The Quilting Women of Gee's Bend

NEWSCASTER: In 2002, the New York Times called the Gee's Bend quilts some of the most miraculous works of modern art that America has produced.

This is one tradition to let slip away.

NEWSCASTER 2: The quilts created by the women of Gee's Bend, Alabama are born from a tradition that dates back before the 19th century, true American art.

Now these quilts are one of the most important works in US art history.

NEWSCASTER 3: February of 1965, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. stopped through a little speck of a town in Alabama called Gee's Bend.

That night he told the crowd, most of them, direct descendants of slaves who had worked the land there, quote, "I've come over here to Gee's Bend to tell you, you are somebody."

(crowd applauding) Boy, was he right.

(crowd applauding) For generations, the women of Gee's Bend have been making beautiful quilts that have hung in museums across the country and now are earning the artists their due.

AUCTIONEER: Sold.

AUCTIONEER 2: Sold.

AUCTIONEER 3: Sold to you.

AUCTIONEER: 4 And the paddle number.

AUCTIONEER 3: Thank you, Brooke.

Thank you very much indeed.

Thanks so much.

(audience applauding) NEWSCASTER: From the Gee's Bend quilters, and while the quilts have been celebrated for years, this is the very first time that they're able to reach such a mass audience, which will hopefully give these women the recognition they deserve.

I can't see the beauty Oh oh The flowers that you give me I don't want nobody I can't see the beauty To praise me when I'm gone Oh oh, give me my flowers Whilst I yet live Whilst I yet live Lord LORETTA: The old Gee's Bend, you know- CASTER: Yeah, I know.

LORETTA: Not even a little spot I don't know, man.

(chuckles) CASTER: That's true.

Nobody never heard of Gee's Bend before.

Ain't that somethin'?

FANNIE: And you know, just until a few years ago, you say something to somebody, "You ever heard of Gee's Bend?"

Nobody knew what you were talking about.

STELLA: Nobody, yeah.

FANNIE: And I would say, "You know, "it'd be probably about 30 miles on the other side of Selma."

That's the only way they can kind of find a way to get there.

CASTER: Yeah, yeah, say Selma.

LORETTA: They would say Selma, but they couldn't get there.

CASTER: Yeah, they'd say Selma.

STELLA: They'd say Selma, yeah.

CASTER: But she said, "Then where's Selma?"

FANNIE: Where is Selma?

STELLA: Say Selma.

FANNIE: Do you remember the march from Selma to Montgomery?

Then, some people- LORETTA: On a Sunday.

FANNIE: Get it back, yeah.

CASTER: Mm-hmm.

FANNIE: It comes back to 'em then, but it depends really still, but a lot of people don't.

CASTER: Me and Doris used to quilt together all the time that we there.

FANNIE: Yes.

CASTER: We used to sit down and quilt all day.

FANNIE: Sure did.

CASTER: I said I'd help her quilt her quilt, and she helped me quilt mine.

We used to have a lot of fun till she moved away.

Till she got happily... (chuckling) FANNIE: Happily what?

(chuckling) She got happily married, huh?

And she pushes now.

(all laughing) CASTER: Yeah, she ain't got time no more.

That was the end of that.

But it was good.

It was good while it lasted.

We enjoyed ourselves.

DORIS: I know.

LORETTA: We had nothing to do.

FANNIE: That's why nobody was bad.

CASTER: Nobody ever heard of Gee's Bend before.

FANNIE: That's why I said that.

CASTER: Ain't that somethin'.

(Producer speaking) CASTER: Ah, my daddy was a minister.

The best daddy in the world, I tell everybody that.

So he was real kind.

Daddy was real kind, real quiet.

My mother- Mama was a little bit mean.

Not real mean, (chuckles) but you know, the- the woman always got to be the firmest one.

Because, look, Daddy was gonna let you have your way anyway, so she had to be more firm.

You seen the picture with this big family on it?

It's all over.

It's a- it's a lot of children and an older man.

It's everywhere.

That picture, that one particular picture, that's my family.

That's the root of our family, my Mama and Daddy.

Patrick Benard.

I think it was like about twelve of them on there.

I don't know exactly know how many, but that picture's all over the world.

And you see the girl in the window?

