter’s Hall of Fame (1979) helped organize a grass roots and letter writing
campaign with copies sent to the Washington
Post. (The Post had originally posted an article on the project.) After meeting with Mrs. Carter the Post responded to these actions with a
second article titled “The Quilts that Struck a Nerve,” with a sidebar to the
article called “A Bible of Black History” with a picture of Harriet Powers and
her quilt.
Protests (with women draped in quilts) and many meetings
were held between the quilt community and the Smithsonian. “Two issues dominated the controversy: the
first was mass reproduction of the quilts; and the second was having the work
done in China. However, the whole matter might have gone unnoticed if not for
the inclusion of the Harriet Powers quilt…which seems to have been regarded as
a kind of living treasure and therefore invested with a sacredness one doesn’t
normally associate with conventional art objects.” (Freeman, 103)
As a result the quilt community was allowed more access
to the Smithsonian Quilt Collection, a major
show in 1997, and opportunity for seminars and research.
The “major show” was the one I was totally caught up in,
making me late for the bus, but not too late for how a courier with conviction
and courage works.
Sources
Freeman, Roland. A Communion of the Spirts: African-American Quilters, Preservers, and
Their Stories. Nashville, TN: Rutledge Hill Press, 1996.
Hicks, Kyra E. This I Accomplish: Harriet Powers’ Bible Quilt and Other Pieces. Black
Threads Press, 2009.
Lyons, Mary E. Stitching Stars, The Story Quilts of Harriet Powers. New York:
Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1993.
Richardson, Jan. In the
Sanctuary of Women. Nashville: Upper Room Books, 2010.
