\nMe: \u201cI was the they.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n
WELCOME TO ALABAMA<\/h3>\n
I went to the American south as a na\u00efve white woman, thick as a brick. I knew about the marches, the murders, Rosa Parks and I\u2019d heard the words \u201cBus Boycott\u201d and \u201cFreedom Riders.\u201d But I had no depth of knowledge, just a bit of well-meaning politically correct empathy — until we arrived at Hutchinson Missionary Baptist Church, Montgomery, Alabama.<\/p>\n
Hutchinson church was bombed in 1956. The church\u2019s pastor is Rev. G.W.C. Richardson. In his teenage years, the Klan had beaten, stabbed and pushed him, unconscious, into a river to drown. The Klan left him for dead but his belt loop caught on a tree branch and Rev. Richardson survived. <\/p>\n
Fifty-two years later, in January 2008, I was in Montgomery working on a TV documentary about Hutchinson church. Just a few years before, a teenage boy had been stabbed and killed on the front steps of the church. The victim was black, the thugs white. The Canadians in our crew where shocked. No, they were scared. <\/p>\n
The seniors we\u2019d come to interview were known as the Forgotten Foot Soldiers of the Movement and Voices of the Boycott. The Bus Boycott has ended, The Struggle hasn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
![\"Gwen](\"http:\/\/barbaraboyden.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/alabama1.jpg\")
When Gwen Patton was nine-years-old, she made her first move against racism. She spent summers with her grandparents in Montgomery, Alabama. One day Gwen was in the local drug store, had just paid three cents for a cup of water, and sat herself down at the counter. The clerk called her a \u201cpickaninny” and ordered her to get up. Gwen looked at the clerk, poured her water on the counter, and left\u2026 slowly. \u201cThat was my first conscious protest,\u201d Gwen told a local reporter.<\/p>\n
Three years later, Rosa Parks was arrested (December, 1955) for not giving up her seat on the bus to a white man. By then, Gwen Patton was 12-years-old, a Child of the Civil Rights Movement — aware and active. Gwen returned to Montgomery to help support the Montgomery Bus Boycott. <\/p>\n
And then there was The Accident. By the time Gwen was 24-years-old, she\u2019d added Anti-draft Counselor to her activities. She was driving with a young man trying to catch a plane to Canada. (Yes, to avoid being sent to Viet Nam). There was a \u201cmysterious car accident\u201d and that\u2019s all anyone would tell me. <\/p>\n
Gwen was left with one leg shorter than the other and she walks with a pronounced limp. But, Gwen has suits made with long-skirts to hide her damaged leg and special shoes. And she drives a huge old Cadillac with fins. I don\u2019t know what made me say that, but that\u2019s what she was driving when I first saw her. I also think the car was a convertible. Gwen is not shy.<\/p>\n
During the filming at the church, Gwen explained bits of her life to the children and presented them, and the church, with the book she\u2019d been given years ago by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. This tiny lady in pink has a mind like a steel trap and uses it. She is a historian\/researcher\/writer and will set you straight. \u201cIt (the Movement) was always interconnected with the whole human rights struggle, which we called it at the time before the liberals got hold of it and called it \u201ccivil rights.\u201d<\/p>\n
She was 96-year-old lawyer Johnnie Carr. Johnnie Carr is considered an icon of the Civil Rights Movement, along with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks. Mrs. Carr kept good company. <\/p>\n During the taping, Mrs. Carr made perhaps the only mention of whites who\u2019d helped during the Struggle \u2013 a Quaker woman came from the north to teach young black girls and they called the school \u201cMiss White\u2019s School\u201d. Its official name was the Montgomery Industrial School for Girls. Johnnie Carr and Rosa Parks met at that school.<\/p>\n When Rosa Parks was arrested, Johnnie Carr\u2019s phone rang. Mrs. Carr says she\u2019ll never forget the words of E.D. Nixon when he called her that day, the day the movement shifted: \u201cHe told me, \u2018Mrs. Carr, they have arrested the wrong woman now.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n E.D. Nixon, an early Father of the Movement worked as a Pullman porter and by the day of Rosa Parks arrest, Nixon owned a house. He put his house up as a bond and bailed Rosa out of jail.