When Pigs Fly Award

 

The Know-It-Alls group of quilt historians is inviting you to our first awards ceremony for our

"When Pigs Fly Award for Quilt History."

Right here. Right now.

It's a virtual ceremony about a real problem.

We'll be awarding the virtual trophy.

Lynne, Barbara, Debby, Julie, Merikay, Tara, Ronda & Alden

And we got virtually dressed up for the ceremony. Note there are more than 6 Know-It-Alls. Smart people keep showing up.

Also note the virtual venue is rather down-scale. We were going to do a Versailles-like ballroom and then we realized how overdone this look is currently, so we just rented a hall in Queens.
One of our biggest expenses was the light strings of flying pigs.

TA-DA

The first Flying Pig statuette goes to Jacqueline L. Tobin and Dr. Raymond Dobard for their book Hidden in Plain View: A Secret Story of Quilts and the Underground Railroad, published in 2000.

We had other suggestions but this decades-old fantasy 

was an overwhelming favorite for worst quilt history ever.

Time Magazine wrote about the book's success in 2007: 

"Tobin is a teacher, collector, and writer of women’s stories from Denver, Colorado. She reported hearing about the UGRR Quilt Code when she bought a quilt from a woman named Ozella McDaniel Williams at a Charleston, S.C., market in 1994. Williams told Tobin that for generations women in her family had been taught an oral history that stated that quilt patterns — like log cabins, monkey wrenches and wagon wheels — also served as directions that helped slaves plan their escapes. Since she lacked historical data to back up Williams’ claim, Tobin enlisted her friend Raymond Dobard, a quilter and art history professor affiliated with Howard University, to help research and write the book, which is [in 2007] in its sixth printing and has sold over 200,000 copies.”

Dr. Raymond Dobard (1947-2019)

We doubt the recipients will be showing up. For one thing Raymond Dobard's award has to be posthumous as he died of dementia in his early seventies about five years ago. We would have enjoyed seeing Raymond again as he was a charming professor in the Art History Department at Howard University and a quiltmaker. (So charming we almost forgive him for getting deep into something he probably should have avoided.)

Fath Davis Ruffins (1954-2024)

The late Fath Davis Ruffins, historian at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, criticized the book and its concept in a 2003 newspaper feature. “It's made up of speculation and supposition….There are no sources." She pointed out that the book offers no information about Ozella Williams' background. "They do not provide a single shred of evidence that this is true."

Jacqueline Tobin’s response: “It’s frustrating to be attacked and not allowed to celebrate this amazing oral story of one family’s experience. Whether or not it’s completely valid, I have no idea, but it makes sense with the amount of research we did.” 

The successful book has made Tobin quite a bit of money in royalties because people who want to hear such stories are unable to apply any historic method or critical analysis to the “Quilt Code.”

Ms. Tobin lives in Denver and maintains an unpleasant Facebook page with little reliance on a historic method or factfinding in looking at current events, rather consistent with her notions about quilt history. https://www.facebook.com/jacqueline.tobin.33/

Lisa Evans, who describes herself as a medieval historian, reminded us in a 2017 Daily Kos post, that the book’s single source, the late Ozella McDaniel Williams (1922-1998) was a “Howard University alumna who had worked as a school administrator and was selling quilts to make a little extra money in her retirement.  Other dealers at the antiques mall have confirmed that she was well known for embellishing the story of her quilts to impress the tourists.” Lisa wrote to Tobin concerning the accuracy of her book and received nothing more than a form letter retelling the story of Ozella Williams and the antique mall.

 Hidden in Plain View thus deserves our first “When Pigs Fly Award for Quilt History.”

A word about our statuette. It may look like an Oscar or an Emmy but in keeping with the current trend for glitter gone amuck we must confess it's a Styrofoam pig spray painted gold.

The new Gilded Age