Hidden in Plain View
A Secret Story of Quilts and the Underground Railroad
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Narrated by:
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Janina Edwards
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Leon Nixon
About this listen
"There are five square knots on the quilt every two inches apart. They escaped on the fifth knot on the tenth pattern and went to Ontario, Canada. The monkey wrench turns the wagon wheel toward Canada on a bear's paw trail to the crossroads—"
And so begins the fascinating story that was passed down from generation to generation in the family of Ozella McDaniel Williams. But what appears to be a simple story that was handed down from grandmother to mother to daughter is actually much, much more than that. In fact, it is a coded message steeped in African textile traditions that provides a link between slave-made quilts and the Underground Railroad.
In 1993, author Jacqueline Tobin visited the Old Market Building in the historic district of Charleston, South Carolina, where local craftspeople sell their wares. Amid piles of beautiful handmade quilts, Tobin met African American quilter Ozella Williams and the two struck up a conversation. With the admonition to "write this down," Williams began to tell a fascinating story that had been handed down from her mother and grandmother before her.
As Tobin sat in rapt attention, Williams began to describe how slaves made coded quilts and then used them to navigate their escape on the Underground Railroad. But just as quickly as she started, Williams stopped, informing Tobin that she would learn the rest when she was "ready."
During the three years it took for Williams's narrative to unfold—and as the friendship and trust between the two women grew—Tobin enlisted Raymond Dobard, Ph.D., an art history professor and well-known African American quilter, to help provide the historical context behind what Williams was describing.
Now, based on Williams's story and their own research, Tobin and Dobard, in what they call "Ozella's Underground Railroad Quilt Code," offer proof that some slaves were involved in a sophisticated network that melded African textile traditions with American quilt practices and created a potent result: African American quilts with patterns that conveyed messages that were, in fact, essential tools for escape along the Underground Railroad.
©2011 Jacqueline L. Tobin (P)2024 Random House AudioCritic reviews
"Tobin and Dobard have taken quilt scholarship to another level. They have revealed that quilts are at once sources of pleasure, information, and meaning and are central to understanding the history of people of African ancestry in North America."—Floyd Coleman, Ph.D.
"By engaging in a vast amount of research, authors Tobin and Dobard have established a significant linkage between the Underground Railroad effort, escaping slaves, and the American patchwork quilt."—Cuesta Benberry, author of Always There: The African American Presence in American Quilts
"Jacqueline Tobin is to be applauded for being in the right place at the right time, and having enough faith to go back again and again to listen to the story of one family's effort to encode knowledge in their quilt tops. And one salutes her partnership with Raymond Dobard, whose knowledge of quilting technology is so outstanding. Their persistence—is vital to our understanding of African American culture and its myriad contributions to American life."—Maude Southwell Wahlman, Ph.D., author of Signs and Symbols: African Images in African American Quilts
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Interesting, but a bit of a slog
- By V. Temple on 11-16-24
By: Ben Macintyre
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Empresses of Seventh Avenue
- World War II, New York City, and the Birth of American Fashion
- By: Nancy MacDonell
- Narrated by: Gail Shalan
- Length: 10 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Empresses of Seventh Avenue will tell the story of how these extraordinary women put American fashion on the world stage and created the template for modern style—and how the nearly $500 billion American fashion industry, the largest in the world, could not have accrued its power and wealth without their farsightedness and determination.
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The wonderful historical perspective.
- By george elliot "sandy" on 09-16-24
By: Nancy MacDonell
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To Overthrow the World
- The Rise and Fall and Rise of Communism
- By: Sean McMeekin
- Narrated by: Robert Fass
- Length: 16 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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When the USSR collapsed in 1991, the world was certain that Communism was dead. Today, three decades later, it is clear that it was not. While Russia may no longer be Communist, Communism and sympathy for Communist ideas have proliferated across the globe. In To Overthrow the World, Sean McMeekin investigates the evolution of Communism from a seductive ideal of a classless society into the ruling doctrine of tyrannical regimes.
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Necessary reading for modern times!
- By Jeffrey Andrade on 10-30-24
By: Sean McMeekin
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The Unit
- My Life Fighting Terrorists as One of America's Most Secret Military Operatives
- By: Adam Gamal, Kelly Kennedy
- Narrated by: Adam Gamal, Peter Ganim
- Length: 7 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Inside our military is a team of operators whose work is so secretive that the name of the unit itself is classified. Highly-trained in warfare, self-defense, infiltration, and deep surveillance, "the Unit," as the Department of Defense has asked us to refer to it, has been responsible for preventing dozens of terrorist attacks in the Western world. Never before has a member of this unit shared their story — until now.
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Meh
- By Anonymous User on 03-06-24
By: Adam Gamal, and others
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How the World Made the West
- A 4,000 Year History
- By: Josephine Quinn
- Narrated by: Alix Dunmore
- Length: 15 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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In How the World Made the West, Josephine Quinn poses perhaps the most significant challenge ever to the “civilizational thinking” regarding the origins of Western culture—that is, the idea that civilizations arose separately and distinctly from one another. Rather, she locates the roots of the modern West in everything from the law codes of Babylon, Assyrian irrigation, and the Phoenician art of sail to Indian literature, Arabic scholarship, and the metalworking riders of the Steppe, to name just a few examples.
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Middling
- By Amazon Customer on 11-14-24
By: Josephine Quinn
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By the Fire We Carry
- The Generations-Long Fight for Justice on Native Land
- By: Rebecca Nagle
- Narrated by: Rebecca Nagle
- Length: 8 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Here Rebecca Nagle recounts the generations-long fight for tribal land and sovereignty in eastern Oklahoma. By chronicling both the contemporary legal battle and historic acts of Indigenous resistance, By the Fire We Carry stands as a landmark work of American history. The story it tells exposes both the wrongs that our nation has committed and the Native-led battle for justice that has shaped our country.
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Educational
- By Alicia on 11-21-24
By: Rebecca Nagle
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Erasing History
- By: Jason Stanley
- Narrated by: Dion Graham
- Length: 4 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Combining historical research with an in-depth analysis of our modern political landscape, Erasing History issues a dire warning for America and the world: the worst fascist movements of humanity’s past began in schools; the same place so many of today’s right-wing political parties have trained their most vicious attacks. Yale professor Jason Stanley exposes the true danger of the right’s tactics and traces their inspirations and funding back to some of the most dangerous ideas of human history.
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The bias attitude of the author
- By Elizabeth ohanna on 09-30-24
By: Jason Stanley