Letters to the editor

Week of March 8

Breza Road is not the solution

To the editor:
   
Common sense at last. In response to former school board member Robert Cheff’s comments (The Messenger-Press, Feb. 22) on the issues surrounding the middle school.
   Our Board of Education should be looking further down the road and being a little more fiscally responsible for the taxpayer’s money. The children are important, but the taxpayers are the ones who can make it happen for our children. This bickering and picking on one another needs to stop so the energy wasted on taking cheap shots at each other can be put to better use.
   Breza Road is not the solution. It is another problem on the horizon that is going to set this community back another five years. By that time we not only will need a middle school, we will need additional space at the elementary school. Stop and take a breather. Look forward. Regionalization is the answer. It makes sense. We have the improvements at the high school to make that a great middle school. The elementary school can remain an elementary school, offering plenty of space for growth in the future. Then we can join forces with Millstone and Roosevelt to build a state-of-the-art high school that will take this community and future generations forward.
   Why waste not only valuable land but time? This would be SMART growth. If the children are your primary focus then show our children that we can work together to accomplish great things for both them and the community we live in.
   This is a great place to live and a great school district to send your children to. Let’s work together to keep it that way.
Denise Erb,
Allentown
Salvation Army says thanks

To the editor:
   
I’d like to thank our donors throughout New Jersey for their generosity during the past holiday season. It was because of their support that we were able to provide holiday assistance to the needy throughout the state. As much as the toys brightened children’s lives at Christmas, so too did the small gifts for our home-bound and nursing home elderly. More so, the food baskets provided what might be the only good meal that many of our neighbors would have during the holidays. As well, I must thank our devoted volunteers for the time they spent tending our red kettles.
   Our annual holiday fundraising, through not as successful as we had hoped, not only helps us provide seasonal support but also is used throughout the year for programs and services which include food for the hungry, companionship for the elderly and ill, clothing and shelter to the homeless, opportunities for underprivileged children, relief for disaster victims and assistance to the disabled.
   Once again, thank you to all our generous donors and supporters throughout New Jersey. Your help is truly appreciated and I hope I may continue to rely on you throughout the year.
   
Major Donald E. Berry,
NJ State Commander,
The Salvation Army
‘Quilt Code’ merely myth

To the editor:
   
As a quilt historian, I would like to give my opinion concerning Carole Nelsen and her Quilt Code quilt. I attended her talk on Feb. 24 in Allentown regarding the use of a code used in quilts to help slaves escape through the Underground Railroad (UGRR).
   Quilts being used as signals in the UGRR is not an accepted theory amongst quilt historians or African American historians. The book that Nelsen referenced by Eleanor Burns is based on the book, "Hidden in Plain View". The authors themselves admit that the basis of their book was "educated conjecture".
   Ms. Nelsen seemed to be very well-versed on the UGRR. My issue is that she was presented by the Upper Freehold-Allentown Historic Society, in a historic building, handing out literature pertaining to the UGRR. Literature with an acknowledgement on the back written by Giles Wright, a black American historian, who has repeatedly dispelled the "quilt code."
   The brief introduction that "some believe the code to be folklore" did not justify the lengthy and detailed quilt code Ms. Nelsen so convincingly related. The patterns in Ms. Nelsen’s sampler all date after the1880s, some into the late 1920s, which is dated considerably after the Civil War and when the UGRR was used. Ms. Nelsen also claimed that a log cabin quilt was used as a signal to slaves as a safe house. Log cabin quilts typically had a red or yellow center square, to symbolize the hearth of the home. This center block is usually about two square inches or less. Would a slave be able to distinguish the color of a center square of such a block at a distance in the dark? Would they sneak up to the hanging quilt? Possibly waking a sleeping dog or startle a farm animal, and risk being caught and sent back to their master to be beaten or even worse, killed.
   To this day, a log cabin quilt with black centers from the 1830s-1860s has not be found to prove this theory. Nor has any quilt been found to document a slave code. Nor has any quilt block samplers been discovered that Ms. Nelsen claimed were used to teach slave children the code. The evidence simply does not exist.
   Ms. Nelsen specifically mentioned the monkey wrench and how it was an important tool. The monkey wrench was not invented until 1858. So it certainly wasn’t used as code in the early stages of the UGRR. And wouldn’t it take time get the word around that such a device was so symbolic?
   I am not saying slaves did not make quilts. There is much documented evidence that they did. They made quilts for warmth, for themselves, and for their masters. Many have survived. Why has a "quilt code" quilt not surfaced?
   It is a lovely story. It is wonderful that it has us all talking about the subject. But to teach it as historical fact is doing a disservice not only to quilt history but to American history, and even more specifically African American history.
   I understand Ms. Nelsen’s quilt is to be donated to the Hightstown Historical Society, and as any gift, I am sure, would be appreciated, but I urge the historical society to research this subject before they display it. I am sure when they do, they will choose not perpetuate the myth at all, like the Smithsonian Institute, the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center and the Camden Historical Society.
   
Dana Balsamo
Princeton