An Open Book to Freedom, April Shipp

1852: Harriet Beecher Stowe publishes Uncle Tom’s Cabin, a book that changes the way Americans view slavery. Uncle Tom’s Cabin was a sensational best-seller that sold 300,000 copies within a year. The book tells a story of human perseverance that starts on a plantation in Kentucky and chronicles a family’s search for freedom by escaping across the Ohio River and north to Canada. Stowe’s novel gave slavery a human face, and reminded 19th-century Americans of the reasons enslaved African Americans risked their lives to gain freedom.
In the quilt, Harriet Beecher Stowe holds up her novel, while a vortex of images explodes from the pages of her book.