The Alabama Women Who Made Their Quilts a Part of Modern Art

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As the Alabama River wends its way south and west, it meanders in a series of bends before emptying its muddy waters into Mobile Bay. Along the way, about 30 miles from Selma, one of those bends cuts deep into the land to form an isolated peninsula, which is filled by the hamlet of Gee’s Bend.

Gee’s Bend (now also known as Boykin) is home to generations of African-American families whose ancestors were brought to the area as slaves, back when the South was covered in plantations. The story of the people of Gee’s Bend is, therefore, similar to many stories in the South: one marked by inequality, institutionalized racism, and poverty. But the history of Gee’s Bend is also a story of community and creativity, the results of which stand as high-water marks in American art.

Quilts are the artistic treasures of Gee’s Bend. Benders, as locals are called, have been stitching these exquisite textiles since the early 1900s, or perhaps even earlier (some date the tradition back to Joseph Gee’s cotton plantation in the early 19th century). Eventually, as interest in the artworks spread, the quilts left the bend and traveled the country, becoming recognized as striking works of modern art featured in museums and galleries from Houston and New York to the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C.

Initially, of course, the quilters of Gee’s Bend—primarily African-American women—were not aiming for museum walls or international acclaim. Quilts were essential to daily life. In winter months, they were used to fight off the bitter cold in bed or to cover wood-slatted walls, thus keeping blustery drafts at bay. They were likewise spread out on the floor, where updrafts seeped in through creaky floorboards.

But the quilts of Gee’s Bend aren’t like typical quilts. Their distinct designs have a lot to do with the past and present of the place in which they were made, as if history seeps into the fabric.

The settlement inauspiciously came into existence in 1816, when Joseph Gee made the trek from North Carolina to take over the land, slaves in tow. His white nephews inherited it, increased the slave holdings, then sold the people and land to another relative, Mark Pettway, who brought more slaves and built a grand plantation house on the property.

After the Civil War and emancipation, the freed slaves of Gee’s Bend became sharecroppers (many kept the Pettway name). But with the economy in disarray and no local infrastructure, the area fell into poverty. Photographs from 1937—many taken by Arthur Rothstein, who was dispatched to the area by the New Deal federal government—show fallow fields and a smattering of ramshackle cabins.

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