“We Didn’t Wait for Freedom” Quilt Collection Presents Stories Stitched in the Seams

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Vera Hall Photo Provided By UHM

Using an assortment of fabrics and quilt blocks, the handmade keepsakes in Vera Hall’s collection highlight a range of African American experiences like that of Robert Smalls whose life in slavery and freedom changed American history.

There’s an art to storytelling and in “We Didn’t Wait for Freedom: The Civil War Narrative Quilts of Vera Hall,” the stories are literally stitched in the seams of this personal quilt collection now on display at the Upcountry History Museum.

Vera Hall is a seamstress and quilter who both studies history and has made history herself. A retired educator from the Baltimore, Maryland, public school system and Maryland State Department of Education, she was the first African American teacher assigned to an all-white school in the city’s “Little Italy” community. She also served on the Baltimore City Council. Throughout her professional and political life, Hall never stopped sewing. The pieces in this collection come out of her passion to let people know that the story of quilting is diverse and wide-ranging.

A longtime quilter, Hall won a set of Civil War quilt blocks at a guild event in 2007 and challenged herself to find some way of using the blocks to highlight the variety of African American experiences during the war. This project led her to also explore in fabric other stories of African Americans whose lives in slavery and freedom changed American history. The results are seen in the quilts of this display, like “We, Too, Sing America,” “Harriet Tubman,” and “Robert Smalls.”

“The needle and thread have always been a passion in my life,” said Hall. For her, quilting and story quilts, in particular, are “piecing the past to the future.”

She still quilts and continues to let people know that these stories on fabric share common threads among families, communities, and eras.

“We Didn’t Wait for Freedom” is on exhibit at the Upcountry History Museum, a Smithsonian Affiliate, through February 18, 2024.

The Museum is open Tuesday-Saturday, 10:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m.; Sunday, 1:00-5:00 p.m.; closed Monday.