Needle Tart

If I'm not knitting or sewing something, I must be cooking something!

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Oh, Dear!

With this being Black History month, the old story of Underground Quilting is making its rounds. Barbara Brackman (a noted quilt historian, in fact if you google "quilt historian" her name is the first thing that comes up) has stated that she hoped the story would die down once she debunked it. No suck luck.
Please go to her site and read just how much she researched this topic. She was quite thorough and there in NO contemporary evidence (contemporary meaning "from the time of" the Civil War, not "modern", but that is a rant for another day).
Yes, it's a wonderful way to get kids to think about the Underground Railroad, and making quilts (even paper ones) is a great class activity, but it's bad history and if we teach bad history (seriously, I once heard a teacher tell her class that slave owners didn't want their slaves to read because they might read the Constitution and find out that all men were created equal, WTF) we will be doomed to repeat the mistakes while holding dear the nice little stories.
Please, if you are a teacher, don't teach this as fact, go ahead and teach it as a nice little story, but it ain't fact. If you are a parent, watch out for this little lie in the classroom. If you are a quilter, keep trying.
Sadly, more people won't read this post. Oh, well, we'll know.

Labels: , ,

1 Comments:

Blogger Amy Lane said...

Oh dear! I rated a post classified under 'lies, more lies, and damned lies!'Sorry!

(spamword: hystst)

12:26 PM  

Post a Comment

<< Home