Really listens a mission this day and age Kelly and Tilma and returning the page, we're talking family matters.

It's about those times.

Ellen, what happened three.

Between the line with Kelly and me?

Welcome to the fam, Elise, Kelly, Welcome to the family, y'all.

Welcome, welcome, welcome.

Yes, I'm Kelly and I'm Telma.

And in the nineties we both start in the sitcom Family Matters.

Now for today, we rewatch season one, episode eleven, The Quilt, which just may be my all time favorite episode of this show.

I mean, it was so good at a great episode for you, Kelly, and may I say before we get started, girl, you did the damn thing.

I'm just too sorry if you did this show.

I always thought about it as being Rosetta's show, but girl, I have not watched it, not one time without crying, not one time.

That scene with you and that's.

My favorite episode two is.

Just w underful.

So I just wanted to throw that in before we get into anything else.

I just wanted to say that because I sincerely mean that you really were excellent.

What were you like thirteen?

Twelve?

Actually it was twelve because we started the show when I was eleven, so by the time we were startling.

That's right, that's right, season girl.

Do you guys remember you guys were so so supportive in that show.

We were so proud of you.

That's the best thing about being in seas with pros.

Not only are they responsible for their own stuff, they totally can help push you through the scene.

It's so yeah.

Oh, we didn't need to push you anywhere, baby, you were on that scene.

And I think it had a lot to do with the writing.

The writing was really good.

They always say, if it ain't on the page, it ain't on the stage.

A girl like I said, I wanted to start the show just telling you how proud I am of you, and what a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, wonderful acting performance.

It was just wonderful.

But other than that, girl, before we get all into that, let's start out with what up girl?

What's up with you?

Girl?

I tell you, I believe my house is going to become the Doctor Doolittle House of the Hill.

Oh no, we had hummingbirds that were born in a potted plant next to our living room window.

So now the hummingbirds have up and flown away.

They're just coming back to eat.

And now we have a nest in the front yard in the Fikers tree right by the front door.

Doves.

Oh wow, I have a bird sanctuary now, and the doves are sitting on the nest.

I had to read up about it because I was worried that something was wrong with them.

But for the last five or six days they've been on the nest constantly, which means in about a week and a half I'm gonna have some little dub babies by the window.

I'm so excited.

I must say, though, if you're gonna be an animal squatter, your house is like legit, the place that you want to be.

It really is.

That place is palatial.

It's so fabulous.

Oh my god, the views to everything, it's so fast.

It's a big old yard.

But you know, my views are being slightly interrupted by construction.

Now there is a massive condo being built down the hill off.

Oh we still got a view, don't worry about it.

Oh yeah, that's what I'm saying.

From your house, you got a view to Heaven.

Well the birds must think so.

And to top it off, I let the dogs out this morning when I was putting birds set out for the doves because I'm worried that she's not eating enough and a dove got in the house.

So that's what we were doing before.

Before we had to not chase the dove, but gently has scored the dove out of it.

Now, you know, my people from the country, did you look it up?

What it means?

What?

No?

I don't know people, but I'm asking dove is a represents peace?

Nice?

Yeah?

Nice?

So that's what's happening.

What's happening with you, girl?

What is happening in your life?

What's happening with me is that you know, I use this platform as a way to write letters to people that do stuff that ain't right.

Okay, so this is my thing.

Am I the only one who is completely ticked off with having to pay for streaming and then still watch commercials?

Girl?

I found that out last night.

I was watching Amazon Time and there were commercials.

I was like, what am I watching?

But guess what hasn't stopped the fee?

Of course not?

You still, of course not, And it's probably gonna go up.

It's probably gonna go up.

Girl.

We have every streaming service known to mand we all do.

It's ridiculous.

It's ridiculous.

Huh.

So what are you gonna do?

Stop paying?

Just keep paying, keep paying.

Okay, Well, enough of that.

Today's episode aired on December eighth, nineteen eighty nine.

So before we go any further, Kelly, what's going on in the world around that time, except for you being twelve and being a storied act all.

Well, you ask great questions.

Take your number one song on the Billboard R and B Singles chart was still Don't Take It Personal by Jermaine Jackson.

Oh he was working.

Huh, baby, Jackson's still in control.

That's like three weeks in a row.

Jackson's headed down, baby.

Yeah, they had the formula.

So also a couple of very significant happenings that were very relevant to this particular episode, one being on December fourth, nineteen eighty nine, the Barnett Aiden Collection, one of the nation's first and most significant private collections of africanamer American art, was so for listened to this six million dollars to the Florida Endowment Fund.

