background&map

background&map, originally uploaded by ujima.

Gee's Bend is a rural community located in Wilcox, Ala., an all but inaccessible patch of land created by a loop in the Alabama River. Prior to the Civil War, two families, the Gees and the Pettways, took advantage of the area's rich soil to grow cotton, using slave labor in the harvesting of crops.

After the war, and with emancipation, the Pettway slaves remained in Gee's Bend as tenant farmers. Though touched by world events-Gee's Bend was a beneficiary of the New Deal and a stop on Martin Luther King's 1965 march to Selma-the residents lived in relative isolation for five generations, developing their own patois, religion and music. It is with their quilt-making that the inhabitants of Gee's Bend-the women, really-have made an incomparable contribution to our common culture.
------from the New York Observer