Connie Martin will present her lecture “Pre-Civil War Quilts: Secret Codes to Freedom on the Underground Railroad” at 1 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 23, in the atrium on the main Prairie State College campus, 202 S. Halsted St. in Chicago Heights.
Martin will speak about the secret codes and hidden messages in the family quilts her ancestors shared on the Underground Railroad. The presentation was created by her mother, who wrote a book “Lizzie’s Story: A Slave Family’s Journey to Freedom.”
The program also will feature Martin’s thoughts on the history of the Underground Railroad, safe routes and the stories of how the quilt codes, their meanings, and knowledge of key abolitionists have been passed down to her, a sixth-generation descendant of captured African slaves forced into slavery in America.
Martin is a member of the Illinois Humanities Road Scholar Speakers Bureau through 2024. She’s a retired middle school language arts teacher with a bachelor’s degree from Illinois State University and a master’s degree from Aurora University. Her master’s thesis was on integrating African American history lessons in educational curriculum.