Unseen Stitches: The Black Fives x Gee’s Bend Masterpiece Quilt
An extraordinary work of art connects the pioneering history of African Americans in basketball with the celebrated Black cultural quilting traditions of the Deep South in Gee’s Bend, Alabama, revealing a powerful metaphor for family, community, and the unseen contributions that actually hold us together.
Two Histories, One Masterpiece
At first glance, The Black Fives Basketball Jersey Quilt is a dazzling composition of colors, patterns, letters, and symbols. Its irregular geometric forms are assembled from remnants of Black Fives vintage style throwback jerseys, transforming pieces of athletic apparel into an extraordinary work of textile art.
But the quilt represents much more than the Black Fives, throwbacks, basketball, or quilting.
It brings together two remarkable African American histories: the pioneering Black basketball teams and their communities from the early half of the last century, and the generations of quilters in Gee’s Bend, Alabama, whose humble and sacred traditions have persevered to become internationally celebrated works of art.
Both histories are stories of creativity, resourcefulness, self-determination, and community. Both emerged during periods when African Americans faced segregation and exclusion. And both demonstrate how people created enduring institutions and cultural achievements through their own initiatives.
This quilt makes these connections tangible.
The Black Fives Era
Before the NBA, African Americans organized their own basketball teams, athletic clubs, leagues, and institutions. It was a period known as the Black Fives Era, which lasted from 1904 to 1950, the year the NBA became racially integrated. These pioneering organizations helped establish and shape basketball as an important part of America’s athletic, social, cultural, and economic life.
Their teams represented much more than athletic competition. They were connected to churches, community centers, businesses, educational institutions, armories, ballrooms, and social organizations. They created opportunities for recreation, employment, entrepreneurship, leadership, and civic engagement.
The Black Fives Foundation inspires excellence in youth by preserving, teaching, and honoring this history.
As part of that work, Black Fives developed vintage reproductions of historic basketball jerseys associated with the pioneering African American teams of that era. Some colorful fabric remnants left from the inventory of these garments became the raw material for an entirely different kind of historical expression.
Instead of being discarded, they became part of another African American artistic tradition.
Gee’s Bend: Art, Family, and Generations
Gee’s Bend is a small, predominantly African American community in rural Alabama, situated along a bend in the Alabama River.
Its quilting tradition extends across generations, rooted in the lives of families whose ancestors endured enslavement, Reconstruction, segregation, and the struggle for civil rights.
For generations, quiltmakers in Gee’s Bend created tapestries from whatever materials were available, including worn clothing, fabric scraps, and other repurposed textiles. Quilting was practical, providing warmth and comfort for families. But it was also a form of artistic expression, storytelling, community building, and cultural continuity.
These relationships are essential to understanding the quilts. Their creation was never simply about individual artistic achievement. The tradition grew through shared experience, inherited knowledge, and the continuing relationships among the families of Gee’s Bend.
Over time, the community’s bold compositions, improvisational designs, and distinctive use of color and geometry earned international recognition.
Yet the quilts themselves remain deeply connected to the people, families, and place from which they emerged.
Mary Ann Pettway and the Making of the Quilt
To bring these two histories together, Claude Johnson shipped remnants of his basketball throwback jerseys to Gee’s Bend quilt maker Mary Ann Pettway before the COVID-19 pandemic. She could be considered the current matriarch of the quilt making Pettways.
From these fragments, she created an original composition that combined the visual identity of the historic basketball teams with the improvisational techniques and artistic traditions of Gee’s Bend.
The resulting quilt is not simply a collection of team emblems sewn together. It is a new work of art in which fragments of basketball history become part of a larger composition.
Each piece has its own identity. Yet the individual pieces take on new meaning through their relationships with one another.
Like the communities represented by the historic teams, the quilt is made from distinct elements that become stronger and more meaningful when joined together.
The Other Side of the Quilt
The front of the quilt commands attention. Its colors, patterns, and historic symbols immediately draw the eye.
But the reverse side reveals something perhaps more important.
There, the stitches and threads that bind the layers together become visible in a different way. They reveal the labor, care, technique, and structural relationships that make the entire composition possible.
For Claude Johnson, this became the central metaphor of the project:
“You won’t know about a quilt, or a place, until you look at the back to appreciate the stitches and thread that’s been holding the layers together all along.”
The observation applies equally to basketball history, families, communities, and the nation.
We often celebrate the visible accomplishments of individuals, teams, institutions, and movements without recognizing the countless people whose work made those achievements possible.
Behind every celebrated athlete are families, coaches, teachers, organizers, business owners, supporters, and communities.
Behind every great quilt are generations of accumulated knowledge, artistic practice, and family tradition.
And behind the familiar narratives of American history are innumerable people whose contributions have been overlooked, forgotten, or never fully acknowledged.
They are the unseen stitches.
Their work holds the layers together.
A Journey to Gee’s Bend
After the quilt was completed, Johnson traveled to Gee’s Bend to meet Mary Ann Pettway and see the finished work in person for the first time.
The visit became an opportunity to learn directly from the artist about her creative process, the techniques involved in making the quilt, her family, and the stories embedded in the community’s quilting tradition.
It also brought the larger metaphor into sharper focus.
Mary Ann Pettway called it, “A Black History Masterpiece.”
The story of the quilt was not simply about two historical subjects being represented in one object. It was about the living relationships connecting history, art, families, and communities.
The visit was documented in the Black Fives short film UNSEEN STITCHES: The Metaphor of the Black Fives Gee’s Bend Masterpiece Quilt, which premiered on November 4, 2022.
The documentary follows Johnson’s journey, his meeting with Pettway, and their exploration of the quilt’s creation and deeper meaning.
More Than a Quilt
The Black Fives x Gee’s Bend Masterpiece Quilt is an artwork, a historical document, and a meeting point between two extraordinary cultural traditions.
Its front celebrates the visible achievements of pioneering African American basketball teams and their contributions to American history. Its reverse invites us to recognize the all too often unseen people, relationships, and contributions that made those and similar achievements possible.
The front is what we see. The unseen stitches are what hold it together. We can behold both as one masterpiece.
Make History Now.
The Black Fives Basketball Jersey Quilt is part of the Black Fives collection. To learn more about its creation and meaning, watch the short documentary UNSEEN STITCHES above.
