In today’s Times, it is reported that part of the extensive graphics we have designed for the new monument being constructed at Frederick Douglass Circle, have become the center of a heated controversy. Beneath an eight-foot-tall sculpture of Douglass, by Gabriel Koren, the plans call for a huge quilt in granite, by Algernon Miller, who designed the memorial site, each geometrical element supposedly part of a secret code sewn into family quilts and used along the Underground Railroad to aid slaves in their escape North to freedom. As part of the project, we had prepared a design for a bronze and colored enamel plaque displaying this. Unfortunately, it appears that the basis for this theory, known as Ozella’s Code, published in the book Hidden in Plain View, by Jacqueline Tobin, and much publicized on the Oprah Winfrey show, is now being challenged as potentially bogus. You can read the full account via the Times link above. In the meantime, I guess we better dust off our computer files, and wait for further developments.
