Here is Leigh's response (November 2, 2005):

In her recent email, Ms. Kemp writes that nobody in the family knew about Ozella's interviews with author Tobin until they read scathing reviews of Hidden in Plain View after Ozella's death. But in May 2002, Ms. Kemp wrote me that her "cousin" was present during "several parts" of the interviews. If Ozella went to her grave without telling her relatives about Hidden in Plain View, one certainly wonders why. If indeed Tobin's research was so haphazard she neglected to corroborate Ozella's claims with family members, the reader would be advised not to take any of the book seriously.

Ms. Kemp makes two contradictory statements about her family's motives for promoting the "Quilt Code". First she claims that had HIPV never been published, the family would have remained silent. In the next breath she asserts her commitment to "adding [the Farrows'] achievements to history". Although she now maintains she and her mother, Serena Wilson, helpfully "came forward and assisted" Tobin only because Tobin "was getting attacked", in August 2004 she wrote me that "after Jackie seemed to become the voice for our family it became necessary to call the authors and the publishers"; the family "let Jackie [Tobin] know she is not the Griot for our family" and began lecturing to "take control of our family story." If HIPV was so inaccurate, it seems odd that the family would choose to promote it not only on their websites, but at Ms. Wilson's own quilt and gift shop, whose longstanding business name she decided to register just weeks after HIPV hit the bookstores.

In fact, Ms. Kemp wrote me, "We could have taken them [Tobin and Dobard] to court but we chose to be supportive." Would not the most effective "support" - not just of Tobin, but of the existence of the "Code" itself - be the written documentation Ms. Kemp keeps claiming her family has but refuses to produce? In 2004 she volunteered to fax it all to me, but never did; a colleague could not find it on display at Ms.Kemp's "museum," nor did Ms. Kemp mention it during their lengthy discussion. And I know of at least one other individual who is waiting for her to produce this promised '"firsthand narrative."

Ms. Kemp has apparently mentioned "copyright" more than once to others; I presume she is merely confused about copyright law and not using it as a diversion. Registration of works with the US Copyright Office is now required only for unpublished works; before 1978, registration was mandatory Only one work appears in the USCO database registered by Ms. Kemp or her mother: a six-page document created by Ms. Wilson consisting of "new material," photographs and illustrations created in 1999 (the year HIPV was released and Ms. Wilson registered her business name). But it is important to note that the information in a document is not copyrighted - only the way that information is expressed. More to the point, an individual cannot copyright something written by an ancestor.

Copyright aside, the question begs asking: why would someone whose sole interest is in "adding [her ancestors'] achievements to history" withhold crucial evidence until she can publish her own book? Why permit, as Ms. Kemp herself says, a dozen inaccurate books to go unchallenged, and skepticism about her claims to go unrefuted? Does she believe her family's credibility, our understanding of African-American culture, slavery and the Underground Railroad, or posterity are well-served by such proprietary coyness? It's been nearly seven years since HIPV was published; how much longer will Ms. Kemp let the record sit there uncorrected?

Perhaps here is the reason for her reticence: "[W]e personally are looking for information before we felt our work is complete enough to release to the public." This is stunning. Ms. Wilson claimed to have given 150 "quilt code" lectures in 2001 alone. Nearly five years, a "museum," and countless lectures later, her daughter is still "looking for information"? Would it not be reasonable to expect that before Ms. Kemp and her mother travel the county presenting their claims to schoolchildren as historic fact, they actually have the supporting evidence in hand? And presuming it is accompanied by evidence that any manuscript's materials, handwriting style, and use of language are consistent with those used by an individual who reasonably can be said could have performed the actions to which it refers, would not her "firsthand manuscript" be, if not everything, a pretty good foundation?

Her assertions to the contrary, Ms. Kemp has declined to present any of the evidence she keeps saying she has not only to those she thinks lack sufficient "good will," but to anybody, including African-American historians. Yet she wants the National Parks Service to credential her "museum", applied for a Federal Education Department grant to promote the "Code," and remains perpetually surprised and injured that her claims are not embraced with unquestioning enthusiasm. In 2002 she told me the family "does not owe historians anything". That is undeniably so; I would suggest the principle works both ways.

