Word: quilt
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When Jacqueline Tobin and Raymond Dobard explored in their book Hidden in Plain View: A Secret Story of Quilts and the Underground Railroad (Random House) a family legend that said messages encoded in quilts helped slaves escape to freedom on the Underground Railroad, they had no idea that their hypothesis would inspire rancor from scholars who declared it false. They also couldn't have predicted how their story, published less than 10 years ago, would capture the popular imagination - being treated as fact on The Oprah Winfrey Show, in museum exhibits, in children's textbooks...
...Hidden in Plain View is the story of one woman's family," explains Tobin, a journalist and teacher, who said she first heard about the codes when she bought a quilt from a woman named Ozella McDaniel Williams at a Charleston, S.C., market in 1994. Williams told Tobin that for generations women in her family had been taught an oral history that stated that quilt patterns - like log cabins, monkey wrenches and wagon wheels - also served as directions that helped slaves plan their escapes. Since she lacked historical data to back up Williams' claim, Tobin enlisted her friend Raymond Dobard...
...reflective glass-lined walls. Designed by Susan T. Rodriguez of Polshek Partnership Architects, the space isn't as much a gallery as it is a shrine. (Can we get something like this for Michelangelo's Pietà?) And the work itself? The Dinner Party has been compared to the AIDS quilt, which seems right--up to a point. The quilt is a genuine piece of collective folk art, whereas The Dinner Party, though it required the work of roughly 400 volunteers, is still guided by Chicago and her unsteady taste, skills and judgment. But like, say, the World War II Memorial...
...asked me. ''I don't know how to eat without using my hands,'' I said. ''Think hard. There is a way. You have a spoon.'' The next morning, when the guard called the prisoners to get up, I felt something sticky and wet on my hands. Turning to the quilt, I saw stains of blood mixed with pus. The handcuffs had already broken my skin and were cutting into my flesh. I shuddered with a real fear of losing the use of my hands. But I figured out how to eat. When the woman from the kitchen offered...
...death had happened rather suddenly and unexpectedly, so that she did not have time to wash the mug she had used for tea. I rushed to the door, hoping to find out the truth. ''These things you have just given to me -- they are my daughter's clothes and quilt,'' I said. ''Yes,'' answered the guard. ''What's happened to my daughter?'' ''Nothing has happened to her.'' ''Do you mean to tell me that you know for a fact my daughter is alive and well at this moment?'' ''Why should she be otherwise?'' The guard walked away. After...