Bria Turner doesn’t remember why she was drawn to blue and yellow fabric when she contributed to the design of an African American quilt during the MLK Power, Love and Justice Female Youth Symposium.
Yet she continues to take pride in her group’s efforts that led up to Black History Month.
“It was fun getting to be around [them] and seeing them express themselves in such an artistic way, seeing the different patterns that they use,” said Turner, a sophomore at Archbishop Hoban High School. “I enjoyed getting to put pieces together that I found fitting.”
On Monday morning, designs Turner contributed to — 52 squares, resulting in a quilt, five feet across and six feet down — were unveiled at the Summit County Courthouse, where they are now on display in an atrium near the Probate Court.
To accomplish this, local teenagers and young adults at the MLK Day event last month worked together to showcase their identities and style with assistance from adults, elders and artistic mentors.
Their design options — dozens and dozens of colors, shapes and motifs — were inspired by the quilts of Gee’s Bend, globally recognized for their improvisational techniques and geometric patterns, equally abstract and bold. Many of the quiltmakers today in this rural Alabama town are direct descendants of the enslaved people forced to labor on the cotton plantation established there in the early 19th century — a lineage that has shaped a quilting tradition passed down through generations.
The Akron Black Artist Guild, which guided the Akron creative space, chose to honor this legacy through participation. Instead of taking days or weeks to complete a quilt, the group completed the task in hours, utilizing interfacing, a sewing technique that reinforces and stabilizes fabric so designs can be assembled rapidly without traditional hand-quilting.
Kool-Aid-inspired reds. Yellows. Leopard print. Teals and aqua blues — choices that echoed personal tastes.
The intangible impact? Intergenerational conversations.
“We were creating and recreating that hub of just sharing what each other created, talking during that moment that we had with them, explaining the history of the ladies and Gee’s Bend,” said Dara Harper, the co-founder and president of the Akron Black Artist Guild.
“It was definitely a space for women.”
Staying warm, staying alive reborn as art
The earliest quilts of Gee’s Bend were made to endure hardship, not to serve as internationally acclaimed art.
Dating back to the early 1800s, enslaved women on a cotton plantation pieced together scraps from worn clothing, leftover fabric and fertilizer sacks to help their families stay warm, stay alive and generally make do during colder months in southwest Alabama.
Their unique style of improvised patterns was passed down through hands-on teaching and oral storytelling.
Through chattel slavery; emancipation, sharecropping and Reconstruction; and the long era of Black Codes, Jim Crow and the Great Migration, the quilts remained largely unseen beyond the community.
It wasn’t until civil rights workers in the 1960s drew attention to Gee’s Bend that a functional practice was reframed by museums. Admirers realized Mary Lee Bendolph, Lucy Mingo, Loretta Pettway and other Black women of rural Alabama had created one of the most important bodies of abstract art in American history.
Their quilts are:
- Rooted in the post-slavery South. (Though this quilting predates modernism, art historians now recognize these works as Black Southern modernism, reflecting its endurance and evolution.)
- Created outside institutions.
- Driven by survival, memory and community.
- Often recognized after the fact as art.
Since then, the quilts have traveled across the U.S. and abroad, from London and Dublin to Amsterdam.
Gee’s Bend quilts stand as an example of how Black contributions — long dismissed or overlooked — continue to be recovered and re-centered within America’s cultural story.
Beautifying Akron’s county courthouse with community representation
Judge Jennifer Towell of the Summit County Court of Common Pleas recognizes that her place of business isn’t always a calming, serene space for visitors. That’s why Towell was excited when Dreama Whitfield, the chair of the MLK Power Love & Justice Female Youth Symposium, approached her about displaying the artwork in the courthouse.
“I think it’s really important that we honor our community,” Towell said, “so that when people from our county and our community come in, they see that we’re supporting members of our community and we recognize important events, especially like Black History Month.
“I think it’s a really good opportunity just to build community relationships and share the space.”
Whitfield, a veteran educator, agreed.
“Art is a powerful way to bring a community together because it’s universal,” she said. “Everyone can find meaning in a shared piece.”
Creation of quilts continues in this local family
During the Jan. 19 event, Turner, the Archbishop Hoban sophomore, met a young woman whose family has created and passed down a quilt for two or three generations.
“And I find that fascinating,” she said. “That’s like a family heirloom that’s constantly being created and passed down to more generations so that they can see this beautiful piece of art.”
Also fascinating: Turner’s great-grandmother made a quilt that celebrated all of her children and grandchildren, complete with photos incorporated into the fabric. Mildred Whitmore, 91, often presents the quilt at family reunions in Cleveland and Alabama.
“It looked as if it had been restored, because it was in color, but you can see the details and the face and the hands,” said Turner’s mother, Virginique Whitmore, thinking back to a time she saw the family quilt at a reunion. (She’s also the business and entrepreneur teacher at Buchtel Community Learning Center).
“And you know, those pictures told stories, and without having them present, you could see that visual representation, but you would not necessarily know what lies behind those images.”