See the girl in the window?

Y'all seen that picture, right?

The girl in the window?

That's my first cousin.

STELLA: It was just fun quilting and finding, especially cutting up the old clothes.

FANNIE: Trying to find some clothes.

STELLA: I love it, because we didn't have other, I couldn't buy the fabric.

LORETTA: Yeah.

FANNIE: Mm-hmm.

STELLA: And one special thing that happened to me when I was sewing the big star quilt that I have in the book, I wanted to finish the quilt up, I had one pair of pants I would put on every Saturday and I thought I was looking good in 'em too, (all chuckling) so I put 'em on, and that evening I decided to cut it and put it in my quilt because I didn't have anything else.

And I didn't realize what I had done until the next Saturday evening when I took my bath.

(laughing) FANNIE: You never even could find them pants.

STELLA: I couldn't find my pants.

(all laughing) I looked everywhere.

Every time I see that quilt in the book, I say, "Hmm."

(birds chirping) We never knew this would happen.

The only thing I knew, I used to hear my parents, they used to pray and the other older people, and say, "Lord, take care of my children."

So I feel like this is their prayer being answered.

They didn't have anything else to give or offer, so this is their prayer being answered, teaching us how to make the quilts, and the quilts are going all over the world.

(Loretta speaking) WOMAN: Definitely.

LORETTA: Mm-hmm.

(woman faintly speaking) CASTER: Well, I never cut my clothes up now and put in no quilt.

I love my clothes too much.

But we needed our clothes, you know, how hard time was?

STELLA: Yeah, we had nothing.

CASTER: We had to do hard work.

We had to cut up clothes.

STELLA: But that was something- I thought I might not use, FANNIE: Wear again.

STELLA: You know, I won't wear.

I don't like to throw away anything.

I still have them in a box.

FANNIE: Oh, my goodness, the truth, I am a hoarder.

STELLA: I hate to throw away stuff.

LORETTA: Me too.

(chuckling) I'm a hoarder too.

FANNIE: I'm an organized hoarder.

I'm an organized hoarder.

CASTER: Well, at least you're organized.

(chuckling) STELLA: Well, I'm very unorganized.

(all chuckling) I love going into everything.

CASTER: So you probably got a lot of jeans stacked up there.

Then I know where to go.

STELLA: Now, all the jeans, I put 'em in a- CASTER: You gonna cut 'em up?

STELLA: With all the jeans, I did a big star.

CASTER: Yeah, I was looking for jeans last week.

STELLA: Yeah, I did a big star.

DORIS: You know where to get your clothes, don't you?

CASTER: Yeah, June Bug.

FANNIE: Goodwill.

(chuckles) CASTER: June Bug.

FANNIE: Do like I did, when I'm into old jeans and stuff, everybody, even the mailman brought me jeans.

(woman chuckling) You put the word out, and you get 'em.

LORETTA: You did indeed.

FANNIE: Mm-hmm.

DORIS: You get a whole lot.

LORETTA: Oh yeah.

DORIS: Yeah.

FANNIE: I started, like I said, I started here in '96, but the women in Gee's Bend, in this area, had been making quilts for years, and like, and it was just for like keeping warm.

My aunt would make 'em, we had to put 'em on the floor, you know, on the walls, over the windows, whatever.

And it was just to keep you warm.

We didn't know anything about it being art at that time.

MARY: The old houses we had at that point in time, they're not like these modern things, right?

The window panes were the old wooden windows, where air would come around it and through it.

So when we, and the door wasn't, you know, wasn't what it should have been, so we wound up, some of the older quilts went to the windows, and some of 'em went to the door.

And then you get another old quilt, and pushed to the door, to keep the wind back.

Yeah.

LORETTA: This community is so rich in history, just to know where we- we got our start from.

Even though it was little means that we came from, we were poor, you couldn't tell that we was poor.

My great-great-grandmother, which was Dinah Miller, she came in on one of the last illegal slave ships in the Bay of Mobile.

And she was married, and she had two that I know of.

I just knew of, which would be my great-grandmother, which would be Sally Miller.

She was on the Miller plantation.

And- and there was a John Henry Miller.

Sally Miller and John Henry Miller ended up coming here to Gee's Bend.

