Gee's Bend - Judge Grants Motion to Suspend Deadlines

Last week United States Magistrate Judge Bert W. Milling, Jr granted defendants' joint motion for suspension of deadlines in the three separate suits by Annie Mae Young (Plaintiff), Loretta Pettway (plaintiff), and Lucinda Pettway Frankin (plaintiff) vs. Tinwood Ventures, et al. (Defendants). The suspension will give all parties the chance to get together and settle matters among themselves. The judge further required the parties to notify the Court immediately if any of the actions in the various suits are settled. Judge Milling has given the parties until Thursday, April 24, 2008 to file "a joint status report on their efforts towards a global settlement of all three actions." (photo The Quilts of Gees Bend collection from Kathy Ireland Worldwide at Heimtextil.)

You can read more about the three suits by clicking here and reading past blog posts.

So, what do you think? Will the parties settle within the next 150ish days?

You can follow the Gee's Bend suits yourself by reading the actual court filings. As mentioned in previous posts, PACER - "Public Access to Court Electronic Records ... an electronic public access service allows users to obtain case and docket information from Federal Appellate, District and Bankruptcy courts, and the U.S. Party/Case Index via the Internet." There's a fee of about 8 cents per page to access the records.

Commodification of Gee's Bend - paper

A friend forwarded to me an interesting, rather scholarly article by Victoria F. Phillips, a professor at the Washington College of Law, American University. The paper is titled "Commodification, Intellectural Property and the Quilters of Gee's Bend" in the Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law (vol 15, no 2). The 18 page paper includes the following sections:

• The Women of Gee's Bend and Their Story
• The Struggle for Civil Rights and the Freedom Quilting Bee
• The Tinwood Alliance Partnership
• Commodification Theory
• Commodification Theory and the Quilters of Gee's Bend

The paper never really defines what "commodification" means - for the lay reader. A quick look says commodification means "to turn into a commodity" or to "make commercial." The paper explains that according to Harrison Arnett, Business Director , Tinwood Ventures (p. 369, footnote 75 and 76) "the quilters retained all the rights to the quilts made after 1984 and that Tinwood pays the community a royalty on all licensed uses for the quilts made before 1984, even though Tinwood owns the underlying intellectual property rights to these."

The author looks at various theories of commodification to see if any apply to the Gee's Bend quilts and quilters. She supports the paper with insights from Tinwood Ventures and many scholars. Unfortunately, the author does not appear to have spoken with any of the Gee's Bend quilters for their opinion. She concludes (p. 376) that the arrangement the quilters have with "Tinwood Alliance, even though achieved by contract, may well be a model worth studying ..." It's an interesting read. Enjoy!

Three Quilts Returned - Gee's Bend Case

Alabama Press-Register reporter Ben Raines's article today, "Quilts returned after suit filed," shares that three quilts loaned to Matt Arnett by Lucinda Pettway Franklin were returned yesterday to her lawyers - two years after the loan and just days after Franklin filed suit and hours after a Birmingham press conference where the Arnett lawyers challenged Franklin's claims. During the press conference, recently conducted appraisals of Franklin's family quilts suggested the "priceless" quilts were worth less than $500.

According to yesterday's Tinwood blog and press release:

"Now that these quilts [quilts made in the Gee's Bend area] are well known -- and some possess great value -- it is important to protect the integrity of Gee’s Bend Quilts. To misrepresent the age of a Gee’s Bend Quilt, or the creator of a Gee’s Bend Quilt, is just as reprehensible as promoting a counterfeit as an original Picasso. Some of these allegations in these lawsuits undermine the good name and good will of the Quilts of Gee’s Bend, to the detriment of the quilt makers, who earn a living through this art. "

According to Raines's article today, Franklin's lawyers question why Franklin's quilts were in California.

"Isn't it interesting that two of the people who examined them were in California?" asked Peter Burke, one of the lawyers representing Franklin. "The lawsuit was only filed on June 19. Did they fly them out to California in the last weeks to have them examined? These quilts may have been in a museum out there or in somebody's house in California. Matt Arnett had them two years, but it took the filing of a lawsuit to get him to do the right thing."

Gee's Bend Cases - You Read the Documents

For those interested in following the legal proceedings of the various Gee's Bend quilt cases, you might want to read more directly about the cases in the US District Court for the Southern District of Alabama:

• Annie Mae Young v. Tinwood Ventures et al Civil Action No. 07-317
• Loretta Pettway v. Tinwood Ventures et al Civil Action No. 07-423
• Lucinda Pettway Franklin v. Tinwood Ventures et al Civil Action No. 07-438

You can visit your local library to see if the library has access to public court documents. Or you can register with PACER - "Public Access to Court Electronic Records ... an electronic public access service that allows users to obtain case and docket information from Federal Appellate, District and Bankruptcy courts, and the U.S. Party/Case Index via the Internet." There's a fee of about 8 cents per page to access the records.

3rd Gee's Bend lawsuit filed

Alabama Press-Register reporter Ben Raines reported that Lucinda Pettway Franklin has filed suit against the Arnetts charging "the Arnetts stole the two oldest quilts known to come from Gee's Bend." Ms. Franklin claims the quilts were made by her great-grandmother, Sally Pettway when she was a slave. According the Raines' article:

"Franklin said Matt Arnett came to her home in Mobile and asked to borrow the quilts for one month so they could be photographed and included in a book about quilts. She remembered he became very excited when he saw the quilts for the first time.

