Sue Willie Seltzer, born in 1922, was an African American quilter from the Rehoboth neighborhood of the Gee’s Bend area in Alabama. Sue Willie Seltzer was a sharecropper for a white cotton farmer, a relationship she describes as exploitative because she would work all day without receiving payment for her labor.[1] She learned how to quilt at age twelve and associates that moment with developing a Christian identity and with her spirituality: “A person can judge me by my quilts, because I am real. And you know why? Because God is with me all the time.”[2] In her thirties or forties, she started spending more time quilting as a means for earning income. She recounted: “One time me and I think it was about five of us started to quilting from one house to another. Quilt one or two for one person, got to the next house, do the same thing. Way back yonder. From house to house, quilting quilts. If they got the quilts ready, us used to do it that way for them.”[3] However, although Seltzer lived on the same road as fellow quilters Irene Williams and Amelia Bennett, they did not work on their quilts together. Nevertheless, based on the designs of their quilts, there is evidence that they may have had the same visual inspiration. Additionally, Seltzer and other quilters would hang their quilts outside to exhibit their work to anyone passing by. “Put it out there,” she explained. “Hang it out there and let somebody see it. They looked good hanging out there! I hang them out there so somebody coming by can see what I’m doing.”[4]
Seltzer died in 2010.
PMA Collection
Notes
[1] Beardsley 2002.
[2] Seltzer n.d.
[3] Seltzer quoted in Herman 2006, 217.
[4] Seltzer quoted in Beardsley 2002, 414.
[5] Seltzer quoted in Herman 2006, 215.
References
Beardsley, John. 2002. “Rehoboth.” In Gee’s Bend: The Women and Their Quilts. Edited by John Beardsley, William Arnett, and Paul Arnett. Atlanta: Tinwood Books.
Blum, Dilys. 2006. “A Dirt Road in Rehoboth.” In Gee’s Bend: The Architecture of the Quilt. Edited by Paul Arnett, Joanne Cubbs, and Eugene W. Metcalf Jr. Atlanta: Tinwood Books.
Herman, Bernard L. 2006. “Architectural Definitions.” In Gee’s Bend: The Architecture of the Quilt. Edited by Paul Arnett, Joanne Cubbs, and Eugene W. Metcalf Jr. Atlanta: Tinwood Books.
Seltzer, Sue Willie. n.d. “Sue Willie Seltzer.” Souls Grown Deep. Accessed October 14, 2021. https://www.soulsgrowndeep.org/artist/sue-willie-seltzer.
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