Curriculum Connections

Language Arts/English
High School – “Crossing Over”
Read and discuss J. R. Moehringer’s Pulitzer Prize–winning story about Mary Lee Bendolph, Gee’s Bend, and the reopening of the ferry service on the website pulitzer.org/year/2000/feature-writing/works.

Art
Elementary and Middle School – Yard Art Show
Mary Lee Bendolph has talked about being inspired by neighbors’ and friends’ quilts that were displayed in their front yards. She says:

We just walked out together, and the peoples have the quilts on the line. They have them hanging out...And all the quilts they made, they had them hanging out on the wire fence, just like an art show. They be looking so beautiful. I asked them about how they made them, you know, what was the name of the quilt. They’d tell us. They named their own quilts and they’ll tell you about it. And it would be so pretty.

Stage a “yard art show” of your own in a hallway, school yard, or other common area, and have students respond to each others’ designs.

Middle and High School – Photography
After discussing the places where Bendolph finds inspiration for patterns, have students find and photograph patterns—both symmetrical and asymmetrical—in their neighborhood. Encourage students to look everywhere, as patterns emerge in everything from a stone wall, to the bark of a tree, to links on a fence. Print the photographs (if possible) or create designs based on these patterns.

Music
Elementary and Middle School – Music
Many quiltmakers, including Bendolph, speak about the connection between music and quiltmaking. Nettie Young explained:

We do lots of singing when we making a quilt, and it could have music and a song to it, because that’s the way we make the quilt. Mostly singing...Sewing, singing, sewing and singing. It’s in that quilt because that’s what I do when I quilt.

Ask students to discuss what kinds of music each quilt reminds them of. Then, play songs from different African American musical genres (such as ragtime, jazz, blues, or spirituals) and have students respond visually. For ideas, consult Toyomi Igus’s and Michele Wood’s book I See the Rhythm, or listen to recordings of songs recorded in Gee’s Bend in 1948 on the website arts.state.al.us/actc/music/index-music.html.