Over a year ago I was lucky enough to attend a very special ceremony here in my town of Athens, Georgia – a new headstone for Harriet Powers courtesy of The Women of Color Quilters Network and others.

Powers is considered the ‘Mother of African-American Quilting’ and her Bible-themed quilts are on display at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.

Harriet Powers was born a slave and lived her whole life near Athens, Georgia, yet her “story quilts” reflect the traditions and style of her West African ancestors, and tell timeless stories for generations of people around the world.

Her life was local, but due to her talent and the extraordinary explanations of her work, her impact is global. Harriet was born into slavery on October 29, 1837, near Athens, Georgia. She spent her early life on a plantation owned by John and Nancy Lester in Madison County.

She married at 18 and began a family that would eventually include nine children. In 1886 when Harriet was 49 years old, she had finished her first quilt to exhibit at the Clarke County Cotton Fair. She combined the African style of applique, with European style stitching to create unique “story quilts” which are preserved today as remarkable pieces of both folk art, and history. Her first quilt was made of 299 separate pieces of fabric, depicting scenes from Bible stories and spirituals. – Georgia Women of Achievement

Harriet Powers and her husband were buried at Gospel Pilgrim in the early 1900’s, and eventually her headstone was destroyed and/or lost. And so was their gravesite. It was only rediscovered in 2005…

At the event in December 2023 there were over 50 people who attended the dedication and there were speeches by descendents of the family, the mayor of Athens ( and others in the community. It was the culmination of years of effort by family and various organizations, and their work should be applauded and celebrated!

A member of the The Women of Color Quilters Network was kind enough to gift attendees with a copy of the book Threads of Faith and I highly recommend it to anyone/everyone with an interest in quilting and history!

I recently returned so I could photograph the headstone again and capture some wildflowers blooming in the cemetery…

And now for a bit of history about the cemetery itself:

Gospel Pilgrim Cemetery sits off Fourth Street in East Athens. The cemetery was founded 1882 by the Gospel Pilgrim Society, a Black benevolent organization, “to see to it that that deceased among their number, as well as all others of their race, not otherwise provided for, are properly and decently interred.” Over the course of its one-hundred-and twenty-one-year history, around 3,500 African Americans were buried in the cemetery (approximately twenty to twenty-five percent of those were formerly enslaved individuals). Most were interred during the cemetery’s heyday in the 1930s and 1940s, but many prominent Black Athenians from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries are buried at Gospel Pilgrim: Monroe Bowers “Pink” Morton was born a slave in 1856, but rose to become a wealthy Athenian and the owner of the Morton Theatre; Harriet Powers was a famous folk artist and quilter; Madison Davis went from slavery to the Georgia Legislature in 1868; and Ellen Green was a local resident who became a dean at Fisk University. Gradually, the cemetery fell into disarray and, after 1960, fewer and fewer people were laid to rest within its geographic bounds. In 1977, the last surviving member of the Gospel Pilgrim Society died of a heart attack. No long-term arrangement had been made for the cemetery’s perpetual care, and it now has no legal owner. While nature as reclaimed the landscape, student and community groups sponsor occasional work-days to remove weeds, clear fallen branches, and pick-up trash. The last burials occurred in the early 2000s. Info via The Athens Death Project

They also have a virtual walking tour here.