The students of Red Mountain Community School weave song and literature and art into their days, helping to connect them to their community and culture as well as enrich their personal lives. Last year the children of RMCS sang freedom songs together all year and even drove to Selma to see the Edmund Pettus Bridge. They were introduced, in art class, to the work of Alabama photographer Spider Martin, the quilters of Gees Bend and other inspiring American artists like Faith Ringgold and Terese Agnew, who use quilts to tell stories. In 2014 the children made an Excursion Quilt with Birmingham Artist Michelle Reynolds and had already began to comprehend what a story quilt could be so when LIllis Taylor and the Bib and Tucker Sew-Op put out a call for people to make and contribute quilt squares to their March Quilt project, I knew I had to ask the students of RMCS to keep sewing. Lillis came to our school and spent the day guiding the students and faculty and we set to work sewing our squares. We originally thought we would be contributing them to the community quilts the Bib and Tucker quilters were building, but Lillis encouraged us to make our own quilt—and so we did! We began with an idea that the children might relate to this narrative even better if they could imagine what it was like to be a marcher crossing that bridge in Selma in 1965. So we empathized and we threaded our needles and we, kindergartners through upper form—including all of the teachers, each created a marcher and added them to our quilt under our felt Edmund Pettus bridge, and we did our best to keep the story alive. And so, here you see our story quilt about the people who participated in that important campaign in Selma fifty years ago.
Tracie Noles-Ross
dededos
kianamaiart
turnnoffyourmind
prguitarman
annaxmalina