Now.

This collection, founded by Alonzo j Aiden and James B.

Hering in nineteen forty three, included works by prominent African American artists and played a crucial role in preserving and showcasing black art.

In December nineteen eighty nine, the Smithsonian Institution took a significant step forward establishing a museum dedicated to African American history and culture.

The Institution hired Claudine Brown and the Steam Museum administrator to conduct a formal study and the feasibility of creating such a museum, and this initiative marked a pivotal moment in the eventual establishment of the National Museum the African American History and Culture.

Yeah, there's a little bit of irony with that just reading that now, with things being the way they are in our little world.

Well, like I said before, today's episode is the Quilt.

Now.

It was written by a young man by the name of David Scott Richardson and directed by Peter Baldwin.

Yes, now, this young man, Scott Richardson was twenty seven I believe when he wrote this.

He died three years after he wrote this episode.

Are you serious?

So I'm gonna call Bob and find out if we can get a little more story about this young man and how a twenty seven year old came to write a script that was so just deep and really rooted in African American history.

By Bob Hi.

Henny, Hi, Hi, how are you.

I'm great, you look wonderful as.

Oh oh, I'm so happy to see you.

Bob.

I told you you're gonna get tired of it.

Never never, never For you.

All the two people that might not know who this gentleman is, we have another where we talk about him extensively.

I won't give his seven thousand and five hundred credits this time, but suffice to say that just about every classic sitcom in the eighties and nineties he was an executive producer on it.

Of course, Family Matters being one of the greatest shows he ever produced.

So we want to welcome back our friend and family, Bob Boyette.

Well, thank you for having me.

It's a pleasure to be here.

We love the quilt.

That was one of everyone's favorite shows.

So we just really wanted to just ask you more about how that show came to be.

So do you remember anything about what inspired this particular episode?

Do you remember any of it?

Yeah, of course I remember it.

It was in our first season.

We were looking for things that were authentic about a black family.

Black families then were not recording their history on DVDs or cassettes, other ways keeping scrapbooks and journals, you know, and quilts were one of the ways because it was passed down through generations and it had a lot of meaning.

And so it was interesting because at the time that we were doing this show, the AIDS crisis was coming on and the quilts were an important part of that, and we thought, well, it's very relevant to show another amazing historical reference for quilts.

We did do some research about it, and it was generational in many black families.

Absolutely.

That was the keepsake.

And the other thing was it was our first season and we were looking for shows that would be aired during the Christmas season, so we were looking for shows that had a little more heart and some emotional content to them.

Oh, those were some of the factors that went into it.

So the writer David Scott Richardson, was it somebody that you knew.

Did he'd just come in with an idea or how did as a.

Young writer that we knew but we really hadn't worked with on other series.

So many of our writers worked with.

Us on numerous series, but David was really kind of new to us, to be honest.

I think the quote was an idea that came up in the room.

So I'm not in the writing room.

So I think everybody played some part in pitching for that episode.

Now I don't know was he black or white.

I don't know David was white.

That's interesting, Yeah, yeah, And I know you were raised in an environment that black women nurtured you, so I knew that you had that kind of history.

We noticed that in the show too, because it's the way that black women are written in Family Matters is so beautiful.

Like we were looking at the earlier episodes were how Tellman Joe Marie got along, and how Mother Winslow was creating carbon copies of ourself through the generations of that It was really done.

Well where did that come from?

You?

Well, I think we all played a part in it.

But yes, I had a tremendous respect for the characters.

Actually, Telma introduced me to Rosetta, who was playing the part of Mother Winslom, and she was so wonderful that we did not only have her come in to just play the part, we also were rich with her stories and a really important member of the family every way.

And an important member of this industry for us.

Yeah, yes, yes, because you know, people didn't know this, but she had formed a theater in New York, our own theater and was very successful.

Yes, I remember you all sent me there once to give her an award.

Yeah, at her.

Theater, and Amasa is still going.

It's still going, It absolutely is.

And it was so diverse.

I love that she wanted everybody to work.

There was no colorism, none of that.

She wanted everyone to work.

And when I think about it, she was a strong, disciplined black woman.

So she was perfect for Mother Winslow and to embody that.

That's why I think the scene with you, you, Kelly and Mother Winslow, it was just so just heart tugging and so real.

It was one of those things where you weren't acting, you were just delivering what was on the page.

But so much more than that, so much more than that.

Thank you so much, having a pleasure seeing you all today and getting to talk with you.

Don't think you got rid of us now.

