Donna Choate and her husband Sabe standing in front of a quilt draped on a wooden fence behind them.
A color photograph of Donna Choate and her husband Sabe, standing in front of quilt draped on a wooden fence behind them. Donna has on a blue button down blouse and she is looking at the viewer, she has her hands behind her. Her husband Sabe has on a tan button down long sleeve shirt and is wearing blue denim overalls. There is an old wooden building behind them.
Donna's oral history about her life and her family's life was recorded in Sparta, Alleghany County, North Carolina, September 25 and 26, 1978.
This story is a part of the Blue Ridge Parkway Folklife Project Collection (AFC 1982/009).
Below is a portion of Donna Choate's oral history.
"My grandmother was a slave."
Transcription: GJ: Mrs. Choate, can you tell me a little bit about yourself? / DC: Well, I was born near Baywood Virginia, in 1909. My parents were James and Lucindy Greer. And my grandmother was a slave. Yes, my grandmother was a slave. My mother was raised, white people raised her, from a child up to her marriage. She was raised in North Carolina. Where do I go from there? / GJ: How did it happen that white people raised your mother? / DC: Her mother, my grandmother, was a slave and she lived with these people, and she died, and my mother was a little girl, about ten or eleven years old. And these white people kept her, and raised her. She even went to school. She had very good she could read very well. And count, too. [...]
But I have three sisters, and seven brothers, and there's only two of us living. And, of course, I only have a public school here, I guess you would call it, education. I finished the seventh grade and that was as far as they taught those days. They had high schools of course in Sparta, but they were not open to the black people. So I finished the seventh grade when I was thirteen years old, and that was as far I got with school. But I did a lot of reading in my time. I did a lot of reading. My mother and my father too would bring newspapers home from the places where they worked, and I would read the news to them until they got where they could, able to subscribe to a magazine, or a newspaper, something like that, but I was the reader.
They said the reason I read so well, I didn't like to wash dishes. [laughter] I could always find something interesting to read at dishwashing time. See, I married in the year of 1933. And we have one child, and she's in Chicago. So it's the two of us here alone. My husband was raised down in North Carolina, but I was raised practically in Virginia. But we moved to North Carolina, oh, I think it was the year of '21.
Here is another portion of her interview.
"She'd make a little flower basket."
Donna Choate is an African-American woman who learned to quilt from her mother who was taught to piece quilts by the white family who raised her. Although at the time of the interview Mrs. Choate had not made quilts for several years, she describes the process, both as her mother practiced it and as she had done it herself. Mrs. Choate had made both utility and fancy quilts, for the use of her family, not for sale.
- Transcription: GJ: Any patterns like you have that were popular, like Around the World, or anything? / DC: Uh, maybe so. I think my mother had that. And she had a basket quilt. She'd make a little flower basket.
It'd be in a triangle. It was a flower basket. And the top, she would use a solid piece which would be in the shape of a V, and put it at the top of the square. I don't know whether you get what I'm talking about or not. And she would piece this, uh, basket, up to the top and then she'd leave the center. Now am I right. Yeah. And it would be solid. It would be a solid triangle. Come down here just like that. That would be the basket. Basket's down here, over in these corners, down here. And then this would be a solid piece up here. And then go to this trouble, taking that little bias thing and put it on for the handle. That was work. That was work. I never have pieced 'em.
You Can Listen to the recorded version of each of these oral history interviews by clicking the source links.
Source Link :https://www.loc.gov/item/qlt000036/
Source Link: https://www.loc.gov/item/qlt000050/
Photograph Source Link: https://www.loc.gov/item/qlt000244