And later on, Dinah came over, I believe in 1935.

At this time, we have like 15 quilters that are still alive that are descendants from Dinah Miller.

CASTER: At one time me and China had went to the flea market.

FANNIE: Oh yes, the flea market.

CASTER: They- they had a lot of jeans.

That lady was selling those jeans for $1.

FANNIE: Yeah.

STELLA: Mm-hmm.

CASTER: I stacked up that time.

But you know, we stopped going to the flea market when the pandemic came in.

DORIS: Yeah, right.

CASTER: So I got started back going out there.

But things still ain't as cheap as they was.

DORIS: Yeah, they did, like $5-6.

CASTER: Yeah, they are.

MARY: I'm like, I ain't gettin' it.

(chuckles) CASTER: And you have to spend a lot of money now to make a jean quilt.

FANNIE: Quilt, yeah.

(all chuckling) DORIS: Another price.

CASTER: Yeah.

STELLA: That's why I like to find a very old one to cut that almost worn out.

ANDRE: You know, these women travel all over the country, you know, showing their artwork, and while they're out doing that, there are men who are here holding down the home front.

Because after the quilting is over with, guess what?

We still gotta have roofs over our head, we still gotta have food to eat.

And these people are still generating it.

You know, you seen the greens, you've seen the produce, you've seen the cows.

You know, we eat locally as much as possible because the grocery store 45 minutes away.

(birds chirping) Because a lot of people, when they came up back in the day, farming education was a second thought.

Their main focus was surviving.

And when you don't have a grocery store, you gotta catch, cook, or grow whatever you going to eat.

(birds chirping) STELLA: Every year, schools start the day after Labor Day, that was the first week in September.

You would be in the field until whatever day it rained, you had not gone back to school.

LORETTA: We missed a lot of days out of school, especially this time of year, we would have to be picking cotton, September and October.

Sometime we would go to school a couple of days, and we would stay home and pick cotton until we got the crop in.

STELLA: There was another catch to this.

We didn't have books and we couldn't afford books.

So you had to write down whatever you can and just looking at whatever book you could at school when you went back to try to get your lesson.

But I just have always loved to read whatever book I found in the classroom.

If that was a story or something to read, I read it.

ANDRE: A majority of my teachers, or the school staff itself, were from right here at home.

So these same women that was teaching me how to read and write, these were the same women that would teach me Sunday school, down there at Pleasant Grove Church when I was a boy.

These same women that taught me how to read and write and taught me about God and faith and prayer, these were the same women that talked to me about when they marched with Dr. King.

These stories of Malcolm X and Dr. King, they were drilled into us, not because it was popular, they wanted us to know so that history would not repeat itself.

(people chattering) MARY: I've been knowing Steve since, looks like forever, I think.

(bell ringing) (people chattering) Right now, we're at the Gee's Bend Welcome Center having pictures taken of our quilts.

(people chattering) LORETTA: I heard, I knew of him back in the late '90s, early 2000.

(camera clicks) MARY: But I have been knowing him a long time, so.

(device beeps) (people chattering) STEVE: The initiation of my involvement with- with Gee's Bend was when, I think about 250 quilts came to my studio and we did the photography there.

There was a time that a very, very committed Atlanta collector named Bill Arnett saw, I believe the story is that he saw a magazine article with the- LORETTA: Annie Mae Young quilt.

STEVE: Annie Mae Young quilt laying on a wood pile.

LORETTA: Mm-hmm.

STEVE: And he had been a collector of textiles over the years, all worldwide.

And he- he saw that picture and he said, "What is that?

Where is that?"

And he asked his friends, "Who knows anything about this area "in Alabama called Gee's Bend?

"I need to go there and look around "and see what's happening with this- this type of textile design."

He fell in love with it, which is about everything that he saw.

And I believe he tried his best to buy virtually anything that came out.

MARY: I said, "Mom, you gonna sell some quilt?"

"I don't know.

I might, I might not."

Okay, next thing I knew, she gonna sell some quilts, right?

STEVE: I think it's true, but you can confirm this, whether or not this is true, I think it is true that he- he essentially paid people whatever they were asking... LORETTA: Mm-hmm.

STEVE: For the value of their quilt.

He didn't...

