Urbanna Post Office quilt program salutes Black History Month

Before 1860, America captured about 4 million Black people from Africa and brought them to America to be sold as slaves. From the beginning, slaves tried to escape.

Trying to escape, or helping someone else escape, was dangerous business and could result in being severely punished or even death. The name of the secret route to escape was called the “Underground Railroad.”

Because it was illegal in slave-holding states to teach slaves to read, slaves could not communicate with each other by writing. Slaves of all backgrounds shared a verbal history of storytelling along with a knowledge of sewing. In African art, they were able to communicate with stitches, pattern designs, colors and fabrics in a quilt.

The patterns told slaves how to get ready to escape and the route to take to freedom. When the quilts were finished, they were hung out windows of slave cabins to be “aired” out and were secret maps for those slaves brave enough to make the dangerous journey to the North toward freedom.

Urbanna Post Office is encouraging children and others to come by and pick up quilt block patterns to color and decorate for a “Freedom Quilt” in commemoration of February being Black History Month.