NY Times - UGRR Quilt Controversy

Check out the January 23rd edition of the New York Times. There's an article about the controversy surrounding the $15.5 million Frederick Douglass Circle being built in Central Park. The plans call for a large granite quilt - with quilt blocks sharing slave escape routes. Algernon Miller is the memorial's designer. Several historians are challenging the memorial on several fronts: 1) there is no documented evidence that secret-coded quilts ever existed, 2) there is no connection between Mr. Douglass and these quilts, and 3) to memorialize secret-coded quilts is to give credence to a myth.

There are several websites that discuss in more details problematic aspects of secret-coded quilts. Check out:

• Patricia Cummings recent article "The Secret Quilt Code and The Underground RailroadCommentary or How Does Telling Lies Honor Black History?"
• Kimberly Wulfert's collection of Quilts & The Underground Railroad articles
• Leigh Fellner's Underground Railroad "Quilt Code" research - available as free PDF

What do you think? Will a historian ever find documented records of secret-coded quilts used by slaves?

Update 4/3/07 - Check out article in Time Magazine, with quotes by Roland Freeman and others.