The Secret Life of Quilts

By Julie Duffin
Appears in the November 2024 issue.

Aurora historian shares hidden codes of the Underground Railroad

You can learn a lot about history from a quilt. Just ask Aurora resident Connie Martin. A retired middle-school language arts teacher, Martin offers insight into pre–Civil War history with her presentations about the clandestine codes incorporated into quilts and Negro spirituals that helped enslaved people find their way to freedom via the Underground Railroad.

Because enslaved people were not allowed to read or write, they often shared information through art and song. Quilts could be sewn using special stitching techniques, colors, and patterns to outline crucial escape plans, transportation, and routes. Displayed in plain sight along a route, the quilts also warned of dangers and indicated local abolitionists willing to help.

In her traveling presentations, Martin discusses 15 different quilt patterns and reveals their true meanings. For example, a quilt with a Flying Geese pattern could be hung up on a clothesline with its arrows pointing the direction to follow. Likewise, a North Star pattern (and the hymn “Follow the Drinking Gourd,” a nod to the Big Dipper) reminded freedom-seekers to use the constellation as a guide. Sometimes the quilt stitching itself secretly noted the distance between safe houses and other vital information.

Similar to the hidden information in quilts, Negro spirituals also used encoded messages that could guide freedom-seekers to safety. “While slaves sang to bring some joy into their lives and make their burdens lighter, they also disguised certain words to indicate methods and plans for escape,” Martin explains. For example, often when singing about Moses, they were actually referring to Harriet Tubman and other abolitionists. Certain singing styles and repetitive patterns also would indicate the time and method of escape. “They were singing songs nobody recognized,” she says. “The slave owners had no idea they were that intelligent and witty.”

Martin frequently travels around the state keeping these historic stories alive. Fittingly, her presentation on antebellum quilts was passed down to Martin from her mother, Clarice Boswell, who has a doctorate degree in adult continuing education from Northern Illinois University; Boswell had presented the lecture herself for more than 16 years—and stitched all the replica coded quilts Martin still uses.

“I’m telling the stories passed on to me from my mom, which were passed on to her from her great-grandmother,” Martin says. Remarkably, Martin can trace her family’s history back six generations, from their enslavement on a Kentucky tobacco plantation to Africa. Her mother documented some of the family stories in her 2002 novel, Lizzie’s Story: A Slave Family’s Journey to Freedom. A screenplay adaptation is currently in the works. (Speaking of family history, Martin’s sister is Cathy Boswell, an Olympic gold medalist in U.S. women’s basketball, but that’s yet another story.)

Marin also has worked to incorporate African American history into schools (her thesis at Illinois State University was “Integrating African American History in Educational Curriculums”). “I love teaching. I love storytelling. I enjoy sharing our family story immensely,” she says. “It’s a real interesting part of American history that I want to share.”

For more information or to book a presentation, visit ilhumanities.org/speakers/connie-martin.

Photos: Connie Martin