April 24, 2014
At the Commodore Theater
421 High Street
Portsmouth, VA
(757) 393-6962
Doors open at noon
Lunch may be purchased from noon-12:45
Talk begins at 1:00 p.m.
Historian, Kathleen Curtis Wilson will tell the story of
an exceptional African American family in Appalachia
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| Historian Kathleen Curtis Wilson |
Virginia and explain what
is known and not known about skilled enslaved women and the importance of new
discoveries in the field of African American studies. Her presentation includes photographs of
textiles made by Lizzie Bolden, photographs of her mother and father, members
of her family and other freed slaves living and working in Bath County.
Historians have long underestimated the importance of the
skills that enslaved individuals possessed because there is no body of work to
study. That is especially true in
Appalachia. In the world of textiles and
clothing, it is accepted that many skilled slave artisans spun thread and wove
cloth, stitched slave clothing from coarse fabrics, did the fine (but tedious)
finish quilting on their mistresses’ showpiece quilts, or were hired out as
dressmakers, earning money for their masters and sometimes saving enough from
their earnings to purchase freedom.
However, there is little physical evidence of these skills to support
further scholarship. Since slave-made
textiles have traditionally remained with the master’s family, historians have
had no way to authenticate the original maker of a quilt, bedcover, or other
piece of cloth that has only a vague provenance.
Elizabeth Morris Bolden, Lizzie, lived in Warm Springs,
VA all of her life. She and her husband
hand one
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| Lizzie's quilt, Warm Springs, Virginia |
daughter, Alice. What makes her
story worthy of historical documentation are the textiles she leer behind,
evidence of her skill as a seamstress and her status in the community. Five textiles have passed from mother to
daughter along with remembrances of Lizzie’s life and details of her sewing
career. At a time when African Americans
in Appalachia had few opportunities for more than unskilled employment, Lizzie
had her own business as a dressmaker for clients in the community. Lizzie’s
great granddaughter, Perlista Y. Henry, will be at the presentation to answer
questions at the end of the talk.
Kathleen Curtis Wilson is a Fellow at the Virginia Foundation
of Humanities, Charlottesville, VA. A
renowned authority on Appalachian crafts, Wilson is craft section editor for
the Encyclopedia of Appalachia. As an
Appalachia textile historian, Wilson has been documenting, photographing, and
writing about regional craft traditions for more than 25 years. Currently she is working on her first novel, The Fabric of Wishful Thinking.
The talk is being held in conjunction with the exhibit
Changing Appalachia: Custom toCutting Edge at the Portsmouth Art & Cultural Center. This program is
sponsored in part by the Commodore Theater, Portsmouth Art & Cultural
Center, the African-American Historical Society of Portsmouth and the Thomson
Family Foundation of Minnesota.
