Corretta Bishop’s quilt has a secret.
Bishop, a lifelong history lover and accomplished quilter, donated a coded Underground Railroad quilt to the Poplar Bluff Municipal Library for their Black History Month display. It shows off eight of the many quilt blocks made by Railroad ‘conductors’ of all races along the road to freedom. They were hung on clotheslines and windows to signal safe houses, directions, obstacles and more to Africans and African-Americans fleeing north.
“Whenever you do any kind of quilt, you’re trying to figure out a good layout. And since the topic of the quilt is the Underground Railroad and the codes, I wanted to start from the bottom up,” Bishop explained.
Beginning with the middle block of the lowest row and progressing left to right and upward, her quilt tells the story of a completed journey to freedom.
The first block is the monkey wrench, a sign to any slaves planning an escape saying now was the time to gather their supplies.
The next row begins with the flying geese block, which had a dual purpose depending on which way the triangular “geese” flew — if the pattern was random, it reminded freedom seekers to follow migrating geese northward. If all the arrows pointed the same way, it meant to turn in that direction. Next is the basket block. This indicated a safe house where people could replenish their supplies. The row ends with a log cabin block.
“A black square in the center, that told you that location specifically is a safe house, so they would have a place to hide out and wait until the next conductor for the Underground Railroad (arrived) to pick them up,” said Bishop.
Continuing upward, visitors find the boat block. It meant there was a waterway close by — a common obstacle in the South — or there was a boat available to cross it. The crossroads block signaled safe passage and reassured former slaves they were heading in the right direction. Bishop explained in Ohio, it had a further meaning.
“If you reached that, a certain part of Ohio... Your next few steps, you’re crossing over to a land of freedom,” she said.
This was Canada. While some freedom seekers settled in the northern states, many chose to journey farther to escape America’s slave catcher laws.
“In the United States if somebody said ‘that was my slave,’ then they would take them back to the South whether they were their slave or not. They had no protections,” Bishop said.
The far right block, the shoofly, signaled the presence of conductors who guided escaping slaves or hid them if slave catchers were on their trail.
Finally, Bishop stitched the North Star
“The ultimate one is the top one, that’s the North Star, which signified... the direction they were headed in to get to safety, to Canada,” she concluded.
In the 19th century and today, these blocks go by other names. For example, the shoofly block is commonly called a churn dash and the basket is also known as a flower basket. But a churn dash quilted in Rhode Island was not the same as a shoofly hung on a clothesline near the Mississippi River. The difference lay in who was meant to understand them.
“What people don’t realize is yeah, they had alternate names, but these names specifically stood out for that purpose, for that code,” Bishop said.
The Underground Railroad operated from 1800-1865. Now, 200 years later, these quilt blocks speak to the ingenuity and bravery of freedom seekers and conductors.
“I think it just goes to show the diligence that they had with trying to find a way, to make sure that everybody understood that this was the way to go. These were the symbols, these are the signs, this is the way you know you’re headed in the right direction. These are the people you know who are safe and wouldn’t turn you in. It just goes to show their determination to get out of that situation,” said Bishop.
Racial tension continues in America and around the world, and she hopes the legacy of a code stitched along the path to freedom will inspire communities again.
“Why can’t we do something more together now? You know, it may not be a quilt, but there’s something there. There’s something to be said for that,” she said.