|
At The Center of 19th
Century Textile History
By Carolyn
Warfield, Great Lakes African American Quilters Network
A complementary
collaboration of writer and artist offers young readers
a commendable story of African-derived material culture
from a woman of African descent.
Martha Ann’s Quilt for Queen Victoria authored
by Kyra E. Hicks and illustrated by Lee Edward Fodi, is
a compelling and uncompromising story of the importance
of action and endurance; being focused to achieve goals.
Martha’s story is a momentous reflection of past history
in the earshot of modern social problems.
How many people
could have a mighty heart, and keep the hope of a dream,
for half a century? Martha Ann Ricks did and
accomplished her dream with passion. The African
appliqué Coffee Tree quilt Ricks made for Queen Victoria
is a remarkable, surviving, 19th century
cloth heirloom. Presented to Victoria in 1892, a fine
expression of art found itself in the hands of a
European woman with a political worldview far more
strategic than one quilter could ever know or
articulate.
Family genealogy
and records research were part of Kyra’s approach to
getting at the truth of Ricks story. “Martha Ann’s
great, great grandchildren shared oral family histories
about her, yet had never seen the published accounts of
their great, great grandmother,” Hicks said. I think
Martha Ann’s Quilt for Queen Victoria has a
reassuring message for young and old alike, of capturing
the transformative strength of history, especially when
American history often is associated with structural
racism and exclusion. Martha’s story fits the category
of humanities and represents “living history.”
Martha was an authentic cultural protagonist of the
African Diaspora, making history from her experience as
an ordinary black woman.
Textile historian
Cuesta Benberry and contemporary quilter Krya E. Hicks
spent eleven years researching numerous documents to
restore Martha’s memory to its proper place in history.
Her story helps us understand the consequences of
history while exposing the connections between history
and power during a period when America had its first
obsession with the color issue. As a product of
individual decisions and choices, history always occurs
within larger institutional contexts and socioeconomic
environments. While Martha’s deed may have been
motivated by a higher source, her conscious will
produced the royal gift. What an impressive and
revealing reality in 1892, for a Liberian woman to be at
the center of 19th century textile history.
As a testimonial of material preservation, Queen
Victoria displayed the charming Coffee Tree Quilt at the
World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893, where a
large number of people saw it.
Early proponents of
Manifest Destiny thought the presence of blacks in
America was a threat to the national security and
quality of life for whites. So in 1816, the federal
government established the American Colonization Society
(ACS) to set up African colonies to get rid of their
free African Americans. John Quincy Adams believed the
aims of the ACS would lead to imperialism. Increasingly,
slave states organized colonization societies
independent of the ACS and founded their own colonies in
Liberia.
Martha Ann was born
about 1817 as one of seven children on Doherty
Plantation in eastern Tennessee. That same year Richard
Allen, James Forten and Absalom Jones, among a large
group of free blacks, gathered at the St. Thomas
Episcopal Church in Philadelphia, to protest the
Colonization Society’s attempts to exile African
Americans from the land of their birth. By the time
Martha’s father, George Erskine, had saved enough money
to buy his family’s freedom, the girl was almost a
teenager. As a free man, Erskine was ordained and sent
to Liberia as a Presbyterian minister in 1820. By 1829,
the Tennessee Colonization Society had organized to send
emancipated slaves to Liberia, and transplanted 870
ex-slaves to Africa during the period which ended in
1866.
An 1831 law said
that emancipation of a slave had to be accompanied by
removal from the state. Thus, the Tennessee Colonization
Society was the only anti-slavery activity tolerated in
the state after the 1830s. The Erskine family sailed to
Liberia in 1830 where they permanently settled and
prospered. Martha advanced in school and education,
mastered her mother’s informal sewing instruction, and
became a well-respected weaver and seamstress as the
years passed.
Martha’s knowledge
of “Victoria, new queen of England came from reading the
Liberian newspaper.” A statement of point in Hicks’
book: “Martha Ann’s admiration of the Queen for trying
to save her and others from slavery by sending the Navy
to patrol the coast of Liberia to stop slave catchers
from kidnapping black folks and forcing them into
slavery” was my pretext for observing Victoria’s
military record in Africa. Actually, 170 years ago,
Princess Alexandria Victoria, age eighteen, ascended to
the British throne when her uncle, King William IV died
in June, 1837. On William’s watch, the British
Emancipation Act was adapted in 1833 to abolish slavery
in the British Empire and Canada. Young Victoria,
crowned Queen on June 28, 1838, had the longest reign in
British history ending with death in 1901.
In 1837 when
Victoria inherited the throne, Great Britain was
perceived as a corrupt country. During her monarchy, the
country was swept along with the Industrial Revolution
and witnessed enormous economic and social changes.
Victorian values of comfort and wealth were in sharp
contrast to appalling poverty and child cruelty. Under
Victoria’s headship, England came to be known as the Age
of Empire. The country ruled the largest empire the
world had yet seen and stretched across one quarter of
the world’s land mass.
Gains occurred in
the Sudan, Gold Coast, and southern Africa in the Zulu
Wars. Moreover, Liberia and Sierra Leone came under
British influence. Great Britain was drawn into Africa
to protect the trade routes through to the Indian
subcontinent and Far East Africa. Subsequently, the
Brits were drawn to Egypt to protect the Sudanese route,
an overland link through the Middle East, and their
presence in South Africa to protect the Cape. After
1870, Africa became the focus of international rivalries
over colonies collecting colonies.
* *
* * *
Martha
Ann’s Quilt for Queen Victoria By Kyra E. Hicks,
Illustrated by Lee Edward Fodi
Book Description
Martha Ann is 12 years
old when Papa finally purchases her freedom from slavery
and moves the family from Tennessee to Liberia. On
Market days, Martha Ann watches the British Navy
patrolling the Liberian Coast to stop slave catchers
from kidnapping family and neighbors and forcing them
back into slavery. Martha Ann decides to thank Queen
Victoria in person for sending the Navy. But first, she
has to save money for the 3,500-mile voyage, find a
suitable gift for the queen, and withstand the ridicule
of those who learn of her impossible dream to meet the
Queen of England. Source:
www.BlackThreads.com
* *
* * *
Carolyn Warfield is an award winning visual artist and
writer living in Michigan.
posted 30 June 2007 *
* * * *
updated 16 October
2007 |
