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Underground Railroad Research Paper

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Underground Railroad Research Paper
Were quilts, with special patterns, used to assist slaves attempting to escape to freedom by way of the Underground Railroad? Stories tell of quilts, made by slaves using sacks or scrapes of fabric stitched with various geometric patterns, containing codes that assisted slaves using the “Underground Railroad” to escape to freedom. Some historians believe there is no truth to the slave-quilt-code theory, while others provide compelling arguments in support of the use of quilts in the Underground Railroad. The debate is even more interesting when the African heritage of the slaves is included in the debate. Furthermore, Blacks made use of quilts to tell their stories by utilizing codes within the figures of mixed quilt chunks. There existed …show more content…
Johnston, T., De Paola, T. (1995). The Quilt Story. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, Inc.
Fry, G.M, (2002) Stitching from the Soul: Slave Quilts From the Antebellum South. North
Carolina: Chapel Hill and London.
McDermott, G. (1992) Anansi the Spider. New York: Henry Holt & Company, Inc.
Ringgold, F. (1992) Aunt Harrier’s Underground Railroad in the Sky. New York: Crown
Publisher Inc.
Wright, G. (1988). Afro-Americans in New Jersey: A short history. Trenton,
New Jersey: Historical Commission. Wright, G., Wonkeryor, E. (1992). Steal Away, Steal Away… A guide to the
Underground Railroad in New Jersey. Trenton, New Jersey: Historical Commission.
Wright, G. (2000). Critique of Hidden in Plain View: A Secret Story of Quilts and the
Underground Railroad. Retrieved from http://www.antiquequiltdating.com/Hidden_in_Plain_View_-_The_Secret_Story_of_Quilts_and_the_Underground_Railroad.html
Levin, H. (2001). New Jersey’s underground Railroad myth buster: Giles Wright is on a mission to fine tune Black history. Retrieved from http://historiccamdencounty.com/ccnews11.shtml Siebert, W. (1967) The Underground Railroad: From Slavery to Freedom. New York, NY
NY: Arno Press & the NY
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