Hidden in Plain View: A Secret Story of Quilts and the Underground Railroad

The fascinating story of a friendship, a lost tradition, and an incredible discovery, revealing how enslaved men and women made encoded quilts and then used them to navigate their escape on the Underground Railroad.

In Hidden in Plain View, historian Jacqueline Tobin and scholar Raymond Dobard offer the first proof that certain quilt patterns, including a prominent one called the Charleston Code, were, in fact, essential tools for escape along the Underground Railroad. In 1993, historian Jacqueline Tobin met African American quilter Ozella Williams amid piles of beautiful handmade quilts in the Old Market Building of Charleston, South Carolina. With the admonition to write this down, Williams began to describe how slaves made coded quilts and 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 unravel the mystery.

Part adventure and part history, Hidden in Plain View traces the origin of the Charleston Code from Africa to the Carolinas, from the low-country island Gullah peoples to free blacks living in the cities of the North, and shows how three people from completely different backgrounds pieced together one amazing American story.

With a new afterword. Illlustrations and photographs throughout, including a full-color photo insert.

Author: Jacqueline L. Tobin, Raymond G. Dobard
Publisher: Anchor Books
Published: 01/18/2000
Pages: 240
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.60lbs
Size: 8.00h x 5.24w x 0.65d
ISBN13: 9780385497671
ISBN10: 0385497679
BISAC Categories:
- Social Science | Ethnic Studies | American | African American & Black Studies
- Social Science | Slavery
- History | United States | Civil War Period (1850-1877)

About the Author
Jacqueline Tobin is the author of From Midnight to Dawn: The Last Tracks of the Underground Railroad, Hidden in Plain View: A Secret Story of Quilts and the Underground Railroad and The Tao of Women. She is also a teacher, collector, and writer of women's stories. She lives in Denver, Colorado.

Raymond Dobard, Ph.D., is an art history professor at Howard University and a nationally known African-American quilter. He lives in Washington, D.C.