I don't think that he- he was a- a cheapskate in any way.

I think he paid people what they asked.

LORETTA: Yeah, what they asked for.

And back then, if you got a couple of hundred dollars for a quilt, that was good.

MARY: And I think it's a good thing, women in this area, I mean, we had a few that worked at different sewing plants and stuff, but just say women working outside of the houses, pretty much unheard of.

STEVE: That was the initial introduction of the whole idea of what a Gee's Bend quilt was to the contemporary art world at that time.

Photos then were allowed to go out and serve as ambassadors of the work of the people of the community to different museums, different curators, venues that would then agree that this was an important material and it could then come out and be published in books and be distributed worldwide.

LORETTA: I'm gonna get you a strip and get those corner evened up, kind of come down here, and then you'll get that- WOMAN: Is it better to go that way?

LORETTA: Mm-hm, come down.

WOMAN: Okay.

(woman faintly speaking) (Producer speaking) ROBERT: Well, a lot of people think that the quilt could have helped Gee's Bend a lot more than it- it did.

Way I see it, the quilters, like my mama and all the other quilters, didn't get what they deserved.

They done the work and somebody else got the money.

That's what I think.

CASTER: Well, do you want the truth?

PRODUCER: I definitely want the truth.

CASTER: Yeah, we didn't think- I didn't think very much of it, 'cause we so used to quilt.

So, like people be so excited by these quilts.

I- I still haven't got excited by quilting.

Not like- like, they make it a big thing, but I can't- I can't feel it.

I don't feel it 'cause I'm used to it, so I don't feel what other people feel.

I might not feel what y'all so excited about these quilts and how people make quilt.

I don't feel it, 'cause some- this is something that we were born with, so we can't feel what y'all feel.

And we probably don't even see what y'all see.

I look at these quilts differently than y'all would look at 'em.

It's just a quilt.

It's just a quilt.

That's all it is to me, a quilt.

STEVE: One of the family members, Loretta- Loretta Pettway, not Loretta Bennett, (both chuckling) Loretta Pettway- LORETTA: Even though I'm a Pettway.

STEVE: Yeah, I know, I know.

LORETTA: She came before me.

(Loretta chuckling) STEVE: Had a quilt that had become sort of an iconic image of Gee's Bend quilts.

In fact, one of her quilts was used as a US postage stamp.

And they, sure enough, they looked into things and found that the original quilt-makers were not being compensated for any copyright usage for their work.

And her son went to see one of the- one of the early exhibitions.

The people at the- at the museum didn't treat him with respect.

ROBERT: Stores in New York full of Gee's Bend quilts, people making thousands of dollars off 'em, and the newspapers up there saying, the white man come down here and pay next to nothing for the Black- Black women quilts of Gee's Bend, and went back to New York and made a fortune.

And that's the truth.

STEVE: Rugs were being made as copies of a Gee's Bend design, posters were being sold.

What else?

Postcards.

I know countless postcards were made.

LORETTA: Mm-hmm, tote bags and scarfs.

STEVE: And the people at the museum shunned the guy, at least in the way that he perceived it, and really made him quite angry.

And he shared that his- his sensibility of- of disrespect, with friends and community people that he lived and worked with.

And no compensation went back to the original quilt- making artists.

It all then went to, unfortunately, the- the Arnett family.

And it- it became a lawsuit.

LORETTA: Mm-hmm.

STEVE: And then they brought the suit of copyright, I don't know, infringement?

LORETTA: Infringement, I think.

STEVE: I guess is the title.

LORETTA: Mm-hmm.

STEVE: And then what's unfortunate is that the lawsuit took a long time to come to settlement.

And during that time, a lot of museums and- and other people who were hoping to continue passing the word and celebrating the work, just went dormant.

I don't want nobody to praise me when I'm gone Whilst I yet live ROBERT: The quilters didn't get what they deserved.

(Robert speaking) That's what I think.

(birds chirping) (Caster speaking) (fan whirring) (scissors snipping) (Producer speaking) LORETTA: We didn't know anything about art, we just thought it was a quilt.

You know, something to keep you warm.

STEVE: After the- the very famous copyright lawsuit settled out, and virtually nothing was happening with the quilts of Gee's Bend at that time.

