Latest / In Focus with Carolyn Hutcheson / Freedom Quilting Bee Legacy - TPR's In Focus - May 20, 2026

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Freedom Quilting Bee Legacy - TPR's In Focus - May 20, 2026 · In Focus with Carolyn Hutcheson

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  Support comes from Troy University's Trojan Café,
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  offering handcrafted Starbucks beverages and a wide assortment of meal and snack options,
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  located on Troy University's Montgomery campus, across from the Rosa Parks Library and Museum.
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  From Troy Public Radio, this is In Focus, and I'm Carolyn Hutcheson.
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  The community of Gee's Bend in Wilcox County, Alabama, is internationally known for its
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  artistic quilts that reflect its West African history. Kim Kelly joins us today with the story
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  of the Freedom Quilting Bee and its legacy. Kim Kelly, thank you so much for joining us
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  here at Troy Public Radio. Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure.
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  Kim, you have an important job in Alberta, Alabama. What do you do there?
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  Well, I am the executive director of a non-profit organization called the Freedom Quilting Bee
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  Legacy. It is the successor organization of the original Freedom Quilting Bee, which was a black
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  women's cooperative manufacturing operation that was established in 1966. The women of County Road
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  29 built a business manufacturing quilts for some of the largest retailers in America, for
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  Sears and Roebuck, for Bloomingdale's, for some of the more prominent interior designers in New York.
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  There was no quilting economy prior to the Freedom Quilting Bee. You never saw quilts as a household
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  item on the covers of House Beautiful or any of those magazines before the Freedom Quilting Bee.
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  It was a significant time in the lives of sharecropping women in this area that their work
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  was recognized so significantly that they built a manufacturing operation and changed their lives
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  and the lives of people in this community. Take us back to the 1800s, specifically around 1859,
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  to the roots of this whole story. What happened then?
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  A woman by the name of Dinah Miller was one of the survivors of the Clotilda. The Clotilda was
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  the last slave ship that docked on American soil from the continent of Africa. Two prominent
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  businessmen in Mobile, Alabama, led by Mr. Mayer, decided that they would be able to go to the
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  continent of Africa and bring back enslaved people and not be caught doing it because the
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  transatlantic slave trade had been outlawed in the early 1800s in the United States. And to
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  engage in the transatlantic slave trade was a crime. But they decided how to make a game
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  of whether or not they could bring back people from the continent of Africa. And they did it.
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  They went across on the Clotilda, they brought back 110 people, and they scuttled the Clotilda,
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  the ship, in Mobile Bay. And the people who were on the ship were spirited away to various parts
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  in the state of Alabama. Now, one of the enslaved people was a girl by the name of Dinah Miller.
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  Eventually, Dinah Miller came to live in Gee's Bend, Alabama. We look at her as the person
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  who brought prominent abstract designs, African designs, to the community. But importantly,
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  she is the ancestor of many of our more prominent quilters in Gee's Bend in our community. I can
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  point to 13 of them just off the top of my head who participated in a quilting project in her
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  honor that is on display on exhibition at the River Gallery inside the Wilcox County Gee's Bend
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  Terminal, the Welcome Center on County Road 29. It's an exhibition that was curated and has been
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  on view for the past year and will remain on view for another year because of the significance and
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  the prominence of her story. To be a survivor of the Clotilda, to have been prominently involved
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  in the quilting textile art of this community, which was an art in the beginning. These designs
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  have garnered worldwide attention and celebration. The West African style of art was rather geometric
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  or abstract and these quilts sustain and perpetuate that legacy. For instance, coming up
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  on May 23rd, don't you have a guided tour? Yes, the Freedom Quilting Bee Legacy has guided tours.
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  Anyone can come and participate in those. We'll tell you the history of the community. We'll show
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  you the interior of the Freedom Quilting Bee Legacy. We'll discuss the women who were prominent
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  in this art form. We will give you an opportunity to tour the Gee's Bend Heritage Trail and go down
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  the road to the Welcome Center and enjoy the exhibition of Dinah Miller. Kim, the interesting
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  thing about this is now it's become intergenerational. For instance, coming up on June 20th,
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  really in celebration of Juneteenth, you have a youth quilting project. So now you're bringing in
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  young people to perpetuate the design, so to speak. Certainly. You know, family has always been
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  the crux of quilting in the community. Children were engaged in things as simple as threading
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  needles, sitting under the quilts, and most of our quilters learned to quilt at a very young age.
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  So what we do is engage the youth in our community to continue the legacy of their forebears.
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  You know, the women who are quilters in this community are fourth, fifth generation quilters,
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  and we want them to be able to pass on what is so important in their families and in our lives
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  as a part of this community. When the community members first took up quilting, what was the
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  purpose? That is a very important aspect of the history here that is often overshadowed by the
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  vibrancy of the quilts and their importance, but the quilts are truly informed by the struggle
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  of the people of the day. Those quilts were remnants. They were the dress tails. They were
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  the old coveralls that couldn't be worn anymore. They were scraps, and they were made to keep us
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  warm because it gets cold here in rural Alabama, and in ramshackle shacks in which the people lived,
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  they needed something to cover the holes in the walls and in the floors. The Freedom Quilting Bee
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  sat originally on 24 acres of land. During the Civil Rights Movement, as sharecroppers were
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  exercising their right to register to vote or exercising their right to demonstrate, they were
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  being kicked off of their sharecropping land, and the board of directors of the Freedom Quilting Bee
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  at the time parceled out 10 one-acre plots and sold those 10 one-acre plots to the sharecroppers
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  who had lost their land for exercising their right to vote. So those 10 one-acre parcels are still
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  owned by the families of the people who they were originally sold to. Land is so important, and the
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  Freedom Quilting Bee was important in understanding Black land sovereignty. So we now sit on 14 acres
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  of land rather than 24 because the board members at that time decided that they were important to
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  make sure that their neighbors, their families, had a place to go, a place to be after exercising
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  their right to civilly protest and to register to vote. Kim, I think you've shared the story of
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  strength of this community that survived, strength of the women that supported this initiative.
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  Absolutely, and we're celebrating our 60th anniversary. We've been prominent in this
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  community for a number of years, and we're happy to be celebrating our 60th anniversary of the
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  Freedom Quilting Bee. Can you give us a website so that your listeners can find directions in case
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  they want to visit? Yeah, sure. Please visit us at fqblegacy.org. We have a quilt workshop the
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  third Saturday of every month. We have guided tours. You can visit us and enjoy this space
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  where these women made a name for themselves. Kim, thank you so much for sharing this history of
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  Gee's Bend today. Well, thank you so much for being interested, and thank you for taking the time with
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  me. And I enjoy sharing these stories because they are as important as the textiles, the quilts
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  themselves, because the quilts are informed by these stories. That was Kim Kelly, who serves as
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  Executive Director of the Freedom Quilting Bee Legacy, celebrating its 60th anniversary this year.
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  Thanks for joining us for In Focus, which is a podcast wherever you get your podcast.
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  I'm Carolyn Hutcheson, and this is listener-supported Troy Public Radio.