Rating: 
Summary: Not History
Review: Hidden in Plain View should not be accepted as solid history. The book contains many errors of fact large and small. To cite a few: William Wells Brown was not a sea captain, but was employed on boats in the Great Lakes (116, 118); George Rawick, born in 1929, did not record interviews with ex-slaves in the 1930s (62); the American Revolution was not over by 1776 (57); the 54th Massachusetts was a regiment, not a brigade, and certainly was not stationed in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1863 (175); Robert Purvis was head of the Philadelphia, not the New York, Vigilance Committee (173). These are only a few examples from many. The book also contains many speculations with little or no evidence. We are told that the Prince Hall Masons may have traveled to South Carolina to conduct business prior to the Civil War (105), which suggests that the authors are unaware of the legal restrictions against free blacks coming to South Carolina from out of state. We are told that there were many abolitionist Masons, but none are identified, nor is there any evidence given that Prince Hall Masons traveled to slave states. The book has a romanticized view of the Underground Railroad. It suggests that there was a regular network leading from South Carolina to Ohio and Canada. In fact, very few enslaved people escaped from South Carolina, and most of those by water along the coast, not overland through the mountains. For a realistic study, see John Hope Franklin's Runaway Slaves: Rebels on the Plantation (1999). An elaborate ten part code, using quilts as signal flags is very unlikely. It requires having access to many quilts or the time required to make them. Enslaved people living on the same plantation had easier ways to communicate with each other.
Rating:
Summary: Caveat Emptor -- An interesting fiction
Review: I agree with most of the reviews of this book that the material is indeed fascinating. It just doesn't happen to be true. Sadly, the "quilt code" myth has been invented by a couple of vendors who sell quilts, and now also sell books, speaking engagements, memorabilia, etc. This isn't the place for a "debunking", however. If you're interested in seriously evaluating the facts of the issue, and comparing this book's unfounded (indeed unique) claims against real scholarship on the Underground Railroad and the history of quilting, a good place to start is the research of Leigh Fellner, which appears in the March 2003 issue of Traditional Quiltworks magazine as well as the Hart Cottage Quilts website.
Rating:
Summary: Caveat Emptor -- An interesting fiction
Review: I agree with most of the reviews of this book that the material is indeed fascinating. It just doesn't happen to be true. Sadly, the "quilt code" myth has been invented by a couple of vendors who sell quilts, and now also sell books, speaking engagements, memorabilia, etc. This isn't the place for a "debunking", however. If you're interested in seriously evaluating the facts of the issue, and comparing this book's unfounded (indeed unique) claims against real scholarship on the Underground Railroad and the history of quilting, a good place to start is the research of Leigh Fellner, which appears in the March 2003 issue of Traditional Quiltworks magazine as well as the Hart Cottage Quilts website.
Rating: 
Summary: Disappointing "scholarship"
Review: I am interested in both quilts and the underground railroad. However, this book struck me as speculation and heresay rather than a well-researched record of historical fact. While historical fact on this subject may be difficult to come by, I found myself knowing no more after reading this book than I did before I read it. I'm afraid the authors set out to write a book based on historical fact and when there were no facts to be found, they wrote it anyway.
Rating:
Summary: Questionable
Review: I bought this book at an historic site in Savannah, GA and assumed it was factual. The deeper I read into the book, the more I questioned what the authors wanted me to believe. There was a lot of supposition and I began to wonder if they were 'reaching' to explain something they desperately wanted to believe. I found the book difficult to read (the references made sticking to the storyline challenging). This story is based on an oral history and I think that is the major redeeming quality of this book - I do believe in the importance of ancestral history, however, it needs to be substantiated in some fashion. I bought this book thinking it was fact, and I finished the book wondering how much of this was surmised. A very slow read.
Rating:
Summary: Master's Thesis as Literature?
Review: I can't add much to the other reviewers who have comprehensively covered the deficiencies of this book. Aside from the leaps of faith made in the research, it reads like the author's master's thesis, crafted for academia and not for actual reading.
Rating:
Summary: Facinating premise, but. . .
Review: I found the premise very intriguing. I am delighted by the idea of directions encoded within quilt patterns. I am very pleased to have been introduced to this interpretation. That being said, I also felt that the research and organization was at the level I would expect of a college freshman's term paper, not a published book. I have read analyses based on oral history accounts, I have studied papers of closely-reasoned logic based on the artifacts and iconography of nonliterate cultures, and I know what CAN be done with limited inputs - but I didn't see that here. I hope that Tobin will rethink her information and write a more authoritative next book. I would love to see the concept (of coded quilts tied to the underground railroad) presented more convincingly.
Rating: 
Summary: Enjoyed the book
Review: I wanted information on the quilts used in the underground railroad and this was the only book I could find. I had not planned to read the book just look for information on the quilt blocks used. I found the information so interesting that I read the whole book. I did not know about the influence of the African culture on the patterns used in the quilts the slaves made and used for the underground railroad. I felt the authors included other research that supported their views. So much of the slave culture was ignored and not recorded that the only information available is what has been passed down from the previous generations. Often our culture has looked down on that time frame in US history, and has resulted in the meanings of the quilts and patterns has been a subject that was not discussed or passed on. Now the people who would know the meanings are not here to tell us what they knew. Ozella McDaniel Williams does remember some and that information is share and interesting. I did find it frustrating that the color pictures did not have more illustrations and found it hard at time to figure out which picture they refered to in the text. A suggestion is to check it out from your library first and see if you want to buy a copy for your collection. It has an extensive Bibliography in the back of the book for further reference sources.
Rating:
Summary: --Sadly disappointing--
Review: I was intrigued when I found this book and really wanted to like it. However, I feel that HIDDEN IN PLAIN VIEW has no substance and offers no new information that can be validated. The authors base their premise, that quilts were used as a tool to help slaves escape, on the word of a woman who sells quilts in South Carolina. The theory was that quilts with different symbols were displayed and they gave messages to the slaves. The authors also went back into African history and attempted to tie in a lot of symbols. I believe the authors were trying, but they really had no solid information to offer and kept on spinning their story. It is possible that along a route going north, a quilt could be displayed outside of a house as a message that this was a "safe house" or something of that nature. Escaping slaves mostly traveled by night, so hanging out a quilt would only work during the daylight hours. There's a story for children called SWEET CLARA AND THE FREEDOM QUILT that is quite good. The girl in the story makes a quilt out of scraps of material that detail the plantation that she lives on; also detailed, was the area outside the plantation, which was more difficult since the girl had to have that area described to her. In the book, the quilt is used as a map for anyone attempting to escape and go to Canada. I really liked the idea and found it plausible. I think, that after all of this time, we'll never know for sure if quilts were hung as signals for the travelers on the Underground Railroad, but the idea of a quilt helping to save a human life is comforting.
Rating:
Summary: Not Worth Reading
Review: If this book were a pile of gravel with a few gold nuggets included, the gravel would be plentiful, and the nuggets would be rare. Messages, such as "go North", and "don't travel in a straight line" don't seem sensitive enough to warrant encryption into a troublesome code such as a quilt pattern. Don't bother reading this.
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