History is a long, interconnected string of events, but even the sturdiest of strands can get tangled. The Sew Their Names Project is a method of preservation of history by sewing names shrouded by years of dark history.
The contributors of the Sew Their Names Project, originally called the Mt. Willing Quilters, came to Tuscaloosa to tell the community more about the project, from the history to how the first stitch came to be.
The event was held at Brown Memorial Presbyterian Church, the oldest existing Black Presbyterian Church in Alabama, and featured several displays of the project’s vibrant quilts around the event area. Brown Presbyterian is a partner church in the Sew Their Names Project, and it is the home church of a primary contributor to the project, Yvonne Wells.
The project was first fabricated in Lowndes County, AL, where it initially started as a simple quilting project at Snow Hill Christian Church in 2005. The pastor of the church, Dale Braxton, said it initially was an effort to bring the community of Lowndes County together.
“It has been a godsend,” Braxton said. “The women and men would come in and sing, eat and fellowship. We’d take field trips together; sometimes we’d just play board games, trying to bring life back to the community.”
Braxton said he hopes to further knit together the community in an effort to educate the next generation as well.
“If you fail to learn of your history, you eventually repeat the things of the past,” Braxton said. “So to be a host church where we have [quilting], it gives us an opportunity to share it with our children. And I just believe the more you know, the more you grow.”
Attendees were able to hear stories from those who had a hand in uncovering the names of those enslaved, as well as from contributors of the quilts. In a presentation, Magistrate Judge Susan Walker recounted how a simple Google search led to her discovering that she had connections to Snow Hill Christian Church through its ownership of Mount Willing Church.
“I knew that I had an ancestor in Lowndes County, and I knew that they had been a pastor in Mount Willing, and that he had enslaved a number of people,” Walker said. “As I’m reading [the Google search], I see that my great-great-grandfather had a slave gallery in his church, and that stopped me in my tracks.”
With Walker’s help, the Mount Willing Quilters were able to thread together a piece of history. She took her search deeper, eventually discovering the names of the slaves who attended her great-great-grandfather’s church. With this information, she felt the need to contact Dr. Braxton.
“I’m seeing membership rolls, and the membership rolls are telling me the names of people who were enslaved,” Walker said. “I got in touch with Dale Braxton, because I saw from those pieces of paper that he was the pastor of the church that owned [Mt. Willing].”
With the acquisition of these names, the Mt. Willing Quilters started the Sew Their Names Project. Tangled in the history, the Sew Their Names Project challenged attendees with the question of what truly goes into a name.
“Sewing their names is giving life,” said Mary Godfrey, who has been quilting with Snow Hill Church since 2017. Godfrey said a name characterizes an individual and recognizes them as a member of a community. She said it is essential to remember the names of those forgotten in order to mend generational wounds.
“To have a name puts you in a society that you can be recognized as a part of. And I just believe that it’s a ministry,” Godfrey said. “Every time I see a name, it’s healing.”
Morgan said he knows Yvonne Wells through a shared love for folk art, and mentioned his own admiration for the art form.
“It’s very much an act of community remembrance and reclaiming local history, while also preserving that history and sharing it,” Morgan said. “So to me, this is folk art at its best.”
Attendees were able to interact with the quilts directly by selecting and sewing a name onto a patch of cloth that would later be added to another quilt for the project.
The contributors of the Sew Their Names Project held their work in high esteem and were eager to spread their knowledge of the project’s history and their sewing skills, highlighting what truly made a name.
“This has brought a new perspective,” Braxton said. “A good name is better than silver and gold.”
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