A story quilt honors Ozella McDaniel Williams, Harriet Tubman and Rosa Parks.

Retired educator and quilter Ozella McDaniel Williams from Charleston, S.C., shared the secret codes embedded in quilts to assist runaway slaves on their escape north. The code had been passed down as oral history in her family from the time of the Underground Railroad, 1830 to the beginning of the Civil War in 1861, to 1994.

The story of the encounter of Williams and journalist Jacqueline L. Tobin is recorded in Hidden in Plain View: A Secret Story of Quilts and The Underground Railroad by Tobin and Raymond G. Dobard.

Dorothy Logan in front of her quilt, holding the book The Underground Railroad Sampler. Photo provided.

Several years later, quilter Eleanor Burns and Sue Bouchard became fascinated with Williams’ story and created a sampler quilt based on the secret code, publishing the patterns in the book The Underground Railroad Sampler.

As a member of the Mennonite church, I find comfort in knowing there is no historical evidence that members of our church were ever slaveholders, and I am grateful for the compassion for slaves I inherited from my faith community. The Underground Railroad Sampler provided a means for me to transform my stitches into prayers for action—that injustice today might be brought to justice, bondage to freedom and disrespect to respect.

I also sought to honor with my stitches the ingenuity of women like Ozella McDaniel Williams, Harriet Tubman and Rosa Parks, whose actions as agents of determination and change brought into being the admonition of the Prophet Micah: “And what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” (Micah 6:8b).

The three women I honor in this story quilt—Williams, Tubman, Parks—carried the meaning, comfort and strength of inheritance embedded in quilts in their bones. Parks, in recalling the events of Dec. 1, l955, years later, remembered: “When that white driver stepped back toward us, when he waved his hand and ordered us up and out of our seats, I felt a determination cover my body like a quilt on a winter night.”

My hope and prayer is that viewers of this story quilt will not only recognize the injustice of the past visited on people of color but will also look to the present. Insurmountable needs in our world today are waiting for agents of change from injustice to justice, bondage to freedom, disrespect to respect. What does the Lord require of us?

Dorothy Logan is a member of Park View Mennonite Church in Harrisonburg, Va.