There was no market presence, there were no museum shows, nothing was going on.

We had both been told by some of the great scholars, "Gee's Bend is dead, nothing is happening at Gee's Bend."

We said, "Well, we know how to find out (chuckles) if that's true or not."

We'll go there with camera and lights and put out an invitation to people in the community.

We'll photograph your stuff.

You get copies of your photos.

No strings attached, it costs you nothing.

We had a pretty good turnout.

(people chattering) We found, though, that Gee's Bend was far from dead.

I do believe that Bill Arnett had really good intentions.

LORETTA: Yeah, I think so.

STEVE: I think, originally.

LORETTA: What he and the world was calling art, you know, it took us a while to- to believe that.

The womens say, you know, you know, "He want this old raggedy quilt, and he'll gimme $300 for it?"

You know, they didn't think anything of it.

MARY: Now, just a top is worth way more than that.

(Producer speaking) (Mary Leatha speaking) because I think it's a lot of people, they getting hungry.

MARY: I remember a time when a king-sized quilt sold for $75, and that was in the early '70s.

STEVE: There were several things that came together at that time in history.

One of them being that the tradition of collectors to go out into the world and collect things that they find, a lot of collectors, historically, are aware that if we buy things in a remote location and then we bring it home, especially if we bring it notoriety- notoriety and celebration, it will appreciate in value.

(birds chirping) MARY LEATHA: They called me Papergirl 'cause I saved a lot of stuff, old stuff.

I love saving stuff that's to my heart.

My dad always told me, "You supposed to look on the inside of you."

And that's what I caught myself doing.

And I started doing it with my hand, my mind- my hand, wasn't going faster with my hand, so I had to get a sewing machine.

After I got the sewing machine, I started really going and growing with it.

And my cousin looked at the stuff, and she always said, "Well, what you should do, maybe you should sell this."

I went on trips and stuff.

I said, "Nobody wanna buy that.

"That stuff my grandma and them used to make, they don't want that stuff."

I had a lot of people taking a lot of pictures of stuff that I've done.

And what happened was, I got a piece now they said it's in London.

They said that they would get it back to me or they'll be giving- it'll be in a museum, or I'll be getting paid something for it.

I hadn't got one dime, not one.

It take time to quilt.

If you want this, it take time, my time.

That's how I feel.

MARY: You got people that really don't know what it takes to do an old, old-fashioned quilt, but me, I remember.

I remember 'cause that's how I learned.

LORETTA: When we used to get cotton, and the mens would take it to have it ginned, they would call it gin where they take the seeds out, the lint, they call it lint, but actually it was cotton that fell underneath the machine that took the seeds out, and the mens would bring that back, and so it would have seeds in it and trash in it.

And so they would bring it back to the womens, and the women would take it.

CASTER: They called it chop cotton.

We had to keep the cotton clean.

We'd chop cotton.

It was like that, probably in May some time when we were out there hoeing the cotton.

LORETTA: So we would have to beat it and fluff it up, maybe two to three times to get all the trash.

We would never get it all out.

MARY LEATHA: Because it was thick, and she used to be beating it down and beating it down until it go all the way out.

LORETTA: Some of the older quilt, you can still feel the seeds in 'em.

So you got a back, which was made out of fertilizer sacks.

And so they- the womens took the sacks and took them apart and made linings out of it.

MARY: I was 16 years old, still sleeping on a sheet that was made out of them old feed sacks, you know, where they sew four of the feed sacks together.

LORETTA: So you got the lining, and you got the cotton in the center with seeds and sticks in 'em.

Then their top, they would put that over.

And some of the quilt then lined up straight up and down.

Some is made in a fan-like pattern.

But that was to keep the cotton from bushing or balling back up.

The lines had to be really close together.

And they did it measured by two fingers or three fingers.

But most of the old quilts are two fingers, the lines in them are two-fingers wide.

They kind of used everything.

They used flower sacks, fertilizer sacks, you know, they just used what they had.

You were only waiting for this moment You were only waiting for this moment to arrive (birds chirping) (wind blowing) (water splashing) (birds chirping) ANDRE: I don't believe that there's one place around here throughout my 45 years of living that I have not been able to go.

If I was hungry, they would feed me.

