LE01 - County Road 29: Fifteen Miles in Rural Alabama That Changed the World

Black women sharecroppers on County Road 29 in rural Wilcox County, Alabama, had been making quilts for generations. Their private world of quilting for necessity and from scarcity was how they kept their families warm during frigid winters in their shacks with holes in the walls. Worn out clothes became the tops ripped and handsewn, stuffed with the remnant cotton they picked, the backs from feed sacks. Heralded in the 60s as amazing works of abstract art, the women of Gee's Bend and Alberta founded the Freedom Quilting Bee - a women's co-op that soon had quilt manufacturing contracts with major US retailers (eg. Sears, Bloomingdales). The women were also leaders in the civil rights movement; marching for the right to vote. While fighting for their rights, their quilts were purchased by Diana Vreeland, Lee Krasner, and art aficionados of the time. From a 15-mile road in rural Alabama is a community whose works are installed in more than 30 museums around the world and continue to influence the worlds of art, culture, and fashion.

CART (Real-Time Captioning) will be provided for all lectures in the Lecture Hall.