Won’t you be my neighbor???

It’s a wonderful day in the neighborhood

I’m thinking of the many, many antebellum African enslaved and free women who quilted….. In Africa… men performed esteemed needlework. But on the plantation, women were taught to sew as became skilled seamstresses. You know, in this role reversal (in my mind’s eye) I picture the black mother toiling in the “Big House” till late and after feeding her family she began quilting in her shanty or cabin. Her man also worked relentlessly in the field. He glanced at her feeble but determined effort to sew, and he deftly reached and guided her hands into a lesson of pride as he remembered his land and people and the various banners and robes he-himself had spun, dyed, tied and quilted. Oh the glory by candlelight or moonlight as they both groaned and yearned for their life and livelihoods in Africa. Oh! the harshness, and downright meanness of the Euro’s, their audacity to think of them as stupid chattel. Though they knew not the language and ways of the wild, greedy, selfish master and mistress…. This couple’s heart and spirit were revived, their children were safe for a short period of time in the cots, and they lay side by side in the still of the night.