And most times, I wasn't hungry, I was just greedy, depending on what they were making.

(birds chirping) (birds cooing) Was there some trauma here?

Yeah.

You know, there's some misfortunate things happen?

Yes, but God knows through our resilience, through our faith, through our spirituality, through our love and connection with one another, not only have we survived that, but we have survived and yet overcome.

We overcame, if I'm being honest, because y'all wouldn't come down here unless there was a story.

LORETTA: There's nothing in the water I don't think down here, but some people think that something is in the water.

I think it's more in the blood.

But once a person do come down there- come down here, it's something that rubs off on 'em.

STELLA: I just want them to know that you can feel safe in this place.

You can come in and bring your family, and you can be free.

(birds chirping) When I'm making my quilt, I feel free, and I want everybody to come in and feel and be free.

LORETTA: When the womens get together, they would always sing and- and pray, and it's almost like they was having church doing quilts.

We call it therapy now.

CASTER: My- my mama, and the next-door neighbor, and a couple ladies that stayed... we called it the quarter.

We had a co-op store.

That co-op store is no longer there.

It was a big old red building, maroon, or whatever color it was, it was a great big old building sitting there.

That was our post office.

It used to be the grocery store.

And whatever you need was in that store.

So when they start, not so much was left in the store, when they start going outta business, all the womens, they got together and they start quilting their quilt down in the back of that store.

And after that, that's when they moved on up there, somehow they end up at up there at the Quilting Bee.

Very few people remember that.

Yeah.

MARY: Something to drink.

CASTER: Yeah, but we had- DORIS: That was a good time.

CASTER: It was, though.

DORIS: Those were the good old days.

CASTER: Yeah, that we could get together like that and help each other.

LORETTA: It was great.

(chuckles) I enjoyed it.

DORIS: It was the thing to do.

You didn't really... That was your main activity.

LORETTA: We didn't have nothing to do.

STELLA: We enjoy each other coming.

We get together.

We don't know when to stop talking.

(chuckling) We enjoy each other.

FANNIE: I just had fun time Stella until old age.

(all laughing) So I, like I said, that's my girl.

STELLA: Our fun thing was we cut up everything in sight, old dress, pants, and everything, and we just sewed it together.

I still have some of that now from the 1970, '80 to finish putting together.

CASTER: Wow.

STELLA: It's in a box.

(Fannie speaking) (Stella speaking) (Fannie speaking) (woman chuckling) STELLA: I just don't want throw it out.

So you would be using it.

FANNIE: Yeah, I'm gonna make it.

STELLA: That's why, it still hanging, so I'll find it.

(Producer speaking) (Stella speaking) MARY: All of these different traditions that were down here, they're dying off with the older people that's down here.

And people do not teach their children anymore like they used to.

MARY LEATHA: My mom then, they wanted stuff, you know, pulled together, "I need you to do this and I need you to do that," when they was sewing, because my mom worked at the Quilting Bee.

And when they was home doing their own stuff, we had to help.

We did have, must of them had but one pair of scissors.

ANDRE: It was imperative for us to learn these things because this is us, this is our culture.

We need to know where we come from so we can appreciate it, so we can protect it, so we can continue to grow it.

And they taught us these things.

STELLA: Well, everybody got so independent.

You can kind of get what you want or do what you want.

It feel like you can do what you want.

You don't need each other like they had to depend on.

See, for when we were growing up, if my mom needed a cup of meal and she felt like the lady up above had that meal, she was able to send and get it.

Maybe that neighbor, she had extra, 'cause she would give her two cups or a little more than one.

But see, now we don't have to go asking for anything.

CASTER: This is it.

This is it.

(Producer speaking) CASTER: Maybe other people tryin' to be movin' in here.

That's what gonna happen, other people.

I noticed that the people that moved away from home, the women never move back.

Usually, it be a man that will move- Mens will move back, but the women don't wanna experience that.

They don't wanna be near stores.

But I said- told- told my sister, "We got cars."

"If you wanna go to the store, you get in the car and go to the store, that's all."

But they said, "We're too far from the doctors.

Ain't no doctor down here.

Ain't no store down here."

They wanna go shopping.

Yep, we go to doctor in Selma.

