An interesting bit of history for codes. Codes In Quilts Pointed Way To Freedom For Slaves By JANE GORDON The Hartford Courant February 21, 2000 http://www.ctnow.com/scripts/editorial.dll Add this as the query for that URL: ?bfromind=1623&eeid=1685303&eetype=article&render=y&ck=&ver=hb1.2.20 "Although black textile artists and folklorists throughout the United States long knew that the quilts had been used as code - yet no one quite understood how - that information had never been disseminated or explored in the community at large." <snip> "[Jacqueline Tobin, a historian and collector,] enlisted the help of noted African American quilter Raymond Dobard, an expert on the Underground Railroad and an art history professor at Howard University in Washington. They gathered enough knowledge to go back to McDaniel Williams at the marketplace for the rest of the tale. And with that, they wrote a book, "Hidden in Plain View, A Secret Story of Quilts and The Underground Railroad" (Anchor Books, $14 paperback). <snip> "The quilts used patterns to teach basic concepts of escape to slaves, many of whom had never been off the plantation. First, a sampler quilt would be hung on a line or out a window, so slaves could memorize the patterns. During a time of escape, the Monkey Wrench would have been the next quilt to be hung, signaling to the would-be fugitives that it was time to gather their tools for the journey." -- Cheers Pat McCotter [EMAIL PROTECTED] PGP Key - 0xD437B2D9 Fingerprint D0 E7 C6 5A 9E EF 0D CF C7 10 88 2A 73 41 11 24
