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The slave quilt code is the idea that African American slaves used quilts to communicate information about how to escape to freedom. The idea was introduced and popularized throughout the 1990s. Most quilt scholars and historians consider the "code" to be completely lacking any basis in fact. ==Origins and promotion of the "code"== The first known assertion of the use of quilts in connection with the Underground Railroad was a single statement in the narration of the 1987 video ''Hearts and Hands'', which stated "They say quilts were hung on the clotheslines to signal a house was safe for runaway slaves." This assertion does not appear in the companion book and is not supported by any documentation in the filmmaker's research file.〔 The first print appearance of such a claim was ''Stitched from the Soul'', a 1990 book by folklorist Gladys-Marie Fry, which states—without providing any source—"Quilts were used to send messages. On the Underground Railroad, those with the color black were hung on the line to indicate a place of refuge (safe house)...Triangles in quilt design signified prayer messages or prayer badge, a way of offering prayer. Colors were very important to slave quilt makers. The color black indicated that someone might die. A blue color was believed to protect the maker."〔 Fry's book is rife with other errors, including a number of quilts which she misdated by anywhere from 50 to 100 years (e.g., one claimed slave quilt contains multiple fabrics from the 1960s).〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Questionable Sources )〕 In the early 1990s, several picture books for children drew upon and expanded this notion. The best known is ''Sweet Clara and the Freedom Quilt'', in which a girl makes a quilt that acts as a map of the area surrounding the plantation upon which she's a slave; the author, Deborah Hopkinson has repeatedly stated that it's a work of fiction inspired by ''Stitched from the Soul''.〔 The idea, clearly presented as fiction in ''Sweet Clara and the Freedom Quilt'', that slave quilts served as coded maps for escapees, entered the realm of claimed fact in the 1999 book ''Hidden in Plain View'', written by Raymond Dobard, Jr., an art historian, and Jacqueline Tobin, a college instructor in Colorado.〔''Hidden in plain view: the secret story of quilts and the underground railroad'', Jacqueline L. Tobin and Raymond G. Dobard. New York, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1999. ISBN 0-385-49137-9〕 Dobard's interpretations of the geometric configurations of certain quilt blocks is based on the oral statements of Ozella McDaniel Williams, a quilt vendor in South Carolina. Williams pointed to certain quilt blocks and recited a poem to Tobin, in short segments, over three years (before the total "code" was revealed). The blocks, according to information reportedly passed down in Mrs. Williams' family, are said to have been created for the purpose of communication, namely, how to get ready to escape, what to do on the trip, and how to follow a path to freedom. These theories have been adopted widely for use in classrooms in the United States as a more palatable and fun way to share "history" instead of talking about the harsh and brutal realities as well as challenges of slave escapes. Those who have accepted the theories advanced as history, rather than the speculative quality that Dobard himself indicates is the case, have been eager to share this information via talks. The theory gained publicity when it appeared in newspapers, on a segment of ''The Oprah Winfrey Show'' featuring Dobard. The quilt code has resulted in children in school "memorizing" the "code" and making quilt blocks and quilts in either paper or cloth to honor the period of history when it was legal for southern plantation owners to own human beings and force them to work at their bidding. In a 2007 ''Time'' magazine article, Tobin (co-author of ''Hidden in Plain View'') stated: "Whether or not it's completely valid, I have no idea, but it makes sense with the amount of research we did." 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Quilts of the Underground Railroad」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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