Craft is a big deal in Arkansas. Each fall, the entire state comes alive with craft fairs featuring makers from every corner showing off their wares, often wares made in their own backyards. Craft goods have become a nostalgic commodity in modern times, things to decorate a home with or hearken back to times of yore. But travel back to when these items weren't so readily available, and you'll find that handmade crafts carried much deeper significance in people's lives. Take quilts, for example. Ozarks at Large's Jack Travis learned about their connection to slaves escaping captivity through the Underground Railroad at last month's Arkansas Folklife Fest in North Little Rock. This week, he's bringing us stories from that festival, and now offers this recollection from the northeast Arkansas’ Eddie Mae Herron Center and Museum in Pocahontas.
Debbie Beck loves being a quilter.
"I do. I am a quilter. I am one of them. And here's one of mine. This is a quilt that I made for my niece. It's a Sigma sorority quilt, all made out of her T-shirts."
She's talking about a Delta Sigma Theta quilt that billows alongside others in the wind at her booth. She's at the Arkansas Folklife Festival, representing the Eddie Mae Herron Center, a museum in Pocahontas that memorializes the town's historic Black primary school and its beloved teacher, Eddie Mae Herron. In addition to educating festival goers about the museum, Beck is also representing a craft tradition passed down for generations. Some of the quilts behind her hold familial significance.
"And this one here is maybe 40 years old, and it was done by my mother-in-law, Sue Agnes Young, and she passed away two years ago at 101. But all these pieces were put together by hand, and all the quilting she did by hand."
She says a group of quilters meets almost weekly at the museum to work on their designs. Some, like Beck's sorority quilt, are made as gifts. Others carry stories and history with them. One quilt from the Eddie Mae Herron Center features designs that escaped slaves used as codes for communication on the Underground Railroad.
"Some of the patterns that they would use to know when they would go south, north, you know, to freedom. And so they would see these hanging out and they would know what to do."
There were instructions woven into the blankets, like the Jacob's Ladder design, a signal to start preparing to leave, or the Wagon Wheel, which meant to look for a wagon that might shuttle to safety. Other stitchings were warnings, like the Drunkard's Path, which cautioned people to not travel in a straight line as authorities were on the lookout.
"Go off the beaten path, because they would catch you. So you need to go off the beaten path, and sometimes you have to get in a swamp, you know, so the dogs would lose their scent."
Another example is the Bear's Paw, which raised the red flag for dangerous wildlife. And finally, alongside the warnings, abolitionists gave green lights too.
"This was the North Star. So they look for that, and that way they know they're headed north. They're going in the right direction. Canada."
Debbie Beck is proud of her craft and the Eddie Mae Herron Center. She says she's glad to be at places like the Folklife Festival so she can share her history and passion with others.
"To not lose the art, and not lose what it meant to pass family and heritage, you know, our heritage. And so it's just important to keep things like that alive and teach our young people about the art of quilting, you know, not just only to tell the story about freedom, but how they use just tiny pieces of whatever material and whatever pieces of string that they could get to make something warm for them, for their families."
She says people today might have lost a sense of just how important something like a quilt was.
"Yeah, because it's not like going to Walmart or JCPenney and Sears, you know, grabbing a blanket, or even back then grabbing a pair of pants, because, you know, they did it all by hand. And it's just, it's fascinating to me. I remember my great-grandmother had it hung from her ceiling, and as a kid, we used to just run up under it, you know, but she just sat there and hand-quilt. Yeah. So don't want to lose this."
Ozarks at Large transcripts are created on a rush deadline and edited for length and clarity. Copy editors utilize AI tools to review work. KUAF does not publish content created by AI. Please reach out to kuafinfo@uark.edu to report an issue. The audio version is the authoritative record of KUAF programming.
