The nucleus of this project began in 2005 as I started to think about how I, as a white woman – an educator, a mother of an African-American daughter, a quilt maker, and a memory keeper – could do something to support us all to face our collective history and redeem ourselves from the legacy of slavery and lynching – hence, how we can sing a redemption song. Multiple examples of art tell the stories of those who have died or been murdered –worldwide wars, disappeared persons in Argentina and Chile, genocides in Bosnia and Rwanda and Myanmar. The AIDS quilt project is a striking example of combining a political issue, memory, and art.

 

Lynching our fellow Americans, a historical reality lasting for over a hundred years into the present, represents a form of genocide. We continue to annihilate members of our body politic. Because we have not fully examined our past, we cannot move into a future that includes all our citizens; I hope the project can contribute the national conversation.  

 

I join the work of Equal Justice Initiative, the Maryland Memorial Lynching Project, other such projects across the country, other quiltmakers, and fellow scholars and citizens and artists who want to tell the story of lynching in America. I give particular homage to Ken Gonzales-Day and his artistic and historical work on lynching. As James Cone said in his book, The Cross and the Lynching Tree: “when we remember, we give voice to the victims… the lynching tree reveals the true religious meaning of the cross …and the cross and the lynching tree can help us know from where we have been and where we must go”.

 

Project Description

The project goal is to design and make 60-65 quilts that represent the states of the United States where lynching occurred (reportedly 46 states, but perhaps all). Using the state tree of each state as a visual image, I construct a quilt or quilts for each state. The number of quilts depends on the numbers of persons per state reported as lynching victims.

 

The front of each quilt is a representation of the state tree with leaves, pine needles, or palm frond (Florida and South Carolina), using fabric piecing and appliqué and/or embroidery, quilting, pen drawing on fabric, and objects, including objects collected from trees. Each leaf or pine needle or frond represents a person who was lynched. On the back of each quilt, I write the names of the persons. All states have unknown or unnamed persons. Finally, I put a fabric map of the counties of each state -- with the number of persons lynched in each county – on the reverse side of one quilt.  

 

Research and Numbers

Lynching is considered to be extrajudicial or illegal murder of a man or woman. Technically defined as three or more persons involved in the extrajudicial act, many lynchings involve one or two persons who act in an extrajudicial capacity.

 

While attempting to be as historically accurate as possible, that is actually impossible because there are lynchings we will never know about; historians are at work investigating and verifying the lynching records to add to the data. I consulted multiple databases and, while accuracy is important, I am quite certain we will never achieve complete accuracy. These data do not typically include massacres, which is an important topic, but not a part of the lynching project at this point.

 

In addition, the databases have a range of years of recorded lynchings. A few states recorded lynchings prior to 1865, during the time when persons were still enslaved. Some states have the data on lynching during Reconstruction; others do not. Most lynchings are in the Southern states and are Negroes/Black and men; however, in states like California, most lynching victims are Mexican-American or Chinese. The lynching history of many states is directly related to the accepted practice of vigilantism in the US, and that practice contributed to the acceptance of lynching in all states.

 

Finally, not everyone counts white persons who were lynched. Because the level of vigilantism in this country is an adjunct to lynching, I typically count these persons in the record. Some lynchings of white persons are racially motivated; other data represent longstanding prejudices of antisemitism, anti-immigrant (Mexicans and Chinese), and homophobia.