The community of Boykin, Alabama, known to many as Gee’s Bend, is home to some of the most highly regarded quiltmakers in America, including Mary Lee Bendolph, Lucy Mingo, and Loretta Pettway, three of the chief quilters from the oldest generation of quilters who represent this profound cultural legacy.
Poet, scholar, and cultural advocate; a nationally recognized thought leader on race, justice, and American society and president of the Mellon Foundation, the largest funder of the arts, culture, and humanities in the United States.
Marion Coleman quilts bear witness that the aesthetic is still a thriving tradition in the African-American community.
Mary Ellen Pleasant was perhaps the most powerful Black woman in Gold Rush-era San Francisco.
“For thirty years, we have done what other schools declare impossible,” explains Collins, who has trained more than one hundred thousand teachers, principals, and administrators in the methodology developed and practiced at her Westside Preparatory School in Chicago.
“When I decided to become a historian,” recalls Darlene Clark Hine, “the last group I intended to study was black women.” That these words come from arguably the most influential scholar of African-American women’s history reflects the intertwined evolution of a career and field of study shaped by a struggle for recognition and legitimacy.
Matriach of the Legendary Ingramettes, widely considered Richmond, Va.’s “First Family of Gospel,” uplifting audiences for over six decades while becoming beloved cultural icons in the community.
Mamie Luella Williams was a lifelong educator in Topeka, Kansas.
Carol Moseley Braun served in the United States Senate from 1993 to 1999 as a Democrat from Illinois.
A textile artist from Fairfield, Texas, Laverne Brackens represents a long tradition of improvisational quiltmaking among African-American women.