I go to doctor all the way in Tuscaloosa.

I go to Tuscaloosa to the doctor, MARY: Gee's Bend was an agricultural place.

We had a school system down here up to the 12th grade.

That got gone.

So many things are being lost in our future, our- my past at this point.

Whilst I yet live MARY: So many things are- are being lost in our future, my past at this point.

(birds chirping) CASTER: I wish my kids just could keep my little homestead, and they'll come to Boykin every now and then.

You know, they ain't gonna hardly do it, but I would love for them to come down here and just look around, and I want them to always have a home to come to.

It's a relaxing place.

Maybe one day one of 'em might wanna live there, and they always have a home.

And I always want a place for my children, and I want them to always know that this is their home.

If they ain't got nowhere else to go, they always could come home.

They don't know what joy they have living in our community if they came back home.

(footsteps crunching) MARY: There is beauty in quilts.

There is a- a usefulness with them.

I mean, we came from the cotton fields and the corn fields to the factories.

That's where we lost some of our traditions.

CASTER: You could consider this as a house top.

It resemble a house top.

Usually, when people make a house top, they have one piece, one big piece in the middle, and they go 'round it with all strips.

But I put a like more of a- a pattern design in the middle, just blocks, just made blocks in the middle.

Then I started going all the way 'round it with strip, different colors of strip.

And I guess that's why they call it a house top.

I don't really know.

STELLA: Sometime it's a pattern that had been done just like my mom taught me how to do the nine patch, the brick layer, and all the house top.

But now I still do those quilts, but I'm putting together in different shape and different style.

(birds chirping) I don't wanna take a pattern to put it back together.

I just like to sew it together.

Whatever thoughts come to my mind, how I decide, I'd just like to put it together.

CASTER: It is up to you how you want it to look.

So you pick any color that you think will look best and go with that particular color and just keep going all around until you get the size that you want.

It's just as simple as that.

Y'all can make it if y'all wanna try.

I'll teach you how.

(Stella speaking) CASTER: (chuckling) Now, you have to pay for these classes, but I'll teach you for free.

(chuckling) You can come too.

(chuckling) You wanna learn how?

MARY: If we are not very, very careful and learn how to teach our children the rules for sewing and for quilting, and how to put up a quilt and all of that good stuff, it will be lost also.

STELLA: On the history day, it just was to keep up the housing, just focus on keeping your land.

That's the main history, keeping your land.

Of everything else, the younger people, they didn't see how important it was.

They were beginning to get rid of the land and all of the idea, but they just started coming back mostly with the quilt.

DERRICK: I think that Gee's Bend is a great place.

I mean, small but great.

But I would love to see our youth come along.

Our youth are our future.

(horse stomping) Being a young boy, you know, don't really pay much attention.

But as I grew older, you know, I really look back onto what they was trying to teach us.

It helped me out a lot.

And this small community, I mean, it's a small community, but I really love it.

I don't really want to live nowhere else but here.

I've always been an outside person, the farming and all of that, you know how they had to pick cottons and do all this.

And my grandfather was telling me before they went to school, they had to go in the fields and pick cotton and different stuff.

And I was like, you know, "How did y'all get an education, "or how you learn what to do what you're doing now, "or learn to survive over the years, just doing stuff like that?"

But I would love to see our youth come along and kinda keep the place going, keep some kind of activities going on here in Gee's Bend, because I want it to be known as a friendly community with love all around.

(tractor rumbling) Growing up, the only thing I knew about a quilt was covering up in it and keeping warm.

(chuckling) Yep, didn't know it would be a big success and a big part of our community in today's time.

(tractor rumbling) Me and my grandfather, we have a small farm, consists about 40 heads of cows, 10 horses.

So during the Summer months, I train my own horses and, you know, ride them.

And on weekends, go to many trail rides and all that kinda stuff.

The quilts are really bringing our community back.

People are wanting to come home.

I mean, because of that, you know, it's- it's in our blood, or in their blood, to quilt.

And that's- that's all we knew.

That's how they survived.

You know, to keep warm during the Winter and just something to keep their mind busy.

ANDRE: If the quilts bring the tourism, we gonna give them the tools.

We going to supply food, we're gonna supply hospitality, and we're gonna let y'all experience who we are.

