Harriet Powers

Powers was born into slavery in 1837 near Athens, Georgia. She is believed to have spent her early life on a plantation as a slave, owned by John and Nancy Lester in Madison County and learned to sew from other slaves or from her female enslaver.[3]

In 1855, at the age of eighteen, Powers married Armstead Powers.[3] They had at least nine children together.[4][5]

Following the American Civil War, the Powerses and their children were emancipated. On the 1870 census they were recorded as having $300 (~$6,943 in 2022) in personal property although they did not own land. In terms of occupation, Powers was listed as 'keeping house' and her husband as a 'farmhand.' At this point, three of their children– Amanda, Leon Joe (Alonzo), and Nancy– still lived at home.[6][7]

By the 1880s Powers and her family owned four acres of land and ran a small farm in Clarke County.[7][8] In 1886, Powers exhibited her first quilt at the Athens Cotton Fair.[4][5][7] After some financial difficulty, Armstead began to slowly sell off tracts of land in the early 1890s, and he ultimately defaulted on his taxes.[7] Despite their financial troubles, the Powers's did not lose their home.[4] Their region had a cash poor, rural economy, and it was difficult for African Americans to collect the cash for taxes and fees.

In 1894, Armstead left Powers; she never remarried and likely supported herself as a seamstress.[3][7] She remained in Clarke County for most of her life.[9][7]

Although an 1895 Chicago Tribune article[10] about the Cotton States and International Expo described Powers as ignorant and illiterate, learning Bible stories from "others more fortunate," Powers was literate. Quilt historian Kyra E. Hicks discovered a letter written by Powers while conducting research for her book on the quilter: This I Accomplish: Harriet Powers' Bible Quilt and Other Pieces (2009).[11] The letter was a copy of an 1896 letter from Powers to a prominent woman from Keokuk, Iowa; it shared insights into Powers's life when she was enslaved, how and when she learned to read and write, and descriptions of at least four of her quilts.[12] Powers wrote that she learned Bible stories through her own study of the book.[12]

Powers died on January 1, 1910; and was buried in the Gospel Pilgrim Cemetery in Athens.[13] Her grave was rediscovered in January 2005.[14]

Powers exhibited her first quilt, The Bible Quilt, in 1886 at the Athens Cotton Fair.[4][5] It was here that Jennie Smith, an artist and art teacher from the Lucy Cobb Institute, saw the quilt, which she found to be remarkable,[15] and asked to purchase it. Powers refused to sell, but the two women remained in touch. Four years later, Powers, met with financial difficulties, offered to sell the quilt to Smith for ten dollars; Smith agreed but talked the price down to five dollars.[5] Powers vividly explained the imagery on the quilt to Smith– who recorded these explanations, adding notes of her own, in her personal diary.[3] It may be that Smith elaborated on the Christian content in her account.[5] Powers visually communicated with her narrative quilts in themes from her own experience and the techniques from the age-old crafts of African Americans.[16]

Powers' second quilt, The Pictorial Quilt, was made in 1898 and its history is somewhat unclear. One account suggests that it was commissioned by the wives of faculty members of Atlanta University, who had seen the first quilt at the Cotton States Exhibition in Atlanta in 1895, when Powers and her husband had separated.[5] According to another source, the quilt was purchased in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1898.

Whatever its origins, the piece was presented to the Reverend Charles Cuthbert Hall of New York City, who was serving as the vice-chairman of the University's board of trustees at the time. The reverend's heirs sold the quilt to collector Maxim Karolik, who then donated it to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.[17]

In an 1896 letter, Powers describes a quilt made in about 1882 that she called The Lord's Supper Quilt.[8] Similarly, records of other quilts exist but it's unclear if they or The Lord's Supper Quilt have survived.[5][8]

Bible Quilt 1886 and Pictorial Quilt 1898 depict biblical and historical scenes as well as celestial phenomena. Both quilts are hand and machine stitched, using appliqué and piecework techniques that demonstrate both African-American and African influences.[18] They are notable for their bold use of these techniques and storytelling.

