Hidden Herstory: Harriet Powers
A quilt can be a powerful medium for communicating stories, and were a rich tradition among African American enslaved women. Harriet Powers’ Bible Quilt is an excellent example and one of very few surviving narrative quilts made by an African American during the late 1800s.
Photo: Bible Quilt by Harriet Powers, Kenneth E. Behring Center, Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of American History.
Powers stitched her Bible Quilt in the mid-1880s and exhibited it at the 1886 Athens Cotton Fair. While on display, the quilt caught the eye of Jennie Smith, a young internationally-trained local artist. Of her discovery, Smith later wrote, “I have spent my whole life in the South, and am perfectly familiar with thirty patterns of quilts, but I have never seen an original design, and never a living creature portrayed in patchwork. … The scenes on the quilt were biblical and I was fascinated. I offered to buy it, but it was not for sale at any price.”
Photo: Bible Quilt by Harriet Powers, Kenneth E. Behring Center, Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of American History.
Four years later, Powers and her family fell on hard times and she contacted Smith to sell the quilt. Before turning over her precious creation, Powers explained each of the eleven panels of the design. Briefly, the subjects are Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, a continuance of Paradise with Eve and a son, Satan amidst the seven stars, Cain killing his brother Abel, Cain goes into the land of Nod to get a wife, Jacob’s dream, the baptism of Christ, the crucifixion, Judas Iscariot and the thirty pieces of silver, the Last Supper, and the Holy Family.