You know, we don't call you back.

You're not going to see us for a while.

No, we'll wait till you come back, though.

I'm always available to you.

All right, Sweet, We love you.

Thank you so much, Thank you so much, Bye bye, bye bye.

This is a pretty emotionally resonant episode.

It's all about the importance of family history and record keeping, which is especially important for African American folks.

Girl, I cry every time I watch it.

It just touches my heart.

But I also just want to take a moment again to acknowledge David Scott Richardson, who wrote just a truly, truly beautiful episode and tragically passed away, as I said, at only thirty years old, just three years after this episode aired.

It's really notable that somebody so young was able to capture the spirit of this story so well.

So bless you David for blessing us with this episode.

I think what you're saying is so right because oftentimes, because we see actors, they usually get all of the credit for all everything that goes on the credit.

But this was a very important story and he deserves his flowers for it.

He really did a wonderful job and captured everyone.

Even Judy got lines.

I mean, he gave Judy some lines.

Judy got attitude, shaking them pigtails and just going on.

And I love the fact they didn't not clutter it with Steve, but not have Steve in this episode, especially because he's coming up real soon.

Yes, do you think that that's why though, that they didn't feel like that they needed the comic relief apps in the beginning of Absolutely it was not needed, and it would have been confusing, especially in an episode like this, because had he been a part of the cast, he'd have been in there, you know, in this episode.

So okay, so let's start at the open, and we see you feeding poor little Ritchie living bacon baby food.

Sick that I think it is.

I think it is nothing I would have bought at the store, But of course it works in the episode because, let's face it, your faux bro barely ate bread.

I mean, he was so particular about everything.

Why was he?

I mean, is it because you had like people to service.

His path every need?

Yes?

Basically he was the first boy in our family in seven years.

So for the first year, even though he started walking at ten months, I don't think his feet touched the foot.

We just passed him around like it was a doll.

Look what I got.

Look here, you haven't you want him?

I mean, he was just my grandmother who would not pour me a bowl of cereal would get a peel of potato because he liked French fries and cut up a potato, oh wow, and make him whatever he wanted fresh.

He didn't have to go to McDonalds.

He could go to the kitchen.

He was spoiled.

That's so funny.

We never talk about that either, like the how we deify, because we talk about it in other cultures, specifically firstborn boys boys in the well.

He was the first one in thirty seven years, so he had a pretty much made in shame for years before anybody else had another boy.

It was just.

Such a good guy served me, you know.

But he wouldn't need any girl.

When he was little, his best friend was Chinese, and so he would go over to spend the night.

Now they made homemade food that he covets.

Now any chance he can get nice.

But I would have to stop at McDonald's on the way to their house so he would have something to eat because he would not touch their food.

That's how particular he was.

Now say, this is why Hollywood thinks you are like the favorite person ever because you would actually stop at McDonald's.

Now, my mother rolled past every McDonald's from here and to the West Jiblip and it ain't stopped one time, even after he became the dollar, meaning no, I'm not bounding.

Well, I didn't want them to have to go because they would have gotten up and gone and got a hamburger too.

Yeah, he's very particular.

He's a child that's never eating pie, never really eating cake pie.

He doesn't even know what a pie tastes like.

He's never He just looked at it and decided he never wanted to eat it, and he never has.

He's weird.

But let's get on with the episode.

We got the other things talk about now.

His strange eating habits more or less story.

Baby food is nasty.

Don't make your baby eat liver and onions.

Oh they hadn't thrown the onions yet, right.

Okay, So we find the children putting together stuff for a garage cells if they can make money to buy VCR.

I remember our firsus, y'all, baby, that we were first people to have it in our family too, baby, and we came in.

Oh heck care.

Everybody wanted to come over watch the little VCR.

Now what I love about you?

You the business woman?

You gamble?

What don't you do your boss everybody around you lie.

You're just out right lie.

Sometimes you said what strengthening the truth?

But you are really funny in this episode.

I mean, you're bossy, you're funny, you're everything.

Yeah, this was the first episode where Laura was really featured on the show.

So this was your episode.

It absolutely was.

It absolutely wasn't.

I don't know why I thought it was Rosetta's.

I think just story wise, I thought about it, but when I see your working it, this is your episode.

Well, ultimately I think it was Rosetta's episode because it really highlighted the values of the family and she totally was the person who set the tone for how things went.

Even if she wasn't there, you could totally tell that everybody had been giving their marching orders and that she was in control of what was happening, which is that the message made it through the generations, absolutely and that all the people there were keepers of tradition.

