Lucy Mingo facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Lucy Mingo
Mingo in 2015
Born	Lucy Marie Young 1931 (age 93–94) Boykin, Alabama, U.S.
Known for	Quilting
Notable work	Chestnut Bud
Movement	Freedom Quilting Bee Gee's Bend Collective

Lucy Marie (Young) Mingo (born 1931) is an amazing American quilt maker. She is a member of the famous Gee's Bend Collective. Lucy Mingo comes from Gee's Bend (Boykin), Alabama.

She was also an early member of the Freedom Quilting Bee. This group started in 1966 to help African-American communities in Alabama earn more money. Lucy Mingo also joined Martin Luther King Jr. on his important 1965 march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama.

In 2015, Mingo received a special award called the National Heritage Fellowship. This award from the National Endowment for the Arts is the highest honor for folk and traditional artists in the United States.

Early Life and Quilting Beginnings

Lucy Young was born in 1931 in Rehoboth, Alabama. This small town is very close to Gee's Bend. Her parents were Ethel and Earl Young, and her nickname was "Toot."

Her father was a sharecropper, which meant he farmed land owned by someone else and paid them with a share of his crops. He also worked far away as a longshoreman in Mobile, Alabama. Because of this, he was often away from home for long times. Lucy and her brothers and sisters worked hard in the fields. They grew corn, peas, potatoes, peanuts, and cotton to help their family.

Lucy Mingo went to Boykin elementary school. When she was 13, she went to the Allen Institute in Mobile. After finishing school, she moved back to Boykin. In 1949, at age 17, she married David Mingo. They had ten children together. Only one of her children, Polly, also makes quilts.

Lucy Mingo is a fourth-generation quilter. This means her mother, grandmother, and even an older family friend taught her this special art. She made her very first quilt top when she was just fourteen years old.

Lucy Mingo's Work and Impact

Working Outside of Quilting

After she got married, Lucy Mingo continued to work on farms until 1965. Then, she worked as a cook in a school cafeteria for ten years. After that, she worked in Selma for a year.

Later, she got a job as a homemaking educator for Auburn University. For more than 20 years, she taught people how to cook, can food, and freeze it. She stopped working at age 69 when her mother became sick. Like many women in Gee's Bend, Lucy Mingo made time for quilting after finishing her other jobs.

The Freedom Quilting Bee

Lucy Mingo was a founding member of the Freedom Quilting Bee (FQB). This group started during the Civil Rights Movement. The quilts they made were sold all over the United States. This brought much-needed money back to the Gee's Bend community.

Mingo was known as a great teacher within the Bee. One of her special skills was making a quilt pattern called "Chestnut Bud." This pattern had a long history in Wilcox County, Alabama. At the time, Mingo said she was the only one in the FQB who knew how to make it. So, she taught her fellow members how to create this beautiful pattern.

Two of Mingo's black-and-white Chestnut Bud quilts were sold to Vogue magazine editor Diana Vreeland. Lucy Mingo and Estelle Witherspoon, the Bee's first manager, also led a team of twelve women. They made a Chestnut Bud quilt, a sofa cover, and drapes for CBS chairman William S. Paley and his wife.

The women of the FQB were very involved in the civil rights movement. Many of them, including Mingo, heard Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. speak in Gee's Bend in 1965. This inspired them to register to vote. Mingo said she "marched in Montgomery and over the Pettus Bridge." She avoided being arrested because she had children. Lucy Mingo was seen as a key spokesperson for Gee's Bend during the civil rights era.

The Bee was started partly to help women who lost their jobs. This happened if they stood up for civil rights and registered to vote, which happened to Mingo. At one point, the Bee was the biggest employer in Rehoboth. The Freedom Quilting Bee eventually closed in 2012. This was due to its members getting older and damage to their community building.

The Gee's Bend Collective

Lucy Mingo made this pieced quilt in 1979. It has a nine-patch center block surrounded by strips.

Lucy Mingo made quilts as a member of both the Freedom Quilting Bee and the Gee's Bend Collective. Both groups aimed to help the quilters earn money, and some members belonged to both. However, the FQB asked quilters to use standard patterns to sell more quilts. The Collective, though, allowed members to be more artistic and free with their designs.

The Collective's amazing work gained national attention in 2002. An exhibition of seventy of their quilts was put together by art collector William Arnett. This show, called "The Quilts of Gee's Bend," traveled to ten museums across the country. This included the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.

An article about the Whitney exhibition in The New York Times brought even more attention to the Gee's Bend quilts. The reviewer wrote that the quilts "turn out to be some of the most miraculous works of modern art America has produced."

Lucy Mingo's quilts in the 2002 exhibition often used "work clothes." In her younger years, Mingo often used old denim and cotton shirts from field work for her quilts. Mingo explained, "You know, we had hard times. We worked in the fields, we picked cotton... And so you look at your quilt and you say 'This is some of the old clothes I wore in the fields. I wore them out, but they still doing good.' "

The Gee's Bend Collective members were surprised by all the attention and praise. Mingo said, "When we see our quilts in museums, we're just amazed. We never thought quilts would get there." She also said, "These quilts just became history because before they were hidden in the closets and on the bed mattresses. When you take them out, they become history."

After the 2002 exhibition, Lucy Mingo was often asked to teach quilting at events across the United States. Also, the prices for her quilts went up a lot! Before the Freedom Quilting Bee, Mingo's quilts sold for about $5.00. By 2008, a quilt she made in 2004 was valued at "more than $5,000."

In 2006, another exhibition called "Gee's Bend: The Architecture of the Quilt" included Mingo's works. This show traveled to eight museums. In 2014, Mingo was featured in a PBS TV show called Craft in America.

Because she is over 80 years old, Lucy Mingo rarely makes new quilts now. But her quilts are still shown in exhibitions. In 2018, Mingo went to New York City for an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This show, "History Refused to Die," included some of her quilts. In 2022, Mingo and other Gee's Bend quilters worked with Macy's department stores. They sold copies of their quilts online and in stores. Part of the sales helped the artists and the Souls Grown Deep Foundation.

Exhibitions

Lucy Mingo's quilts have been shown in many museums and galleries across the United States, including:

Awards and Honors

• Folk Arts Apprenticeship grant from the Alabama State Council on the Arts (2006)
• National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment of the Arts (2015)