Building a Movement - A Stitch at a Time

Quilts from Tutwiler and Marks, Mississippi & Poverty Initiative Friends
Union Theological Seminary, James Chapel

October 13 - November 20, 2008

This exhibit is a display colors and textures, memories, and moments in time that bring together and hold the complex relationship of individual, family, community, and a social movement to end poverty. Each of these quilts is stitched by individuals. They are also made by communities. Some of them are family quilts – intergenerational, pieced, sewn, and gifted from one family member to another. Some of these family members are part of this movement. Some of these quilts are made by members of a community as part of a larger community effort – to provide a community and health centers for their community in Tutwiler, MS with funds made from the sales of these art pieces.

One of the quilts that will arrive from Marks, Mississippi in early November is a story quilt – a masterpiece of vital and yet often invisible history of a moment in a movement – the birthplace of the Poor People’s Campaign and the Mule Train that led poor people and others of all different racial, ethnic, religious, and geographic backgrounds to fight for their rights as human beings to education, healthcare, food, housing, water, and jobs.

How this exhibit came to be:
Over the past four and a half years, the Poverty Initiative at Union Theological Seminary has offered six immersion courses. These courses have taken students and faculty and religious and grassroots low-income community leaders to places near and far throughout the U.S. and internationally (New York City and State, The Gulf Coast in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Appalachia, the Mississippi Delta, and most recently to Scotland).

These immersion trips have focused on investigating conditions of poverty and meeting and building partnerships with local religious and community leaders. In each of these courses there has been a focus on the role of art and culture in community and movement building. And in each of the communities we’ve visited, we’ve found a wide variety of music, dance, performance, paintings, other artworks, and quilts.

Over the course of the Spring and Summer 2008, an idea participants had to bring the quilts they had encountered on the immersion trips to the community in New York City became a reality. We hope you will enjoy experiencing these art works, these voices and stories, these warm covers, these pieces of daily-life.
Quilts are available for purchase through Tutwiler Mississippi Quilters.

Special Thanks: To all the Quilters and to Derrick McQueen, Juli Bertalan, Jessica Chadwick, Janet Walton, Troy Messenger, Colleen Wessel-McCoy, John Wessel-McCoy, and Aaron Scott for their hands in this exhibit.