That's what I passed to my kids.

And as we saw in this episode, Judy was actually talking and tworking.

Well she wasn't working because we didn't work yet, but she was talking them braids though she was hurting me.

It was nice to see her little sassy attitude, because she did have a very distinct attitude when they let it loose.

Right, because it was totally her, like she knows more than everybody else.

She was telling everybody what to do, bombing people.

She could play the dozens better than any comedian you ever.

Yep, she just didn't get written for like that.

They didn't give her that time to really build up those chops and when she got a minute, she did it.

Sometimes, when you're on a show with there's a lot of castmates, they can't service all the characters.

Do you think she was a victim of that?

We all were, except for you and Joe, Marie and Reggie, even mother Winslor.

I mean, I remember times when I had nothing to do on the show.

I was there, I was in the scenes and stuff, but I really wasn't doing anything.

And the only thing that made me get over it was my manager.

I think one time I had like three lines or something and he told me how much I was making her line and that kind of calmed me down, so I was okay.

After that, I was just like, oh, okay, well I could work with that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

No.

Fact that Chris people was like there's no small parts, only small actors.

No small parts and small bars.

I've had them.

I've been there, done that, got that and the T shirt, Thank you very much.

Yeah.

Now we also find out again that this house that just keeps growing and growing.

Now we're in the basement.

The basement we didn't know we had until this week, but we're pulling up stuff, so this house is some piece of work.

Now among all this stuff, Eddie finds a camera, which he proceeds to just make himself a nuisance with because she wants to express himself.

And what was that line you said when he said he wanted to find a way to express himself.

Yeah, because English ain't working for you.

You were just a little bit of everything in this But your.

Character Rachel also finds a saxophone and decided what to keep times you gotta laugh.

I mean, what does this girl not do?

But she's totally a creative.

I love it.

And she did say before that she was in the high school band and all that stuff.

But a saxophone.

The girl will just do anything.

And I don't believe they told me how to do anything except blow and just move the little thing up and down.

They didn't give me not a bit of let us take you into the room and show you how this thing works.

No, none of that here, play it.

That's because you are on an act tour, Honey.

It be funny exactly because a couple of those notes I hit hurt me.

I like the fact that I was called hot lips though, and that was before I started playing the saxophone.

Hello somebody, Hello, Rachel had a husband.

Come on now.

So then we see mother Winslow donating a box of stuff that she tells Laura very specifically that she can sell everything in that box except equipped and she just basically trusts Laura, knowing that she's quite enterprising.

She just trusted her, which seemed a little strange to me because you know your kids well.

I don't think she did though you know she had given you instructions.

It wasn't like you were a kid that did not follow through on stuff you were supposed to do.

Now, she told Eddie that had been something else because he probably forgot it while she was talking about it.

But I think she did trust you to do the right thing, because generally you do.

But we're starting to see the money changes everything for you, baby, you're a gambler.

There's a little gambling twelve year old.

Don't mess with my man, my kids on my money, not necessarily in that order.

Yeah, I was gonna say that was very funny.

It's nice to see that mother Winslow has more of a social life than Rachel does, isn't it?

Isn't that wonderful?

Don't we just love everybody in the house always?

I mean, I do love the fact that they kept her character so youthful and so interesting.

I mean, she'd go out, she was playing tennis, she had a little outfit on car games, all that, all that.

She was so just a really wonderful character of that age.

We don't get written like that, you know, too often.

So it was nice to see her.

And it's certainly something she could do because it was nothing.

So what do you think about that rain they fabrogated for you a paper?

Guess it was pretty good for the time.

But I loved fact the water was everywhere except on the windows on the house.

But there was water.

The water.

Listen, baby, this is when we was a fledgling show.

No, I mean, I think it was a sign of the times.

Yeah, it was a sign at the times.

Too.

I mean, they didn't have the technology to make it look like they do now, So we were doing good I think for that era.

Okay, So Laura complains to Harriet.

Because there's no people coming in because of the no foot traffic, And how much money had you made?

What was that?

Three dollars?

Three dollars fifty cent?

I think you had made you work in.

The room was empty.

But finally a woman walks in to take a look around, and she's really interested in the quilt, which happens to have gotten left out on the table.

I don't know how that happened.

I was wondering that too.

You're hesitant to sell it at two hundred dollars.

Your mindset starts changing when you have your asthma attack rye the two hundred dollars and buy three hundreds.

You've just flipped.

You've just given it away.

The thing had been gift wrapped with a lovely note and walking to her house in the rain, you're just so wonderful.

