Souls Grown Deep launched a free digital guide to Gee’s Bend on Tuesday, Sept. 15, on Bloomberg Connects, the arts and culture app run by Bloomberg Philanthropies, with the Wilcox County community’s fifth annual Airing of the Quilts Festival set for Saturday, Oct. 3.
The guide carries new and archival audio and video of Gee’s Bend quiltmakers, including Mary Lee Bendolph, Arlonzia Pettway, Loretta Pettway, Annie Mae Young, Lucy Mingo, Essie Bendolph Pettway, Loretta Pettway Bennett and Mary Virginia Pettway, along with archival photographs and visitor information: directions, including the Gee’s Bend Ferry crossing from Camden, hours and accessibility.
It also covers the Gee’s Bend Heritage Trail, a self-guided driving tour of the quiltmakers’ community; the timeline display “A History of Gee’s Bend From 1816 to the Present” at the Gee’s Bend Welcome Center; and “Between History and Memory: Dinah Miller’s Legacy in Gee’s Bend,” an exhibition on the community’s earliest known named quilter, brought from West Africa as a girl in 1860, likely aboard the Clotilda.
The audio includes a 1941 recording of Isom Mosely, one of about two dozen known recordings of formerly enslaved Americans, and Bendolph and Mingo recounting their fight to register to vote in Wilcox County.
“For generations, the world has come to know Gee’s Bend through our quilts, but too often the benefits of that attention never made it back across the river,” said Gloria Carey, granddaughter of quilter Rachel Carey George and an advisory board member of Visit Gee’s Bend, a cultural tourism effort supported by Souls Grown Deep.
“This guide helps change that. It invites people to come see us, to meet the makers, to buy directly from the artists and to experience this community the way we know it, on our own terms and in our own voices.”
The Airing of the Quilts Festival runs from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Oct. 3 at the Gee’s Bend Welcome Center, 12021 County Road 29, rain or shine, with quilt displays and sales, demonstrations, hands-on quilting workshops for all ages, guided tours with local quilters, storytelling, live music and food vendors.
It is organized by Freedom Quilting Bee Legacy and Sew Gee’s Bend Heritage Builders.
Organizers put last year’s attendance at about 3,000 and its economic impact for Alabama at $878,000, and Wells Fargo has joined as a sponsor this year.
“They don’t just see quilts, they meet the women and families behind them,” said Claudia Pettway Charley, co-founder of Sew Gee’s Bend Heritage Builders.
Tickets, with a recommended donation to support the quiltmaking community, are at airingofthequilts.org.
Most of the festival is outdoors on uneven ground, and visitors using wheelchairs, walkers or other mobility aids should plan accordingly, organizers said.
The Welcome Center and River Gallery are open Mondays from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. and Tuesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.
The Bloomberg Connects app is a free download from Google Play or the App Store. The community appears on maps as Boykin and Alberta; residents call it Gee’s Bend.
