Harriet Powers was born into slavery, lived and died in relative obscurity within 50 miles of Athens, Ga., and yet is poised to become a household name in 2012. How is it possible that a woman, whose life was local, could have such a global impact?
Harriet was a storyteller. Stories are told in many ways. Some are written in prose or poetry, while some are drawn or photographed. Singers and dancers tell stories and some may be acted on the stage. Although she was not well schooled, Harriet Powers left her record of life and events in the 19th century American south by translating oral stories into quilts. She combined the West African style of appliqué with European style stitching to create unique “story quilts,” which are preserved today as remarkable pieces of both art and history.
Harriet’s quilts are considered some of the best folk art of the 19th century, and the thorough documentation, most of it in her own words, makes them historically priceless. One hangs in the American History Museum of the Smithsonian, in Washington, D.C., and one hangs in the Museum of Fine Art in Boston. An off-Broadway play was written and performed about her, called “Quilting in the Sun.” The 175th anniversary of her birth is in 2012, and currently there is a petition to issue a Harriet Powers Commemorative Stamp for the occasion.
After years of abandonment and neglect, the overgrown Gospel Pilgrim Cemetery in Athens, where Harriet is buried, has been restored, thanks to a grant received by the East Athens Development Corporation.
Who is this woman who after so many years will get the recognition that she deserves both in her home state, and beyond?
Harriet Powers was born on Oct. 29, 1837, near Athens, Ga. She spent her early life on a plantation owned by John and Nancy Lester in Madison County. She married at 18 and began a family that would eventually include nine children.
In 1886 when Harriet was 49 years old, she had finished her first appliquéd story quilt and exhibited it at the Clarke County Cotton Fair.
The quilt was made of 299 separate pieces of fabric, depicting scenes from Bible stories and spirituals. The figures were colorful and stitched to a watermelon-colored background. Broken vertical strips divided the quilt into panels. In West African
designs that are similar, crooked or broken lines are used to startle spirits and keep evil from “moving in straight lines.”
We wouldn’t know about Harriet’s accomplishments if it were not for Jennie Smith, an artist and art teacher at the Lucy Cobb Institute, a secondary school for young women in Athens, from 1859 to 1931. (The school was restored in 1984 and became the home for the Carl Vinson Institute of Government at the University of Georgia.)
Jennie admired Harriet’s quilt and offered to buy it. She and Harriet stayed in touch over the next five years, and when the Powers family suffered economic losses, Harriet agreed to sell her masterpiece. She dictated to Jennie a detailed explanation of each of the 11 panels, which Jennie recorded and saved for future generations.
As hard as it must have been for Harriet to let her creation go, the story has a happy conclusion. This quilt is part of the permanent collection at the Smithsonian Museum of American History, where thousands of people can read her story and enjoy it each year.
Jennie Smith knew the Bible quilt was special, and she entered it at the 1895 Cotton States and International Exposition in Atlanta.
A group of faculty wives from Atlanta University saw it and commissioned a second narrative quilt. This quilt was 15 panels, illustrating Bible stories and documenting specific natural events that had occurred during Harriet’s life, such as “Cold Thursday,” Feb. 10, 1895 when temperatures were below zero in Athens. Harriet recounted some events that had happened before her birth and existed to her only in stories told by the elders. These included “The Dark Day of May 19, 1780,” which was documented as dense smoke over North America due to wildfires in Canada, and Nov. 13, 1833, “Night of Falling Stars,” which was later identified as the Leonid meteor storm.
This quilt stayed in the family of the chairperson of the Atlanta University Board of Trustees until it was acquired by folk art collector Maxim Karolik and donated to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.
Harriet Powers died on Jan. 1, 1910, and is buried in the Gospel Pilgrim Cemetery in Athens.
You can petition the U.S. Postal Service to issue a Harriet Powers Commemorative Stamp by sending your postcard, letter, or quilt guild petition to: The Citizens’ Stamp Advisory Committee, U.S. Postal Service, c/o Stamp Development, U.S. Postal Service, 475 L’Enfant Plaza, SW, Room 5670, Washington D.C. 20260-2437. Editor’s Note: Carol McClullough is secretary of the Executive Board, Georgia Women of Achievement.
About Post Author
