Quiltmakers, Keepers of American History
Combatting moves to erase history with stitching, batting, and squares of fabric
By Martha Merson
This July 4, 2026, marks the 250th anniversary of “The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America.” During the past 18 months, the current administration has pressed the National Park Service to remove American stories from its visitor center walls and websites. Erasures within American history are not new, but the systematic approach of the current regime conveys its blatant disrespect and hostility for Americans, especially the Black, Brown, and LGBTQ Americans who have fought for civil rights. The grassroots will step up, using performance and visual arts to keep these stories visible. Women have a crafty tradition of encoding history in quilts that are both a vehicle of history and its witness.
Genny Güracar is now in her 90s. Back in the mid-1970s, she was teaching for the YWCA of Palo Alto California adult education programs. Nearby Mountain View, where she lived at the time, offered a Bicentennial celebratory activity for kids, painting fire hydrants red, white. and blue. Genny’s son participated though she thought at the time that the project, though fun, had limited potential for learning. She wondered about leading a project with more lasting value. “It came to me that there is so much about our history that we don’t know. I suggested to the adult ed class that we make a quilt and that we each could pick a subject and make a square. That was the whole idea: we’d design our squares and we would read more and learn more about the topics of our squares. It was a living history for us.”
Connie Young Yu, a historian, was part of the Bicentennial quilt remembered that “Twelve of us got together and we made a list of important events that we thought people connected to.” The quilt grew in historical scope. An Italian woman designed hers to highlight her mother’s experience as a 12-year-old working before child labor laws went into effect. Connie chose to do a square about Chinese immigrants and the cross-country railroad construction. There was one about Japanese internment — new information for many in the class who were young children in the Midwest at the time of that tragedy. A group member researched the populist movement. The People’s Party had affected her farm family’s life. Several Black women heard about the project, joined, and drew on their experience growing up in the South during the Jim Crow era.
The project unlocked personal stories. “Each square showed how history affected our families,” Genny recalls. “It was terrific. Everyone felt proud and it was important. The energy lit up the whole class.”
Then Connie Young Yu decided to take the project a step further, producing the book Patchwork History, recounting the history behind each of the squares. The introduction speaks to the spirit of resistance that fueled the project.
“We just want to celebrate something about our people’s history … We made this quilt in answer to those who would commercialize our Bicentennial with revolutionary cars, TV sets, potato chips, and bubblegum without leaving us with a spiritual link to those who struggled so hard for rights we have now.” — Genny Güracar
Connie Young Yu added:
“We were tired of being told by TV commercials and politicians which were the great moments in our history and what leaders and events we should be celebrating.”
The Bicentennial quilt went into a bank, it went into schools. Wherever anyone wanted to take it and talk about it, it went. Connie knew people appreciated the quilt, but felt it never got the national attention it deserved. In 2007, Genny donated the quilt to the International Quilt Museum in Lincoln, Nebraska. “It left our community,” Connie said.
A few months ago, Genny received an inquiry from someone writing a book on quilts for the 250th celebration of the Declaration of Independence. How thrilling that they had heard of the People’s Bicentennial Quilt. Genny sent photos and described the quilt in detail. When her copy of the book arrived, she was taken aback. Other quilts were featured full page and in color — but not the People’s Bicentennial Quilt.
“Our quilt is an eighth of a page and in black and white,” she says. “I was shocked and disappointed the book didn’t give space for our piece. The quilt acknowledges the power of the organizing. That’s what history is about. The quilt acknowledges
slavery, displacement of Native Americans, some of the difficulties in our history. How will we come to terms with that part of the history if it isn’t given space in the conversation?”
Genny’s opinion on the idea of denying those things, and denying the progress that has come from reckoning with them: “There are great things in our history and we’ve come a long way. People are not property. We have made strides and we should be proud of it.”
For Genny, the quilt is not a relic of the 1970s. It is a form of witness. Quilts have tracked the things going on in people’s lives for hundreds of years, she says, and this one is no different. As she wrote: “This quilt is a continuation of a long tradition of women’s creativity in needlework. We join and carry on the work of our foremothers who in quilting reflected on and recorded the history of their times.” And in 2026, she notes: “We are part of our history. Making our own history.” Genny points out that women were long excluded from the formal art world, and that quilts are now recognized as works of art — another kind of progress worth naming.
Her message to quilt makers and quilt appreciators is direct: “We are urged to
be passive, but we have to be active and make our views known. Whether that comes out in a quilt or going to a congress person and ragging on them. We are not going gently.”
Genny Güracar shared her story, provided photos, and is currently making a group quilt called Love the Planet. Genny’s creative work also took the form of politically themed cartoons which were published under the name Bulbul.
In an exhibition titled The Spirit of '76: Reflecting on America's 250th, Los Altos History Museum in California currently displays a banner-sized reproduction of the Bicentennial quilt. Los Altos History Museum produced the reproduction of the quilt in the exhibition based on a hi-res image provided by the International Quilt Museum at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln by the Quilt Study Center in Lincoln, Nebraska. Los Altos History Museum will offer the program American Patchwork: The Making of the People's Bicentennial Quilt with Historian Connie Young Yu on July 15 from 5:30-7pm Pacific.
I was at the NOW 60th Conference in Alexandria. They had quilters - it was powerful. It was on immigration - so powerful.
Beautiful, the quilt, the stories, the whole idea.