Black In Time is a visual archive—an affirmation that Black history is not distant, but present, layered, and ongoing. This quilted wall hanging brings together portrait panels arranged in a grid, evoking calendars, windows, or pages in a history book. Each framed face looks outward, asserting presence and dignity, while collectively forming a continuum of Black intellectual, cultural, scientific, and political life across generations.
The structure of the quilt suggests order and intention. Black sashing creates strong divisions between portraits, recalling timelines or film frames. Rendered in black and white, the portraits echo historical photographs and printed archives, referencing how Black contributions have often been recorded, if recorded at all. By translating these images onto fabric and stitch, the work reclaims that archive through a medium long associated with care, labor, and community.
Eleven African American icons past and present laser printed on cotton with Ankara backing. Black cotton sashing. (Johnson, Dunham, Hughes, Terrell, Robeson, Parks, Woodson, Williams, Height, Barber, Jamison) Their names are listed and because of them…we are! We must never forget. Free motion quilted Approx 40” x 24” Ready to hang This project was supported by the ARPA Arts, Culture & Sustainability (AC&S) Stipend Program @Hayti
Wallhanging -Black In Time
At the center of the composition, a text panel lists names, an intentional act of naming and remembrance. It functions like a roll call across time, bridging the visual and the written, the seen and the spoken. Naming is power. It resists erasure. It affirms that these lives mattered, and continue to matter, not only in the past but in the present moment.
This quilt is both tribute and declaration. It asserts that Black people have always shaped time rather than merely endured it.