That was two years ago. Since that time, Franklin said, Arnett has told her the quilts were destroyed in a fire, accidentally thrown away, ruined in a flood, lost or on his desk ready to be mailed to her."

Also from the the Raines' article:

"[Gary] Coulter, already representing the Arnetts in two other suits filed by Gee's Bend quilters in recent weeks, described the three complaints as "frivolous" and refused to say whether the Arnetts still had possession of Franklin's quilts."

[Source: Al.com, Press-Register, Saturday, June 23, 2007.]

Gee's Bend - Can't Be Real products!

My coffee got lukewarm this morning as I read the Gee's Bend posts on the Extreme Craft blog and then went on to read about 6 months of past extraordinary crafts posts. Well - about Gee's Bend. I laughed so hard with Extreme Craft's Kathy Ireland Gee's Bend swim suit line post (I'm sure there is no line of swim suits for sale - though I did hundreds of Google searches just in case!) If you are following the Gee's Bend legal cases, be sure to read Extreme Craft's commentary titled Gee Money. Enjoy!

Gee's Bend Quilter Loretta Pettway files suit

Alabama Press-Register reporter Ben Raines wrote on Friday, June 15 that Gee's Bend quilter Loretta Pettway (65 years old) has filed suit against the Arnetts and others.

You can read Raines' article "Gee's Bend: A Fight for Righs" at al.com.

You can also click to the Tinwood blog for the Arnett Family's response to Annie Mae Young's law suit.

Paris Hilton, Black Women in Prison, & Quilts

Paris Hilton is back in jail today shouting, "It's not right!"

The Bureau of Justice statistics reports that 2.186 million persons are being held in Federal or State prisons or in local jails in 2005. The latest figure I can find show that 38,817 Black Women were held in Federal or State prisons or 46% of the female population vs. 44.7% for white women.

In some prisons or correctional facilities across the US, volunteers teach quilting to inmates. Do the math, that's a lot of Sistah quilters and crafters behind bars. A few facilities that have or had quilting programs included:

• Hiland Mountain Correctional Center in Alaska
• Patuxent Institution for Women in Jessup, MD
• Brushy Mountain Correctional Complex in Morgan County, TN

Even male inmates are quilting. Katherine Mills reports about Quilting Convicts (WCC, page 20, 2003) at the Lea County Correctional Facility in Hobbs, New Mexico. Inmates can earn Good Works credits (and minimum $0.40 per hour) for taking part in the hand-quilting program.

Thanks to blogger, JenClaire of Bayou Quilts, for letting us know about Fine Cell Works, a British charity that promotes needlearts in prisons and sells their products, including quilts, online. WhipUp blogger talks about her experience with Fine Cell Works with the quilt teachers and the prisoners. (Photo from www.WomenandPrison.org - Beyondmedia's Prison Installation Voices in Time: Lives in Limbo)

Gee's Bend quilter Annie Mae Young files lawsuit

Annie Mae Young of Gee's Bend, AL has filed suit against William Arnett and Tinwood Ventures of Atlanta, according to the Associated Press and other online sources, claiming she was "cheated financially by her promoters and corporate clients." Also named in the suit are Kathy Ireland Worldwide, Shaw Living, and Visa.

The wildly popular Gee's Bend quilts - a collection of quilts created over the last several decades by black women from the Gee's Bend, AL area - have been exhibited in museums nationally for the last four years. Several of the distinctive quilt designs have been used on items such as Kathy Ireland Home Collection in 2004 and "The Quilts of Gee's Bend" rugs. There was even a Gee's Bend debit card from Visa.

From Ben Raines AL.com June 5th report:

According to the suit, Tinwood claims to own the intellectual property rights to the quilts produced in Gee's Bend prior to 1984, and, in turn, the company has leased those rights to manufacturers.

While several of the companies involved in marketing products based on Gee's Bend quilts state in promotional literature that the quilters "receive a royalty" for every item sold, Young's lawsuit states she has never received "one penny from these enterprises."

In fact, Young said, she had no idea her quilt designs were being used for anything beyond a book, much less a line of rugs selling for $5,000 a piece. The suit seeks compensatory and punitive damages for "commercial misappropriation of her work and likeness."

"I don't know nothing about them making all those rugs. Most of them are made out of my quilts. They've got them all over the world and I didn't even know they were doing that," Young said. "They didn't explain nothing to me about rugs and bedspreads and coffee pots. All I know was that they were selling my quilts and giving me a little something for them."

The Associated Press article says "attorneys for the Arnetts and Tinwood den[y] the allegations and says the lawsuit was filed to "harass" and extort money..."

We're sure to hear more about this case in the weeks and months to come. The debate will continue .... Is the fame the quilters of Gee's Bend have received compensation enough? Give credit to the Arnetts for promoting the quilts to a worldwide audience and increasing the market value of the quilts? Were any of the Gee's Bend quilters unfairly compensated? Did the quilters really agree to give up their quilt designs to be licensed by others? I'm sure you can list a dozen other debatable questions around race, gender, educational level, income and "ownership" of art. Feel free to leave a comment here.

In the meantime, below are a few posts highlighting an array of Gee's Bend products, experiences, and research. (AP Photo of Mrs. Young by Chitose Suzuki.)