Ms. Kemp claims to have "7 generations of quilts at the museum" According to her mother's magazine article, lecture brochure, and the HGTV synopsis of the Simply Quilts show on which she appeared, Ms. Kemp, aged 48, is the fourth generation to have been born in the US. Either she has remarkably precocious great-grandchildren, or she means that her museum contains quilts made by ancestors of Eliza Farrow, who according to Ms. Wilson is the African who brought the "Code" with her when she came here as a slave "as a young girl" "in the early 1800s".

If so, where are those quilts? An antiques dealer colleague who visited Ms. Kemp's "museum" reports that of the approximately 20 quilts on display, none appeared to date much before the 20th century, let alone to the antebellum years. That is also true of the quilts pictured on Ms. Kemp's old website (one is a direct copy of a pattern in a 1980s "patriotic" quilt book) and of the quilts Ms. Wilson chose to illustrate her magazine article, all of which dated to after WWII. No such quilt is mentioned in HIPV.

But even if provenanced antebellum quilts were on display, they are not evidence of a "quilt code" All they can possibly demonstrate is that those individuals quilted - just as millions of other American women of both races have done for nearly two centuries.

Ms. Kemp claims that "So many people are using the quilt code to add to their personal platform of "Whites mistreated enslaved Blacks" or "Blacks were too illiterate and unskilled to have done this." I challenge her to produce evidence that any reasonable person has done so, let alone "so many". I also suggest that if such statements are being made, and she truly wants to stop them, rather than complain, she simply produce the evidence she persists in claiming she has.

In numerous emails including this most recent, Ms. Kemp has insisted that the "Code's" quilt patterns originated in Africa. She has not explained how patterns such as Sunbonnet Sue and Bow Tie fit into that claim, or how it could be that other supposed "Code" patterns appear in 19th century Australian quilts. I would also be interested in evidence supporting her claim that the Daughters of the Confederacy are conspiring to discredit claims that the patterns originated in Africa, and that the Southern states selected a North African motif for the Confederate battle flag.

I know of nobody who has demanded Ms. Kemp "defend" the Farrows. All that has been asked - quite reasonably - is that she produce some evidence that the people she claimed used the "Code" were (as her mother asserts) free, adult, and living in South Carolina during the Underground Railroad period. This she has never done.

Ms. Kemp writes that "My Great-Grandmother was born in 1859 died 1957..." We must presume this is a typographical error; surely Ms.Kemp does not expect us to believe that her great-grandmother gave birth to her great-aunt Ozella (b.1922) at the age of 63. If she means her great-great grandmother - her mother's great-grandmother - that is consistent with Ms. Wilson's magazine article; it's also supported by numerous US Census records, which all indicate that the only person by that name in the entire nation was born in 1859 and lived in Ms. Wilson's hometown. The census also records that Eliza and her husband Peter Farrow repeatedly state they were born not in Africa as Ms. Kemp claims but in Georgia, where Peter can be found in the 1870 and 1880 censuses along with his parents, also Georgia-born. And Eliza states that her parents were also born in Georgia.

Yet it is this Eliza who Ms. Kemp and her mother claim brought the "Quilt Code" from Africa "in the early 1800s" as a "young girl" and who, as a married freedwoman with children, traveled from plantation to plantation teaching the "Code" to slaves. Those with good math skills will already have calculated that when the Civil War began, according to both Census records and Ms. Kemp's latest email, Eliza would have been only two years old. The fact that neither Ms. Kemp nor her mother seem to have noticed this glaring inconsistency should raise doubts in any reasonable person about the reliability of their other claims And even if Ms. Kemp produced a "Quilt Code" manuscript shown to have been written by Eliza, the information in it would be secondhand; Eliza could not possibly have witnessed a "Code" being used.

Even that, however, would be orders of magnitude more than Ms. Kemp and her mother have ever given us to date. I look forward to seeing her documentation - as I have since she offered to fax it to me more than a year ago.

Leigh Fellner
www.ugrrquilt.hartcottagequilts.com