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s E.D. Nixon\u2019s mug shot from his arrest a year later for taking part in the Montgomery Buss Boycott. <\/em> I\u2019m glad I noticed Johnnie Carr\u2019s swell hat or I would never have known about E.D. Nixon and the work and planning that went into the Bus Boycott. <\/p>\n Near the church, I kept coming across official historical markers honoring workers in the Boycott. Hutchinson had been a big meeting place and down the street, Georgia Gilmore\u2019s plaque explained how she\u2019d formed the Club from Nowhere. They made sandwiches and baked. The Club sold pies and cakes and raised money for the cause. And they cooked for Dr. King.<\/p>\n HATS: Older white women (often with a penchant for pale pink) usually ask me about the hats African American women wear to church. They don\u2019t care what I answer. They just want a way to deliver a superior look of scorn for what they don\u2019t consider right and proper for a church. <\/p>\n Well ladies, as you know, covering your head for worship is a tradition in many religions. And African American women also want to look their best on church day. No, they want to look Spectacular — a holdover from days of slavery, days of menial work, days of segregation, days of Jim Crow laws.<\/p>\n Mildred is the Hat Lady at Hutchison. She told me about her mother who\u2019s in two photos in the Foot Soldier\u2019s new renovated lounge. While working as a maid, Mildred\u2019s mother stepped on a nail and died of lockjaw two weeks later. Mildred always became emotional when talking about her mother and wouldn\u2019t be interviewed. Good for her. All that I can tell you is Mildred sparkles. Here, Mildred wears a hat that\u2019s like a blue disco ball. She also supplied our co-host Catherine\u2019s hat. <\/p>\n The woman between Mildred and Catherine is Dr. Tommie \u201cTonea\u201d Stewart, Professor\/Actress\/Child of the Movement and Motivational Speaker. Tonea was a regular on the TV series In the Heat of The Night and she was our inspiring Point Person for the church. Another mind like a steel trap, this time with a phone attached. <\/p>\n OK, one more hat picture. I don\u2019t know this woman\u2019s name, but I do know she was 90-years-old and told us about going to catch the bus on that first day of the Boycott. There was a note: \u201cDon\u2019t Ride the Bus\u201d. And no one did. \u201cThree hundred and eighty-one days, people walked, walked with joy,\u201d Gwen Patton said.<\/p>\n Nicole Brooks was the co-producer of this show. Here we fall into each other\u2019s arms, all teary-eyed. Pretty mushy stuff for a couple of tough producers. What brought that on?<\/em> <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Reverend Richardson (on the left), organized the congregation to re-enact the Civil Rights marches that still take place. The Reverend, his granddaughter and his wife led us all into the church. Not a dry eye.<\/p>\n The remarkable ladies of Gee\u2019s Bend, Alabama, were my personal introduction to the Civil Rights Movement. <\/p>\n In the 1990s, my friend Red brought the Gee\u2019s Bend ladies and their quilts from Alabama to the David Mirvish Gallery & Bookstore in Toronto. Until then, to me, quilts meant itty-bitty flowers on symmetrical bits of fabric. <\/p>\n As soon as I arrived in Montgomery, Red put me in touch with the Gee\u2019s Bend Quilt Collective. They told me to just drive on over. My map showed Selma between Montgomery and Gee\u2019s Bend. By this time I\u2019d fessed up to a church elder that I didn\u2019t know the details of Selma and its famous bridge. I would have been offended. If he was, he was a gentleman about it.<\/p>\n Selma\u2019s Edmund Pettus Bridge was as far as 600 peaceful civil rights marchers got on their first day\u2019s walk from Selma to Montgomery. The Pettus Bridge crosses the Alabama River just six blocks from the center of town. It took two more attempts to walk to Montgomery. And by then an estimated 25,000 were marching. The struggle for voting rights turned. <\/p>\n Silent vigils are still held to honor Bloody Sunday. Peaceful marchers carrying candles cross the bridge to official memorials that are on Alabama\u2019s \u201cMust See\u201d tourist maps. Ironic. But not funny.<\/p>\n Gee\u2019s Bend was settled in 1816 by Joseph Gee on a piece of land sticking into a bend of the Alabama River. It didn\u2019t take him much to come up with that name. Joseph Gee arrived with 18 enslaved blacks to work his cotton plantation. Enslaved blacks is the politically correct descriptor. Slaves are the vernacular. But call yourself whatever you want. Eventually they became African American sharecroppers and tenant farmers. \u201cWe lived a starvation life,\u201d a quilter said in the video about them. \u201cWe worked like slaves\u2026couldn\u2019t have no blankets.\u201d <\/p>\n Kip, our documentary\u2019s \u00dcber Producer, drove me to Gee\u2019s Bend \u2013 go west on the highway to Selma, turn left. It was supposed to be a two-hour drive to Gee\u2019s Bend. About an hour in, Kip pegged it. \u201cThis is a pilgrimage isn\u2019t it?