The Art of Necessityby Thomas Canfield

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Like kaleidoscopic portraits ina family album chronicling adver-sity, struggle and triumph, theextraordinary quilts created bygenerations of women in Gee’sBend, Alabama, are a remarkablypersonal, picturesque record oftheir community’s resilience underdifficult circumstances. In a mate-rialistic age of manufactured com-modities, the fact that the deep-rooted art of quilting has enduredin Gee’s Bend is a testament notonly to the community’s devotionto tradition but also the result ofprolonged geographical segrega-

tion from the modern world atlarge.

Secluded on three sides withina massive, oxbow-shaped curve ofthe Alabama River in one of thenation’s poorest regions, Gee’sBend is about 30 miles southwestof Selma and seven miles directlyacross the river from the WilcoxCounty seat of Camden. The com-munity, spanning an area fivemiles long and eight miles wide,comprises approximately 750African-American citizens. Theirearliest ancestors were broughtfrom North Carolina as slaves in

Cabins on the old Pettway Plantation. Gee’s Bend, Alabama, 1937.Arthur Rothstein, photographer

Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division

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1816 by Joseph Gee, who estab-lished a cotton plantation there.Ownership of the plantationchanged twice before the CivilWar. Mark H. Pettway, the planta-tion’s final antebellum owner,marched an additional 100 or more

slaves there in 1845-46. Theywalked over 700 miles from NorthCarolina to Alabama.After emancipation,the freed black popu-lation remained onthe land, in virtuallyunchanged circum-stances, as share-croppers and tenantfarmers. Many oftheir descendantsretain the Pettwayname to this day.

After the cotton marketcrashed during the Great Depres-sion, the widow of a merchant whohad extended credit to the familiesof Gee’s Bend foreclosed on thecommunity in 1932. Arriving onhorseback, armed collection agentstook all the Gee’s Benders’ posses-sions, including food, livestock,farming tools and seeds. Onlyemergency rations distributed bythe Red Cross alleviated the near-starvation that families sufferedthat winter. In 1934-35, supple-mentary aid followed when theFederal Emergency Relief Admin-istration provided small farm loansas well as seeds, implements andlivestock. As part of Roosevelt’sNew Deal in the late 1930s and1940s, the government acquired10,000 acres of the land and madeno-interest loans to Gee’s Bend

Annie Pettway Bendolph carrying water,Gee’s Bend, Alabama, April 1937.

Arthur Rothstein, photographerLibrary of Congress, Prints &

Photographs Division

Pettway girl. Gee’s Bend, Alabama, April 1937.Arthur Rothstein, photographer

Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division

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residents, allowing them to pur-chase their small farms. Approxi-mately 100 Roosevelt Projecthouses were erected, along with ageneral store, cotton gin, black-smith shop, sawmill, school andclinic.

The result was a self-suffi-cient, landowning community ofAfrican Americans who weremarked by a strong sense of iden-tity and an indomitable spirit fos-tered in the face of hardship. In the1930s, Farm Security Administra-tion photographers captured theisolation of the residents, and theLibrary of Congress recorded tra-

ditional gospel music in Gee’sBend during the following decade.Although the hamlet’s name wasofficially changed to Boykin in1949 (the same year the first postoffice was built), locals still referto it as Gee’s Bend, as do the roadsigns. Electricity did not arriveuntil 1964. Only one road, unpaveduntil 1967, leads out of town. Gee’sBend had no telephone service orrunning water until the mid-1970s.

Because of it isolation, Gee’sBend was referred to as “AlabamaAfrica” by other blacks in the deepsouth. Yet the community’s inde-pendence not only helped to

Old cable ferry between Camden and Gee’s Bend, Alabama.Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, FSA-OWI Collection

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preserve the distinct traditions ofquilting, story telling and gospelmusic; it also led the people ofGee’s Bend to play a notable role inthe civil rights movement. Duringthe voting rights activism of theearly 1960s, many Benders rodethe unreliable ferry across the riverto register at the Camden court-house only to face armed lawenforcement, tear gas and jail.Those Gee’s Bend residents whowere property owners could not beevicted for their actions, yet furtherretaliation came with the termina-tion of the ferry service and loss ofjobs in 1962, part of an overalleffort to halt black civil rightsworkers from traveling betweenCamden and Gee’s Bend.

