A Stitch in Time

Southwest Art Center Quilt Festival

My mother loved quilting and gingerbread houses. Perhaps that is why quilts have always spoken to me. They are far more than fabric stitched together; they are memory, testimony, and history sewn into cloth. They tell stories that books sometimes cannot.

The exhibition at the Southwest Arts Center, on display through September 1, is a powerful reminder of that truth. These are not simply beautiful works of textile art. They are visual narratives of the Black experience. Appropriately themed "Music Moves Movements," the exhibit demonstrates that music has always been more than entertainment. It has been protest, prayer, lament, celebration, resistance, and hope.

Yet this exhibition is about even more than music. It is about heroes and sheroes, war and peace, politics and liberation, martyrs and movements. It reveals how songs have become part of the very fabric of the African American story and, ultimately, the American story.

What struck me most was how contemporary these quilts still feel. Though many draw upon the struggles of the 1960s, 70s, 80s, and 90s, they could just as easily have been created today. They remind us that, despite overwhelming odds, we have endured and overcome. Yet they also expose an uncomfortable truth: many of the battles remain unfinished.

James Weldon Johnson captured this reality in Lift Every Voice and Sing:

"Stony the road we trod, bitter the chastening rod..."

Those words still echo in our national consciousness. They describe how Black communities have continued to express themselves through oppression, inequality, racism, and war not only through speeches and marches, but through art.

Quilting itself is a form of resistance.

For enslaved Africans, for sharecropping families, and for communities living under persistent economic hardship, quilting became an act of survival. It clothed children, kept families warm through harsh winters, and transformed scarcity into abundance. The same sentiment for impoverished Whites in America laying ground for quilting circles. Across Black communities, women gathered in churches, homes, and community circles to sew quilts for families in need, especially in regions where the crushing realities of sharecropping left many struggling to repay debts to landlords or simply survive another season. Quilting circles became places where labor was shared, stories were exchanged, wisdom was passed from one generation to the next, and communities cared for one another.

Within African American oral tradition, certain quilt patterns including the Monkey Wrench, Log Cabin, and Bear's Paw have been remembered as symbols that pointed toward the journey to freedom. Hung across clotheslines or fences, these patterns are said to have communicated messages to those seeking liberation along the Underground Railroad. Whether understood as documented history or as a cherished cultural memory, these stories reflect a deeper truth: quilts have long represented hope, resilience, and the determination to survive.

The quilting tradition itself reaches even deeper. Long before enslaved Africans arrived in America, textile arts flourished throughout West Africa, where weaving traditions were often the work of men, while women contributed their own distinct textile arts through dyeing, sewing, embroidery, and cloth production. Together they created fabrics that carried identity, status, spirituality, and communal memory. The African American quilt emerged from these rich cultural traditions while adapting to the realities of enslavement, poverty, and survival in the United States.

One recurring image throughout the exhibit was inspired by Nina Simone's Mississippi Goddam. Seeing that work repeatedly was impossible to ignore. As we continue to ask what happened to Nolan Wells and so many other Black boys in Mississippi and across this nation, Simone's protest remains painfully relevant. We may wish these stories belonged only to history, but they do not.

I do not believe this coincidence is accidental. Rather, it feels like an act of the ancestors a reminder that the struggle is not over. Perhaps we were not defeated so much as weary. Perhaps we simply paused to catch our breath.

Walking through the exhibit, I found myself hearing another familiar refrain from the Black church tradition:

"How long, Lord, how long?"

The quilts answer that question without speaking a word. Their vivid colors, bold imagery, and layered symbolism bring freedom, resistance, and liberation to life. They refuse to allow us to forget. They insist that we remember both where we have been and where we have yet to go.

From a Motherist perspective, quilting is more than an artistic practice; it is leadership formation. Motherism teaches us to gather what appears fragmented, to honor every piece, and to weave lives together for the good of the whole. No single square completes the quilt. Every piece depends upon another.

That is the genius of Motherist leadership. It is never about self-interest. It is about connecting people, gifts, histories, and generations into a community capable of protecting and nurturing everyone. Men and women, Black and White working together, each contributing their gifts, so that the entire community is strengthened. Just as a quilt transforms scraps into warmth and shelter, Motherist leadership transforms individual lives into a tapestry of collective care, healing, and liberation.

Quilts are not simply blankets. They are living archives. They preserve stories across generations, transcend time and circumstance, and remind us that every stitch carries the memory of a people still quilting together the unfinished story of freedom.