\u201d<\/p>\n We were lost. The highway became a narrow county road and took us deeper into the already Deep South. Bad land and abject poverty \u2013 it was the Third World. I know that description is politically incorrect but the area was not an emerging nation. It was dead-end every which way. In 1933-32, the Red Cross kept the starving Gee\u2019s Bend inhabitants alive. In 1937, the famous U.S. Farm Security Administration needed \u201cgood Southern Tenancy pictures\u201d to join Dorothea Lange\u2019s dustbowl photos. The Gee\u2019s Bend families were captured as objects for us to gaze upon today. <\/p>\n No one in the community let anything go to waste. The sewers took the leftover corduroy from the Sears piecework and made quilts. They took the men\u2019s faded, worn dungarees and made quilts. They quilted empty rough sacks. Clean cotton batting came from cotton ginny lint, and the quilts were hung on walls to cover cracks old newspapers couldn\u2019t fill. And they were used on Gee\u2019s Bend beds.<\/p>\n Back to voting. Gee\u2019s Bend folks could take a short ferry ride to Camden, the county seat, where there were jobs and stores and they could register to vote. Or they could drive two hours by car to the same place. It was that damned bendy river. <\/p>\n They crossed the river until the county took out the ferry. Then they still managed the day trip to drive and vote. But Gee\u2019s Bend was isolated. Then and now. <\/p>\n Kip and I were driving in circles, only we didn\u2019t know it. We followed a sign that read \u201cGee\u2019s Bend Ferry\u2019. But no ferry had been to that wretched dock for years. Our GPS stopped working. We had no phone signal. And our paper map was no help because Gee\u2019s Bend wasn\u2019t marked — the government had decided to call the place Boykin. <\/p>\n We found a kind of store with a gas pump and a phone booth. The phone was broken. Nothing but the dusty, scrubby landscape of poverty surrounded us. The saggy store was covered in warped clapboard that may have seen white paint, but now was the gray of a black and white photo. It was surrounded by dead winter fields of rubble and stubble with an occasional bare tree poking out. Altogether the collection of dead phones and useless maps added up to\u2026 ominous. <\/p>\n Being the woman in the car, I went into the store and asked for directions. One lady pointed at another lady and said something with a stretched out Southern drawl. I had no idea what she was talking about. The ladies were patient \u2013 they didn\u2019t have much to do, or places to go. So they talked until I understood that someone was driving to Gee\u2019s Bend, and we should follow her. Sure.<\/p>\n The ladies in the Gee\u2019s Bend documentary I watched over and over, all loved sewing. It was a passion, a hobby, a way to make money, a way to express themselves. They never stopped quilting. They picked cotton all day in dry hot fields\u2026and inside their head they designed with such intensity, they often \u201chad to sew to two or three in the nighttime\u201d. They had friendship, singing, quilts and God. \u201cWe were so thankful.\u201d<\/p>\n The ladies traveled. You know how famous they were? The Gee\u2019s Bend story was featured on Oprah. Jane Fonda lived near Gee\u2019s Bend and her daughter, Vanessa, made the video I\u2019d watched so many times. It showed a quilting bee with all the ladies singing work songs and spirituals. One woman kept time on the quilting frame like the drummer in a dragon boat. The quilt bounced under the ladies\u2019 needles. They sang. They spoke of segregation. They laughed. <\/p>\n Gee’s Bend Quilters Collective Building at Gee’s Bend, AL (officially Boykin, AL)<\/em><\/p>\n Many of the original quilters have died. Six generations of driven, artistic women have dwindled to a few. People from all over the world still come to sign the guest book. We did. Anyone who follows quilting knows about Gee\u2019s Bend and the quilts. It\u2019s become a much-copied style. <\/p>\n York Heritage Quilters Guild, A Celebration of Quilts XII, 2014, samples<\/em> If you find one of their old Gee\u2019s Bend quilts for sale, expect to pay many-many tens of thousands\u2026 of dollars\u2026 U.S. dollars. <\/p>\n Gee\u2019s Bend has one more note of fame. During the Atlanta funeral procession for Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr., mules pulled the wagon carrying his coffin. The wagon and those mules came from Gee\u2019s Bend. It had been his wish.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I wanted to write this before February 1, the beginning of Black History month. I didn\u2019t make it. And I still haven\u2019t seen the movie Selma. This is what I experienced in that part of Alabama in 2008. It made a mark.<\/p>\n Woman: \u201cWhat were they like?\u201d<\/em> I went to the American south as a na\u00efve white woman, thick as a brick. I knew about the marches, the murders, Rosa Parks and I\u2019d heard the words \u201cBus Boycott\u201d and \u201cFreedom Riders.