Title: Ku Klux Klan Fundraising Quilt
Artist(s): Made by Chicora community members including Grace Rowe Way, Marie Tripp, and Ethel Smith
Dimensions: 62" x 82"
Date Made: 1926
Place Created: Chicora, Michigan
Collection: Great Lakes Quilt Center/Michigan State University Museum, #2000:71.1,
Gift of Karl and Barbara Rowe
Photo Credit: Mary Whalen

In 1987, Loma Bell Rowe Mudget gave away some of her belongings to family members. She knew that her nephew Karl, a high school teacher, was interested in family and local history and presented him with a bag, inside of which were two items Karl had never seen before: a family bible and the K.K.K. quilt. Loma told Karl that she had inherited the quilt from her father, also Karl's grandfather, Frank, when he had died in 1960. As an educator and historian, Karl was determined to find out more about it. Karl brought the quilt to the attention of historians specializing in state and local history and importantly, Karl interviewed elder family members about the quilt.

Karl discovered that his paternal aunt, Grace Rowe Way, at age sixteen, had been enlisted, much to her embarrassment but because she had fine handwriting and sewing skills, to stitch names onto the quilt. Way recalled that each person paid 10 cents to have their name stitched on a block and when the quilt was completed, members of the local Klan entered a raffle to win it. Karl's grandfather, Frank Rowe, held the winning ticket.

The K.K.K. Fundraising Quilt: A Primary Resource for Research and Education

This quilt, done in the Redwork style, is a significant example of how textiles are important documents of history and how objects of material culture provide primary source data for describing, analyzing, and understanding aspects of human history. The materials, construction, design, pictorial imagery, signatures, the oral histories and related ephemera, and even condition of this quilt hold clues that strengthen and expand our understanding of quiltmaking, of Klan activity, and of the social and cultural history of a particular community at a particular point in time.

Whether or not they intended to do so, members and supporters of the Ku Klux Klan in one Michigan community created--in this Redwork textile--an artifact that continues to be a testimony to their beliefs, relationships, and actions. In an age where we continue to struggle with local, national, and global issues of tolerance, social justice, and human rights, this artifact can help us understand the roots of fear and intolerance and to serve as a powerful reminder not to perpetuate the mistakes of the past.