As a result,those few Gee’sBend residents whoowned cars had todrive approximately100 miles round tripto get to Camden.Reportedly, thecounty sheriff at thetime stated that “Wedidn't close the ferrybecause they wereblack. We closed itbecause they forgotthey were black.”Today, while the

town has four churches, it has onlyone post office and a grocery store.Such basic facilities as the school,hospital and police station arelocated miles away, a fact that hasonly served to encourage theardent self-reliance of the Bendersover time. Their isolation prevailedfor 44 years, until a new ferrybegan operating in September of2006.

In 1965, Dr. Martin LutherKing Jr. spoke at Pleasant GroveBaptist Church in Gee’s Bend. Afew days later, he spoke outside thejail in Camden. Many Benderswho attended were subsequentlyjailed. Inspired by the strength ofthe community, King used the geo-graphical divide posed by the river

Alabama River ferry operator from Camden to Gee'sBend,1939.

Marion Post Wolcott, photographerLibrary of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division

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as a rallying point, motivating sev-eral residents to join him in thefamous October 30 march fromSelma to Montgomery. AfterKing’s assassination in 1968,mules from Gee’s Bend pulled thewagon carrying his casket throughAtlanta.

In 1966, Francis X. Walter, anEpiscopal minister and civil rightsworker, developed the idea of mar-keting local talent to provide economic empowerment for areaquilters. Farming came largely to aclose when a federal dam construc-tion project, completed just southof Gee’s Bend in 1970, floodedthousands of acres of the area’smost fertile farming land. Nearlyone-third of the women in Gee’sBend joined the Freedom QuiltingBee, an offshoot of the civil rightsmovement designed to boostincome and foster communitydevelopment by selling their workto outsiders. This cooperative, cen-tered in the nearby town ofRehoboth, provided some financialrelief to the community. In the late1960s, Gee’s Bend quilts were fea-tured in Vogue and Life magazines,and local artists received a long-term commercial contract to sewfor several department stores.

The quilts of Gee’s Bendreflect an artistry born from utility.Their beauty emerges from, and inspite of, an inherited materialdearth reaching back to the days ofslavery. Many Benders had little orno heat and lived in barely fur-nished, ramshackle homes, soquilts provided warmth and protec-tion from the wind, cold and dust.While Gee’s Bend quilts look likeMinimalist art, their earliest cre-ators were actually inspired by thenewspaper and catalog collagespasted on their walls to provideinsulation. Quilts were often madeof limited available materials,including feed and flour sacks,rags and tobacco pouches. Someartists fashioned “britches quilts”out of castoff clothes, such as over-hauls, trouser legs and shirt tails,often employing such materials tokeep memories of deceased rela-tives alive. Yet until the outsideworld began applauding theirquilts as art, the creators viewedthem as merely functional items.Old quilts were burned to repelmosquitoes, or used to mop upmotor oil and protect automobilesfrom the elements.

Today, the quilters of Gee’sBend have garnered nationwide

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acknowledgment and are being celebrated for their accomplishments.Gee’s Bend quilts have appeared in museum exhibitions from New Yorkto Houston and San Francisco. Books, articles, short stories and filmshave highlighted the unique stories of the quilts and their creators who,for the first time in their lives, have a real income from their work.

In 2006, the U.S. Postal Service issued a series of Gee’s Bend stamps.This recognition has helped to revive a once-dying community and thenearly-lost art of quilting that has been passed down for generations frommothers and grandmothers to daughters and granddaughters.

Woman sewing a bedspread, Gee's Bend, Alabama. c. 1938–1940Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division

Thomas Canfield, who holds a Ph.D. in English with a specialty in Elizabethandrama, is working on his second M.A. in theatre history and dramatic literature atUMKC. He was the dramaturg for last season’s Rep production of King Lear, and forthe Heart of America Shakespeare Festival’s production of Romeo and Juliet. Dr.Canfield is also an English instructor at Grantham University and the dramaturg forthis season’s UMKC Theatre production of The Country Wife, William Wycherley’sRestoration comedy.