So then Laura has to update the family on the goings on of the sale.

She made three hundred and fifty.

Dollars and exactly how does she do that?

Now?

Well, uh, see what happened.

He had to tell them that she sold the quill that she wasn't supposed to sell, but she sold them for three hundred dollars.

And that's supposed to take the onus off of it, because you made enough money to buy a VCI and a new quilt.

And that's when the heartbreak starts.

See, this is the problem with people.

They don't ever tell you all the information.

And this is what's going on with adults.

I noticed that when I was a kid.

They tell you not to do something, they don't always tell you what's gonna happen.

I remember one time my mother warned my brother several times tonostick something metal into a socket.

Nope, she didn't say because you're gonna kill yourself, just she just said, don't do it.

By the time he figured it out, he was smoking and everything.

Nonut, you got a nerve, Tata.

He's pretty destructive.

Your dog on self.

I'm starting to think back out of some stuff you did.

But I digress.

So it turns out you find out that that quilt is a lot more than just a quilt.

Yes, it had been in the family for generations.

And everything about their family record, their history, who married, who, who was well, who started it.

All of that was embodied in the quilt.

And it really got me to looking up some things about quilts, because I didn't know that there was actually a underground real road quilt that has symbols on it that the slaves would know what they meant users romance.

That was their way of reading, because of course they didn't have books.

We weren't allowed to be educated during that time, but the quilts told all kinds of stories and I just found that so interesting that there is an underground railroad quilt with symbols that tell you if you're safe, where to go, when to I mean, it was really really interesting.

That's so cool.

Yeah, how like people create those kind of things to stay alive, like that they're safe houses.

Like the people, a lot of them couldn't read, but they could understand the symbols on the quilt to know where there was safe.

Houses exactly exactly.

I mean, there were things like falling blocks and a bear claw meant something.

And it was just really really interesting how they were able to communicate in a very sophisticated matter for the time without having the ability to read or write, and just really touched me.

So of course Laura feels having the history horrible after she finds out what all the quilt meant, and she puts up flyers around the neighborhood and knocks on doors to see if she could find the woman and get the quote back, but to no avail.

Of all people to save the day, Eddie comes in and one of the pictures, one of the only pictures that you can even see, is a picture of this woman's car.

And that's how you and your dad are you able to search her down.

Her license plate?

Right, So Laura and Carl go to see if they can get the quote back from the woman.

And how much is she charging for that bad boy?

Three thousand dollars Yeah, talk about a mark up, okay, and then says she'll sell it back to you for twenty eight hundred g.

Thanks.

So this is when I get my chance to do my monologue, the big emotional speech, telling her what the quip meant, to the fair that she didn't know what it meant and she was sorry.

And just some of your lines, some of the one of the that really touched me.

It's so weird how things grab you.

But when you talked about how you hurt your whole family and you just please, Miss Nash, you gotta help me.

Girl.

That just tore me up.

And I love the way she played it because you didn't quite know.

I mean, you know she was touched by it.

But the way you told that story, the way you did that monologue, Like I said, I have not watched it one time without crying.

It's just so real.

The other thing that I love about this family is it never seems to be acting.

Yeah, I guess our relationships were growing and changing and we were becoming so much closer.

But I love how it just doesn't feel like a sitcom, well.

Because it wasn't.

I don't think you remember how much you guys helped me get there.

You were like.

I don't remember because I seem to think you were a genius, and I was trying to get acting lessons from you after so I could learn how to cry, because at that point, I mean, you sat there and cried.

Although I tried every time I watch you in those days, it was hard for me to cry and saying so, I was fascinated by the fact that you could just cry and a scene.

But I can do it now.

You can't cry unless you have some kind of frame of I mean, usually it's connected to some real emotion.

So you guys would talk to me about all of the things that in your life experience that could help me get there.

It wasn't fake because it was attached to a real memory of you guys pulling me along.

But you had some foundation.

Now did I read somewhere where you were at Howard University?

Yeah, so you had some foundation.

I did a lot of plays, but when you're a young performer, this is what makes it different.

You have to pull on all these emotions, some of them that you haven't even experienced.

Yet even experienced exactly, so.

You really don't know what to do.

I think it's part of the reason why young performers, after they grow out of the you're just cute stage, you can't really get roles because you're kept so secluded that you don't ever really live life, so you don't have any emotion or any sense memory.

To pull on.

So really, in most what it's like to be a wife and mother.

Suddenly you're responsible for roles with people with very complicated lives, but all you've ever known is how to be a kid actor on as show or you know what I mean.