\u201d But I had no depth of knowledge, just a bit of well-meaning politically correct empathy — until we arrived at Hutchinson Missionary Baptist Church, Montgomery, Alabama.<\/p>\n Hutchinson church was bombed in 1956. The church\u2019s pastor is Rev. G.W.C. Richardson. In his teenage years, the Klan had beaten, stabbed and pushed him, unconscious, into a river to drown. The Klan left him for dead but his belt loop caught on a tree branch and Rev. Richardson survived. <\/p>\n Fifty-two years later, in January 2008, I was in Montgomery working on a TV documentary about Hutchinson church. Just a few years before, a teenage boy had been stabbed and killed on the front steps of the church. The victim was black, the thugs white. The Canadians in our crew where shocked. No, they were scared. <\/p>\n The seniors we\u2019d come to interview were known as the Forgotten Foot Soldiers of the Movement and Voices of the Boycott. The Bus Boycott has ended, The Struggle hasn\u2019t.<\/p>\n![\"alabama2\"](\"http:\/\/barbaraboyden.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/alabama2.jpg\")
From my notes for our video editor: The group-interview in the sanctuary was amazing \u2013 they each introduced themselves and my notes call out \u201cWoman in Silver Hat\u201d. <\/em> <\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/barbaraboyden.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/alabama3.jpg\")
\u201cYou tried to be a law-abiding citizen because you didn\u2019t want to be put in jail,\u201d Carr recently told a reporter. <\/p>\n
\n![\"E.D.](\"http:\/\/barbaraboyden.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/alabama4.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"hat\"](\"http:\/\/barbaraboyden.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/alabama7.jpg\")
![\"hat\"](\"http:\/\/barbaraboyden.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/alabama6.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"alabama8\"](\"http:\/\/barbaraboyden.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/alabama8.jpg\")
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/barbaraboyden.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/alabama9.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/barbaraboyden.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/alabama10.jpg\")
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/barbaraboyden.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/alabama11.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Reverend](\"http:\/\/barbaraboyden.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/alabama12.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/barbaraboyden.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/alabama13.jpg\")
The program about Hutchinson Church is in fact about the Civil Rights movement, the Forgotten Foot Soldiers of the Movement and the violent racism that continues. Most of the people interviewed had been crippled, left for dead, bombed, threatened, made orphans, damaged\u2026on and on. There was an intense seriousness about the messages being delivered to us. These were people who had survived and were happy to be alive. More of our people shed tears during the taping of this show than any other. We were all uneasy. And that was before Ferguson and \u201cI Can\u2019t Breathe\u201d.<\/p>\nON TO SELMA & GEE\u2019S BEND<\/h3>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/barbaraboyden.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/alabama14.jpg\")
I\u2019d heard Martin Luther King Jr. preach in St. Paul\u2019s Cathedral in London in the 1960s. I think I heard him say \u201cI have a dream\u201d but I\u2019ve seen so many film clips of him saying those words, in different places, my mind could have morphed all of them into St. Paul\u2019s. Shallow and callow, that was me. I did mini skirts then, not social justice. I also grew up in white, racist, anti-Semitic, 1950\u2019s Thornhill, Ontario. Mea Culpa.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/barbaraboyden.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/alabama15.jpg\")
Gee\u2019s Bend quilts were bold and irregular. They knocked your socks off. I became obsessed with Gee\u2019s Bend and everything to do with it \u2013 especially the women and their quilts. These African-American women were also survivors and they managed just fine in the heady world of art galleries.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/barbaraboyden.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/alabama16.jpg\")
It was March 7, 1965 now called Bloody Sunday. Armed state and city police used billy clubs and tear gas to stop the marchers. And TV cameras caught it all. <\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/barbaraboyden.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/alabama17.jpg\")
