This book tells the fascinating story of a friendship, a lost tradition, and an incredible discovery, revealing how enslaved men and women made encoded quilts and then used them to navigate their escape on the Underground Railroad. Historian Jacqueline Tobin and scholar Raymond Dobard, PhD, offer the first proof that certain quilt patterns, including a prominent one called the Charleston Code, were, in fact, essential tools for escape along the Underground Railroad. In 1993, Tobin met African American quilter Ozella Williams amid piles of beautiful handmade quilts in the Old Market Building of Charleston, SC. With the admonition to “write this down,” Williams began to describe how slaves made coded quilts and used them to navigate their escape on the Underground Railroad. But just as quickly as she started, Williams stopped, informing Tobin that she would learn the rest when she was ready. During the three years it took for Williams’s narrative to unfold—and as the friendship and trust between the two women grew—Tobin enlisted Dobard, an art history professor and well known African American quilter, to help unravel the mystery.

Part adventure and part history, Hidden in Plain View traces the origin of the Charleston Code from Africa to the Carolinas, from the low-country island Gullah peoples to free Black people living in the cities of the North, and shows how three people from completely different backgrounds pieced together one amazing American story.

Presented in conjunction with Intersections in American Art.