CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 5/12/2025

Ethics of care in California quilts from the Second Great Migration

Published to accompany the upcoming exhibition at Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Routed West: Twentieth-Century African American Quilts in California collects more than 100 quilts by nearly 90 individual African American quilters working during the Second Great Migration, 1940 to 1970. These are drawn from BAMPFA’s renowned collection of more than 3,000 quilts, most of which were produced by women with ties to the San Francisco Bay Area. “At its foundation, Routed West is about an ethic of care that underlines the flow and flourishing of quilts within African American communities,” Elaine Y. Yau writes. “It is an ethic that guides how fabrics are salvaged and chosen, puts hands to work to fill physical or emotional needs, tends to past memory as much as it does to present and future kin, and calls forth the quiltmaker’s own image of beauty from the sovereign space of the imagination. That the stories gathered here include California as part of their journey is specific to these quilts, but they are not exclusive to the Golden State; in terms of their other destinations and travels, one need only look at a map of other African American migration routes for a view of where quilts, made and kept for sustaining Black life, can likely be found.”

ABOVE: Susan Pless. Before 1944; Okfuskee County, Oklahoma. “Untitled (Strip).” Corduroy, cotton, cotton / polyester blend, velveteen; machine pieced, hand quilted 82 x 75 in. Bequest of the Eli Leon Living Trust, BAMPFA. Photo: Kevin Candland.