392: Stitched Together: Documenting the Vibrancy of Black Bottom Detroit Through Redwork Quilting

Presenter(s)

Berkley Sorrells

Abstract or Description

The Black Bottom neighborhood of Detroit was once home to a thriving African American community, with homes, schools, businesses that was razed in urban renewal efforts by the city of Detroit for the construction of interstates and manufacturing plants in the mid 1960s. In 2018, the Michigan State University Museum acquired a unique redwork quilt with twenty squares of fabric containing the unique signature of the individual square makers, often followed by an address or phone number. A majority of these addresses traced back to Black Bottom and surrounding areas, with each square foretelling an individual story of a greater narrative that had been woven together. Of the homes whose addresses are documented on the quilt, none remain standing today; rather they are barren strips of grassy land east of bustling Midtown Detroit. Utilizing online platforms like Ancestry.com, the Quilt Index, city directories, and multiple newspaper databases such as the Michigan Chronicle, along with other virtual archival materials, I have worked to uncover the stories of these twenty women and their families initiated by the material evidence provided by the quilt. This research journey uncovers their stories, shows what links them together, and documents the vibrancy of the now vacant land where they once lived. While the homes and individuals are not standing, they are preserved in the lives of those who lived to see them. In amplifying the voices of the twenty women and their families, we fill in previously blank pages in collective history.