(birds chirping) LORETTA: We started in 2021 with the "Vacation with an Artist."

And this is where other artists come down and they learn our form of art, which is quilting, piecing quilts together, and also hand quilting.

This- this porch that I'm sitting on, it's a little bungalow.

It was originally built for- for our three sons.

When we all came home, we would, the boys would have somewhere to hang out, and yeah.

And this is our little studio down here.

But in the last, I would say, six years, we turned it into a little quilt studio.

(people chattering) ANDRE: And right now, we have 100% support behind the women and their quilts.

And we are gonna do everything we can to initiate every entity that can connect to it.

(people chattering) LORETTA: And so we've been doing it ever since.

And we've been teaching, or showing the guests how we- how we put quilts together.

STEVE: Can I see it like holding it up?

And as a photographer, I travel all over the country doing- doing my work with different makers and creators and creative agencies and creative groups.

I have found nobody with more peace and love than the people of Gee's Bend.

MICHELLE OBAMA: As I stand here today with all of you and look at this amazing portrait that will hang among so many iconic figures, I am a little overwhelmed to say the least.

I'm also thinking about all of the young people, particularly girls and girls of color, who in years ahead will come to this place and they will look up and they will see an image of someone who looks like them hanging on the wall of this great American institution.

AMY: I had the opportunity for the whole painting to tell a story.

And I wanted to be able to ground you not only in our history and within the history of the United States, but within Black history too.

When I connected that pattern to the- the women of Gee's Bend and their quilting, that was a way for me to- to connect you to Black history without being too didactic, and- and still connect you to art history as well.

LORETTA: When that little girl was looking at Michelle Obama in the dress and then she started dressing, like had her little dress made like that, it really made me proud.

I was already proud of- of Gee's Bend, but that just really, really, (chuckles) is top.

But you know, there was a quilt made for for the Obamas when they, I think in '09, the womens down here.

FANNIE: Did they give it to them?

LORETTA: I don't know if they ever got it.

FANNIE: We didn't wanna give it to nobody else.

CASTER: They went last year FANNIE: We wanted to give it to her.

CASTER: They went to Kamala Harris house last year FANNIE: She's just special.

I tell you, she's just one of a kind.

Yeah, very special.

(Stella speaking) FANNIE: Mm-hmm.

STELLA: Yeah.

FANNIE: Yeah, that was special.

(Fannie speaking) "Hands that once picked cotton now pick Presidents."

(Fannie speaking) If you think about how, when you see some of the pictures.

So we gotta realize that we still being suppressed, you know?

(Stella speaking) (Fannie speaking) DORIS: Yeah.

(birds chirping) (wind blowing) ANDRE: This community taught us in totality of what life was.

You know, most times now in today's culture, you know, when you go to school, it's a array of things that they may say they don't want you to learn.

They don't want you to know.

They don't want you to be taught.

Miss Gragg, again, local educator here in the area, she taught us this poem or a motto, I guess, when I was a kid.

And this was elementary school.

And I hope I don't mess it up.

How did it go?

"I am somebody.

I am somebody.

"I am somebody.

Good, better, best.

"I'll never let it rest until the good get better and the better gets best."

(boat humming) LORETTA: It's something that rubs off on them.

It's just like a smile, it's contagious.

(birds chirping) CASTER: I'ma enjoy Jesus as long as I live.

Hallelujah.

Don't make me start praising God.

(laughing) Woo, Lord, thank you Jesus while I yet live, with every breath I got.

Hoo!

Hallelujah, Jesus!

I want to say to y'all, I love y'all, and y'all welcome to Gee's Bend anytime.

(chuckles) And then when you come, I want you to enjoy yourself.

Well, look, what the Word say, "Whosoever, we'll let 'em come."

We gonna make 'em feel at home.

Then we will feed you too.

Praise me when I'm gone Lord, I don't want nobody To praise me when I'm gone Oh, give me my flower Whilst I yet live Whilst I yet live The flowers that you give me The flowers that you give me The flowers that you give me Mmm I don't want nobody Nobody To praise me when I'm gone Lord I don't want nobody To praise me when I'm gone Oh, give me my flower Whilst I yet live Whilst I yet live