From the hand-stitched banners of the early Suffragettes to the pussy hats of the 2017 Women’s March, we have always sewn subversively to call out abuses and memorialize our experiences. Following in that tradition, I quilted “Stones” to honor women of color enslaved in 18th and 19th century America. I imitated artist Gunter Demnig’s European Stolpersteine, which I read first about in Isabel Wilkerson’s book Caste: The Origin of our Discontents. Her powerful insights echoed in my mind as disturbing news of book bans and legislation restricting the study of race in the classroom emerged. Wilkerson quotes a young German student who reflects on the importance of memorials, and how many people balk at feeling any responsibility for historical wrongdoings. The young German states, “…It is the older Germans who should feel guilt. We were not here. We ourselves did not do this. But we do feel that… we should acknowledge… we should be the guardians of the truth” (349).
Sometimes there are things in life that are not our fault, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t still our responsibilities. I would venture to say that it was in a similar spirit that Guntar Demnig created the Stolpersteine, 10 square centimeter brass micro-monuments set in cobblestones, which denote the last known residence a Nazi Holocaust victim occupied of their own free will. Demnig created the first Stolpersteine in 1992. The plaques, located throughout Europe and South America, list the individual’s (if known) name, date of birth, and fate.
What struck me about the Stolpersteine was the amount of personal autonomy involved in their creation. In the Guardian’s article “Stumbling Stones: a Different Vision of Holocaust Remembrance“, the craftsman who engraves each piece speaks to the intimate and humane nature of the work. “Despite several proposals to mechanise the process, Friedrichs-Friedländer insists it remain manual. ‘To show respect for the victims, it must be done by hand,’ he says during a brief cigarette break. ‘The Holocaust was so systematic. What they invented as means of mass slaughter, it was more or less automatised. We don’t want anything like that.’ ” Moved by the assertation that this work of remembering and creating must “be done by hand,” I aimed to recreate something similar for American women whose lives were spent enslaved as an alternative narrative to prohibitions in American discourse.
To begin my project, I looked up estate inventories and bills of sale from historical plantations for the names, dates of birth, and dates of death of the women who were enslaved there. Since these quilts could not be set at the corresponding place of each woman’s life, as the Stolpersteine are, their locations needed to be represented another way. Using Google Maps, I depicted their respective locations in fabric behind the text, with green batik to represent the fields, blue broadcloth rivers, and highways of charcoal satin. While I considered sewing each panel together to create a quilt, I ultimately chose to fashion them individually so that they might travel through the community more easily – perhaps privately, in the lining of a coat, or publicly, on a messenger bag.
It’s outrageous that not more time (or, in some places, no time at all) is spent in public school classrooms talking about, learning about, and thinking about the history of slavery in America. Until we discuss the crime, we cannot attempt to remedy the consequences. One way we can address our responsibility is to sew, as Claire Hunter wrote so beautifully in Threads of Life, a book exploring personal histories of women and textiles: “For some, sewing, the act of making one’s own mark, stitching a signature or embroidering images of a personal world, is a way of holding onto an elusive individuality and tethering an identity. Its very physicality — the joining of cloth, the creation of texture, the making of something substantial from discarded remnants — is a comforting metaphor for personal growth in the face of an enforced reduction…” (63). I feel the truth of Hunter’s words resonating with my own agency as a fiber artist and activist and I encourage others to use their own creative powers to promote that values that underpin a kind and accepting society.
Most of us do not have the means to fashion brass plaques, but across time boundaries and varying socio-economic strata, we do have the humble materials of sewing. We are empowered by the values that guide us to use these materials to promote our priorities and lend ourselves to the rich history of sewing as a tool of social change. And for my colleagues in the fiber arts world, please consider making more and better “Stones” as a counterpoint to ignorance and cruelty, upholding the long tradition of activism in fiber work.
