Quilts, Primary Sources, and Authenticity

In 1999 Doubleday published a new book by Jacqueline Tobin and Raymond Dobard entitled Hidden in Plain View: A Secret Story of Quilts and the Underground Railroad. The authors put forward a hypothesis, based primarily on one story told to Tobin by one woman, that enslaved African Americans made and used quilts containing a “secret code” to journey on the Underground Railroad to freedom in the north. The book has sold thousands of copies and spawned a wide array of spin-off activities, including the development of exhibitions of quilts incorporating “ the code,” K-12 curriculum units based on “the code,” “how-to” books and patterns to make a “secret code” quilt, lecture/demonstration workshops by individuals claiming a connection to the “code”, and many scholarly articles, even a Masters thesis, that uncritically accept that a quilt code played a role in the Underground Railroad. Along with this embracing of the story has been a parallel series of lively and often-heated discussions on listservs, chat rooms, at scholarly gatherings, and in other venues as well as published reports on how the one story is flawed and unsubstantiated. Despite these parallel discussions and printed statements, the story has, however, become widely accepted as true and authentic.            This paper will examine how voices of authority¾i.e. museums, historical societies, holders of Ph.D.s, classroom teachers, academic organizations, government officials¾in other words, those individuals and organizations that we have been taught to trust¾have played a complicit role in endorsing and perpetuating this story as truth.