Artist statement-Meg- Deborah

This is a quilt square that represents the time of the Bloody Kansas era, when Kansas had to decide for itself to be a free or slave state after the Nebraska act in 1854. On this quilt square, the crack in the middle represents how the state was in two pieces. There were thousands of pro- and anti-slavery supporters that had their own opinion if whether the state became a slave or free. We put the bullet in the middle of the state because it represents the violence that occurred in the event. About 56 people died and many were wounded. The chains and the bird represent the slaves and the whites. How slaves were chained up and had to work with out pay and the whites could do what they wanted, without any rules or owners. The significance of this quilt piece is to show that the decision that Kansas had to make affected everyone’s life. The slaves in Kansas were eventually freed because they entered the Union as a anti slavery state in 1861, seven years after the Kansas-Nebraska act. Kansas became in Unity with the rest of the United States of America.