So you have to pull on real emotions.

And this is why I keep going back to the fact that you guys were really responsible with us in terms of helping us to get there.

You helped us to identify emotions that could help us really do what we needed to do.

Well.

I thank you for allowing us even a little bitty part of that, because, like I said, as far as I'm concerned, you had that.

And of course the writing helped.

I mean they all say if it ain't on the page, it ain't on the stage exactly.

And this young man wrote this episode to teach and to touch, and he did both of those things, and you really brought it home for us.

Thank you.

And this is one of the great things about having Rosetta there too.

To talk about being on what's known as a Childlin circuit, but the used to be really great plays like Yep, August Wilson's Places used to be considered the Chiitlin circuit.

Those are like Tony Award winning plays.

They're really good, right, having performers who have really really paid the cost, and being connected to people who tell you how much this work really matters and it affects people, right, So getting to talk to her during this episode was really cool also.

And if you remember correctly, she started a theater group of her own, AMAS Theater in New York and her motto was that she wanted one of each.

She wanted everybody to be included.

She wanted a door to be open to anybody who was interested.

And she touched many, many, many lives with that theater company she started out.

I think she did make Beth was one of her first plays, and it was with Orson Wells or something, and she wearedless I am serious, Yeah.

And wasn't Bill bul Jingles Robertson her.

Godfather both Jangles.

She had history and it was fascinating to sit and listen to her.

And this could have been a slice of her life the way it was delivered.

Guys, I'm telling.

You because it was really connected to something, just like you're talking about.

It's really connected to real memories.

It really was.

And we all loved this script.

I remember when we read it, it was just like, wow, this is so good, you know.

And I love her telling how each piece of cloth had a meaning or was from something specific in each generation's life.

If they had a part of a wedding dress, Amy Rose's church dress Sunday that she wore M M.

Mother Winslow's father's army uniform, a patch from that that he wore in France in World War One.

World War One, Girl, that is crazy.

It's really spoke of the forgiving nature of black women.

Like you cut up and they still trust you and still love you and still bring you back into the fold.

The Mother Winslow's character decided to still give the quilt to Harriet because she knew that it would wind up in Laura's hands eventually, which was so deep.

Right, because the eldest daughter of each generation was supposed to add a patch for the previous generation and then they would pass it on to their daughter.

But Mother Winslow didn't have any daughters.

Yeah, So she gave it to Harriet because Harriet was her daughter for all practical purposes.

Yeah.

And also she let Laura keep the quilte in her room.

She knew that Laura would never allow anything to happen to that quilt again.

Now let me ask you, do you have any keepsakes from your grandmom or anything like that.

No, Actually, my mother has a lot of stuff, so I don't know how she plans on divving them up.

We mostly have a lot of pictures, Like my mother's a picture person, so she has a lot of photos that she plans to give.

But I don't know if we have a lot of keepsakes.

I'm actually thinking about making a quilte for my kids.

That's actually a great idea.

Wow, yeah, what about you?

Do you have anything from Bertha?

I can't have some of my grandmother's jewelry and something that I can never wear, but I bought it for so I took it back when she passed away.

Her first fur.

Oh nice, oh, bab you can't be in the Midwest without a fur come on.

Coat, honey?

That was my grandmother.

Had no qualms about spending my money, none at fall.

Oh, I bought it a fur coat.

You know what she said?

Why didn't you get me a hat?

I had to go buy her hat.

If that had mink shoes, she'd have had those on too.

I love it.

I love it?

Why not?

My grandfaby was taking care of me, how.

About and bragging about it to anybody who would listen anywhere.

Do you have a picture on her?

Now?

Do I have a picture of her in it or in the fur.

Yeah, I think I do.

Yeah, I think I do.

Actually, I hope we can post that.

I think it's a great idea though, for you to do a quilt for your kids.

I wish I had thought of that.

Yeah, by the time I got to it and Jerald would have to finish it, we'd be pulling fabric for the rest of our lives.

I could totally see him quilty putting it together.

Swing lo.

Oh gosh, that's funny.

So instead of we usually do our funky facts or whatever, but we thought that we would continue on in the discussion that we're having about quilting and how that embodies the legacy of Black America.

Yes, the history of quilting and Black American culture began as early as the seventeenth century.

Enslaved women made patchwork blankets, threading, sewing, and quilting together scraps from fabric from slave owners households.

Sounds like that was not only something that they were creating and making, but also a time of community where they were able to be together.

So I think it probably really helped them to stay connected as well.

