THE HISTORY AND MEANING OF AN INSCRIBED QUILT FROM AN AFRICAN AMERICAN COMMUNITY IN DETROIT, MICHIGAN.

In 2016, the Michigan State University Museum acquired a unique redwork guilt with twenty embroidered blocks containing the names of women, streets, numerical addresses, and telephone numbers. The addresses trace back to what were once vibrant, predominantly African American neighborhoods in Detroit that were decimated by urban renewal actions in the 1960s. A research team involving museum faculty and staff community historians, and congregants of a church used object-based research, online digital sources, the collections of Michigan State University Museum, social media, and oral histories to uncover the history of the guilt, its makers, and the urban religious, cultural, and social communities in which the makers lived. This study revealed that the guilt was made by women closely connected to the Zion Congregational Church of God in Christ on Mack Avenue in Detroit, and the guilt is now valued as an important document of history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]