Jo Baker’s Birthday

This painted quilt by the artist Faith Ringgold tells a story of a fictional African American woman, Willia Maria Simone, living in France in the 1920s. In panels of text along the top and bottom of the quilt, Willia explains that she is painting a portrait of the famous St. Louis–born dancer Josephine Baker. The quilt is one of a series by Ringgold in which she sought to redress the absence of Black women in art history. Ringgold stated, “The reason why I began making quilts is because I wrote my autobiography in 1980 and couldn’t get it published because I wanted to tell my story, and my story didn’t appear to be appropriate for African-American women.”