Yeah, during enslavement, quilts from ay using whatever resources were available, and they didn't really follow the European you know, cut a square and sow it a kind of pattern.

They used what they had and they were more personal about it.

These scraps of fabric had history and stories and relatives attached.

Yea.

You know.

They were more raw, they were more personal and probably because of the kinds of things that they were using, more vibrant in many ways.

Ain't no pattern to your baby, right, And this art was passed down from generation to generation because formal education was not allowed and the easiest way to really hold people down is not to educate them.

Yep.

They thought by not allowing us to read or write or have those skills that they could then keep us bound.

But boy, ol, ingenuity is something, isn't it.

Yeah?

I mean necessity, the need to communicate, the need to do better, be better, find better.

They found it without words on a page.

They were words in a quilt, yep.

And this is the way that they kept traditional alive by passing it down.

If represented their lineage in history.

With so many of us not being able to trace our roots back to any specific nation, you can kind of see yourself in a quilt, yeah, which is deep.

They always thinking ahead.

I love that smart people.

And they were used in the fight for freedom as a historical record of victories.

It's just amazing how they were used.

I mean, just like the Negro spirituals like Wade in the Water were actually coded messages meant to guide people to freedom.

Quilts featured certain patterns to outline escape routes, to mark safe places, and all this was happening on the underground railroad.

They had an actual quilt that had symbols like a bear claw, like tumbling blocks.

Each one of these had something to talk to and they thought, yeah, that told you what to do during these times.

It's just fascinating to me that they created that and it wasn't like it was only in one place.

They had to use this to travel to other cities, and you know, the underground rail wasn't in one place.

So they actually learned and were taught these symbols by their family.

Yeah, it's amazing to me.

They weren't just quilts that kept the family warm.

They represented something.

They were lineage, they were history, they were people in your family.

They were decades and decades of history and the only way we could have it.

But that the tradition has continued on because those made by black women in modern day have evolved into meanings of exploring broader things like sisterhood, female empowerment, and black feminine beauty.

So it continues to go.

On and again that sense of community.

Sure, something about talking about your history and then participating and actually putting it not to paper but to quilt has got to be enriching for all those involved.

I think it would be just fun to get together and everybody brings something together and let's do a quilt.

You know, let's do a family matters QUI Now, I'm very just like I said, I'm fascinated by this episode.

I'm fascinated about the things that I'm learning because of this episode.

It makes me want to learn even more.

But you know what I really love about our culture too, is that even with nothing, we put together our resources, shared resources will help you win every time.

I may not have everything, but I have this one little thing, and have those two things over here.

Correct, and we'd amade something yep, like a big bowl of soup.

Just throw everything in there everybody can eat.

Correct.

It's very important that we as African Americans hang on to our history in any way that we can and without getting too political, this relates a lot to what's going on right now with critical rate theory CRT, with our contributions to this country being erased while a man sits in a white house that black people build.

You know, we usually try to keep light and fun, but sometimes life just ain't lighten fun.

There's just a lot going on right now, and we want to be part of the discussion.

Sure, we don't want to act like there's nothing going on for us as a people, but I.

Think for me also just this podcast and the way that our relationship has developed over the years, I'm so glad that we're able to be because I've learned this from you.

Is keepers of the tradition.

Yeah, the things that you have passed on to me, like that quill, it has value.

Yeah, the stories that have traveled through time.

It's meaningful.

It's the way that our ancestors have survived.

And this the way that you teach us how to survive, and that's what each other and keep surviving.

Sure, girl, absolutely, absolutely, So kudos to you.

Tell im a fourba and a keeper of tradition.

Well, kudos to my Grandmam for drumming it into my head and to just our history.

I think it's so important, even more so important now because one of the things that I think about out now is that I don't have a daughter, but you do.

And right now, your daughter she has less rights than you did growing up.

And that's a tough one for me.

I worry about kids, and I don't know.

It's a very strange time.

It's a very strange time, and you, having children, will be more exposed to it on a personal level.

And how do you prepare your kids for that?

And I'm asking you as a mom, I do what you did to me, Like you're not my biological mother, But the way that you told me do this, not that this is how you behave This is what's important.

Giving values and honoring your history and honoring your future who you are is so important, right, and honoring the future like you do this in hopes that the future will be better, which is what you do, right.

You gave to me not knowing what it'll be.

Yeah, I don't think we can stop encouraging.

I don't think we can stop growing.

I don't think we can stop fighting.

I don't think we can stop talking to our children, because they're the ones that are going to be in this world out in this world that we've created.