Jennie Smith recorded Harriet Powers's comments for each square of the Pictorial Quilt. These comments were included in documentation when the quilt was given to Reverend Cuthbert of Atlanta University. According to her notes, for the Leonid or falling stars square, Powers said, "The people were frightened and thought that the end of time had come. God's hand staid the stars. The varmints rushed out of their beds."[29] Another panel illustrates the 'dark day' May 19, 1780 (now identified as a historically dense smoke over North America caused by Canadian Wildfires).[6]

Art historians have identified similarities between West African appliqué wall hangings and Powers's works. Similar to the appliquéd textiles of Benin, Powers's work feature standardized symbols with little variation. For example, most of the human figures, both male and female, in the Bible Quilt seem to be made from a singular pattern. Male figures are differentiated from female ones through a V-shape cut from the skirt. Additionally, her representations of humans, animals, and objects are minimalist and capture the essence of the figure, making her work stylistically similar to works made by the Fon, Asante, Fante, and Ewe.[18]

Author Floris Barnett Cash suggests that Powers's interest in celestial scenes, religious stories, and astronomical occurrences reflected interchanges within the Black community where she lived. Community-shared information, such as hearing sermons from preachers every Sunday, or the news, was shared during quilting frolics and was incorporated into her quilts.[16]

Other analysts have suggested that Powers' interest in celestial bodies was related to a belief in their religious significance,[30] or that they were related to a fraternal organization of some sort. Her interpretations of both quilts have survived in writings by others. The result may have been influenced by the people recording her comments. Researchers have learned that Powers was literate, but she might also have used her quilts as teaching tools, as many people in her community were likely unable to read.

Powers, "an aged Negro woman who held the esteem of many Athens people," according to her death notice in the Athens Banner, died January 1, 1910 of pneumonia and was buried at the local African American resting place, Gospel Pilgrim Cemetery in Athens.[31] In 2005, University of Georgia graduate student Cat Holmes rediscovered the joint headstone for Powers and her husband, Armsted, which over the years had been obscured by overgrown vegetation.[32] The marker held the couple's name and was "just about 15 inches by about two feet and about 3/4 of an inch thick, [and] seems to have been erected by Powers' youngest son, Marshall", whose name was at the top of the headstone.[32] Holmes had been searching for the grave off and on for about two years. On Christmas Eve 2004, Holmes and her husband, David Berle, a University of Georgia horticulture professor, who had been assisting with restoration efforts for the cemetery, were searching in a "still uncleared" area.[32] First they found a marker for Viola Powers (a daughter-in-law) and then, an hour later, the Powers' headstone.[32]

In 2009, Powers was inducted into the Georgia Women of Achievement Hall of Fame.[3]

In October 2010, organizations in Athens, Georgia, produced several events related to the theme "Hands That Can Do: A Centennial Celebration of Harriet Powers." The events included a quilt exhibit, storytelling, a gospel concert, a symposium, a commemorative church service at New Grove Baptist Church in Winterville, and visit to the Powers grave site.[33][34]

Athens-Clarke County Mayor Heidi Davison issued a proclamation naming October 30, 2010, as Harriet Powers Day.

• African-American art
• Baltimore album quilts
• History of quilting
• Quilting
• List of slaves
• The Quilts of Gee's Bend

• Adams, Monni. "Harriet Powers’ Bible Quilts", The Clarion, Spring 1982, American Folk Art Museum.
• Bobo, Jacqueline. Black Feminist Cultural Criticism. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2001. Print.
• Finch, Lucine, "A Sermon in Patchwork," Outlook, October 28, 1914, pp. 493–495. Published four years after Powers's death, Lucine Finch's article includes a photograph of the Bible Quilt, description of each quilt block, and (presumably) quotes by Powers.[1]
• Hicks, Kyra E. Black Threads: An African American Quilting Sourcebook, McFarland & Company, 2003. ISBN 0-7864-1374-3
• Hicks, Kyra E. This I Accomplish: Harriet Powers' Bible Quilt and Other Pieces, Black Threads Press, 2009. ISBN 978-0-9824796-5-0
• Holmes, Catherine L., "The darling offspring of her brain: the quilts of Harriett Powers" in Georgia Quilts: Piecing Together a History, University of Georgia Press, Athens, Georgia, 2006. ISBN 9780820328997
• Perry, Regenia A. (1972). Selections of nineteenth-century Afro-American art. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
• Jacquiline L. Tobin and Raymond G. Dobard, Hidden in Plain View: A Secret Story of Quilts and the Underground Railroad (Anchor Books, 2000).

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Harriet Powers.

• African-American Folk Artist Harriet Powers.
• Harriet Powers: A Freed Slave Tells Stories Through Quilting. Archived June 5, 2018, at the Wayback Machine
• Southern American quilting: Harriet Powers.
• Harriet Powers Film Project.
• Bible Quilt