Women taught little girls to sew and that\u2019s what saved the community. The women did piece work for Sears, Roebuck and Co. and it brought in a bit of extra money. But still, they were poor. <\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/barbaraboyden.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/alabama18.jpg\")
<\/a>Some of the Gee\u2019s Bend quilters took part in the Freedom Quilting Bee in a near-by community. It was a collective to raise money for the civil rights movement. Eventually, the ladies of Gee\u2019s Bend formed their own quilting bee. They took to hanging their quilts out on the highway and selling them. The young men in the area went to university on quilt money. And then they left. The same story that\u2019s told all over rural North America. <\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/barbaraboyden.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/alabama19.jpg\")
\nNo Gee\u2019s Bend African Americans were registered to vote until Martin Luther King visited and told them to take the ferry to Camden and register to vote. \u201cYou are somebody,\u201d he told the residents. \u201cCross the river for Freedom\u201d.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/barbaraboyden.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/alabama20.jpg\")
And then they were discovered. The ladies of Gee\u2019s Bend thought they made quilts. Turns out, according to the critics, they made \u201cbrilliant pieces of modern art\u201d. The fabrics ached of character and humanity. They\u2019d been part of worn-to-threadbare clothing. The compositions were abstract. You can spot odd pockets torn from old jeans. The quilts were scooped up, shown at the Houston Museum of Art and the Whitney Museum in New York City. <\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/barbaraboyden.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/alabama21.jpg\")
Real life today is different. When we arrived at the quilting collective, finally, Kip and I were led to a stark building where we met a middle-aged lady. She offered to quilt so we could film. The frame held a quilt top of neon bright modern fabrics in a standard quilt pattern. Their store sold new machine-made carpets based on the old quilts. The quilts you can buy are all new and shinny. The charm was gone. And so were the most of the ladies. <\/p>\n
\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/barbaraboyden.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/alabama22.jpg\")
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/barbaraboyden.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/alabama23.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/barbaraboyden.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/alabama24.jpg\")
And now you can buy a manufactured Gee\u2019s Bend quilt top on sale for $39.99 (U.S.) on the Crate and Barrel website. Their quilt kits turn up on e-bay. And the domain geesbend.org was for sale the last time I looked. There was a lawsuit about the ownership and copyright of the ladies\u2019 work. It was settled out of court and neither side can talk about it. <\/p>\n
\nMe: \u201cI was the they.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\nWELCOME TO ALABAMA<\/h3>\n
\nWhen Gwen Patton was nine-years-old, she made her first move against racism. She spent summers with her grandparents in Montgomery, Alabama. One day Gwen was in the local drug store, had just paid three cents for a cup of water, and sat herself down at the counter. The clerk called her a \u201cpickaninny” and ordered her to get up. Gwen looked at the clerk, poured her water on the counter, and left\u2026 slowly. \u201cThat was my first conscious protest,\u201d Gwen told a local reporter.<\/p>\n Read More...<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/barbaraboyden.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/barbaraboyden.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/barbaraboyden.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/barbaraboyden.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/barbaraboyden.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=250"}],"version-history":[{"count":33,"href":"https:\/\/barbaraboyden.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":309,"href":"https:\/\/barbaraboyden.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250\/revisions\/309"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/barbaraboyden.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=250"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/barbaraboyden.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=250"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/barbaraboyden.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=250"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}