How do you distill hundreds of years of African American history into a twenty-minute presentation?

For three students in professor Yolanda Pierce’s African American Religious History course last semester, the answer was obvious. They turned their end-of-semester project into a community art quilt, a colorful, mixed-media wall hanging commemorating the breadth and scope of African American religion.

“It tells a story about African origins, the slave trade and Maafa (also known as the African holocaust), the Bible, black nadir, the great migration, and diverse religious expression. We used iconic images and African American religious and spiritual moments to tell a story about black faith in this country,” said Anjeanette Allen (M.Div., 2012), a woman who has “quilting in her spirit” and who organized the project.

Allen, Rachel Daley (M.Div., 2011), and Chinor Miguel Lee (M.Div., 2013) unveiled their thirty-six-inch by thirty-six-inch quilt December 9, when students presented final projects expressing what they learned in Pierce’s class. Pierce is the Elmer G. Homrighausen Associate Professor of African American Religion and Literature.

These students were part of a larger group that created a Museum of African American Religious History, which included art, dramatic readings, poetry, a ring shout (a religious ritual practiced by African slaves who would move in a circle while singing, shuffling and stomping their feet, and clapping their hands), and the quilt. Two other groups used dramatic productions to reflect their class experiences.

Click here for photos of the class presentations and the quilt.

“We created a quilt to tell stories. This was appropriate because, historically, African American quilts told stories and were lovingly passed down through generations,” said Lee.

“The quilt was the centerpiece of our project,” said Daley. “You can’t really cover the scope of African American history in twenty minutes, so we created snapshots of history.”

The front of the quilt has sixteen blocks—square sections making the traditional patchwork look—depicting historical activities and events. A seventeenth block on the back honors Pierce.

“Dr. Pierce gave us absolute free reign, as long as we met the goal. We had to celebrate African American history and its religion,” said Daley.

Allen suggested the quilt to her cohorts, in part because, earlier in the semester, she had written a paper on the significance of quilting in the African American religious tradition. While writing that paper, she interviewed Cynthelia Cephas, a fourth-generation African American master quilter, who donated her talents to teach the seminarians about quilting.

Allen, Daley, and Lee each created a row of four blocks and then invited classmates to a quilting bee, letting others design blocks for the fourth row.

For Lee, who said he had “zero quilting experience and isn’t creative but got a lot of inspiration from my wife and three children,” the storytelling “forced me to engage the class materials differently from how I usually learn. It made the lessons more personal.” His blocks depicted the great migration of African Americans from the South to northern cities, the Azusa Street Mission in California—a three-year revival scene that launched the African American Pentecostal movement—the March on Washington, and the crossroads of Christianity, Islam, Judaism, and Santeria.

Daley made blocks to celebrate the achievements of Jarena Lee—the first woman authorized to preach by Richard Allen, founder of the African Methodist Episcopal Church—to draw attention to slavery in America, to recreate a tent revival meeting, and to depict post-Civil War Reconstruction. Daley explained her focus on Lee, who was born free in New Jersey in 1783: “This was 1819 and there was no precedent for someone who was black and a woman to be a pastor. My block shows the moment when, after a moving experience, she goes outside and opens her arms to the light of Christ.”

Allen’s four blocks show an African village with a griot storyteller, a Middle Passage slave ship, an enslaved man and woman in chain bondage, and Harriet Tubman, whom slaves called Moses because of her work to lead them to freedom.

Beyond the blocks, the quilt has red, black, and green fabric strips representing the colors of the Black Liberation Flag, which broadly represents African American unity and pride.

“Our quilt stories touch me in a profoundly spiritual and emotional way. It absolutely emboldens me when I consider the resilience of my people,” said Allen. “A class like this makes a real difference because it speaks to how our sense of humanity and self worth as a people had to be reconstructed, often in the face of horror and false biblical interpretation. That’s a powerful thing. The stories of pain, resilience, and, ultimately, God’s love, as told through the quilt, are not only intensely self affirming, but they serve as a body of knowledge for significant theological reflection.”

Blocks were made with various materials, including African Kente cloth, cowrie shells, yarn, paint, branches, chains, and other items in the tradition of African American story quilts.

“We used elements that had meaning to us and the story we were telling,” said Daley. “It worked because, with art, you can really express something without having to explain it. You can leave the questions unanswered.”

While this quilt may not answer all the questions, Daley said projects like this one, and the class in general, reflect the value of Black History Month, which this year has the theme “African Americans and the Civil War.”

“Dr. Pierce says we have a tendency to forget history. The response to bad things that happened is often to look forward. I think that’s limiting,” Daley said. “Many people like to tell the story of African American religion in this country starting in 1965. But history is important. A quilt like this opens us up to questions, even if we don’t know all the answers. This course created an avenue for me to talk to African American students about history. Hearing what their ancestors experienced gave me a different perspective.”