Yeah, but if you don't have any frame of reference, you don't know how to fight.

So these stories are important because there's a spiritual this.

You know, how I got over It really is a road map to how I was an overcomer.

And it's important because we're fighting the same battles that you thought, even though it's fifty years later.

Honestly, I thought that things would just keep getting better.

I never thought I would feel as if I were actually being pushed backwards, which is kind of the feeling I get now.

It just made me start wanting to really recognize myself our contribution in more ways than one.

So I started looking up inventors and just all the things that black people have contributed that I guess has been forgotten.

But I wrote some down and these are just African Americans who did some things that you don't often hear about.

Garrett Morgan was the inventor of the three signal light stoplight.

Marie von Britton Brown co invented the home security system.

Frederick McKinley Jones refrigerated trucks Madam C.

J.

Walker.

Wi course, she was the first black female millionaire and she made her money in cosmetics and hair products.

Patricia Bath revolutionized cataract surgery.

She was an ophthalmologist.

Lewis Latimer carbon light bulb filament.

Now we all know that Thomas Edison created the light bulb, but he created the filament.

Benjamin Banneker, Yeah, first clock.

It was wooden.

Funny fact about this is it was the first clock to be created in America and Stevie Wonder sings about him in his song black Man.

H.

Parker inventor of the furnace for central heating.

James West was a co inventor of the foil electric microphone.

So those are just a few of the contributions that we made and nobody would ever know.

And these aren't little bitty things.

So in spite of the fact that back in the day we weren't able to be educated, and in spite of the fact that we had to use other means of communication, my how far we have come and how smart we are as a people.

We were to have created something out of nothing.

A lot of times people don't recognize that they didn't just steal people who couldn't read or write.

These are people who were very capable when they got here.

Like with the vaccines.

Oh yeah, these were things that there had been practiced before the enslaved people even got here.

So they brought with them a lot of skills that nobody knew about.

That's true.

My grandmother would still go out in the yard and start pulling up stuff.

I remember one time she had chopped off the end of her finger doing something.

She was always going to something crazy.

But then she went and got some turpentine and sugar, and I was like, what are you and she just fit all on her finger.

I mean, they had all these remedies.

I remember this had to come from the South way back when.

But when your foxbro was a baby, he had a lot of problems with his tonsils and stuff like that.

He would get these fevers that would spike, and my grandmother said, well, I got to make him a bacon jacket.

Were but what she said, a bacon jacket.

So she went and got a white sheet, tore it up, got slices of bacon, and sewed it onto the piece of white fabric and then wrapped him, wrapped his whole chest and back wrapped him up in it, and the next day the bacon was not cooked, but it was crisp, absorbed all of it.

It pulled the fever out.

There was another thing she did with white potatoes.

They would make a potato necklace and the next day those potatoes would be black.

Put onions on your feet too.

So they had to be inventive from Jempstreet, so they used what they had.

We've always been able to make something out of nothing.

It's a glorious thing and I'm just so proud of us.

I'm so proud of this episode.

Yes I could talk about this all day, but I'm pretty sure you sick of me talking by now.

So yes, we're going to let it go.

That's it for the week, really, but we want you to stay.

Tuned and we're gonna rewatch each episode of filming matters week by week, so you have to make sure to watch along with us.

You can catch it on Hulu and TVs and a bunch of other places.

Welcome to the Family with Telma and Kelly is a production of iHeart Podcasts and Audiation.

It's hosted by me Teloma Hopkins and me Kelly Williams, our executive producers are Sandy Smalling's for audiation, Adam Rip, J D Hopkins, who also happens to be my son and Kelly's fobro, and Jonathan Strickland iHeart Podcasts.

The show is produced by telman I, but our series producer is Irelen Meachin and our theme songs lyrics were written by JD.

Hopkins and Adam RiPP.

The theme song was scored and mixed by Matt Noble, who's also our series mixer.

And we'd like to thank Nikki Etour and the entire iHeart Podcast team.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Follow us on Instagram and welcome to the Family Pod for behind the scenes photos and more bonus content.

And don't forget to leave us a voicemail at our website, Thefamilymatterspod dot com.

We want to hear your thoughts and favorite memories of the show and let us know if you need advice, because we're good for some bad advice.

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Make sure to rate and review us wherever you're listening.

We are so excited to have you guys along.

For the ride.

Thank you so much for hanging out with us with the quilt, our favorite show.

Welcome to the family everyone and we will see you.

Welcome, Welcome, Welcome, next time, have a great week.

Bye.

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