found between the old quilts has become a primary source of information about pioneer life. Quilts made without any insulation or batting were referred to as summer quilts. They were not made for warmth, only to keep the chill off during cooler summer evenings. African-American quilts There is a long tradition of African-American quilting beginning with quilts made by enslaved Africans, both for themselves and for the people who enslaved them. The style of these quilts was determined largely by time period and region, rather than race, and the documented slave-made quilts generally resemble those made by white women in their region. After 1865 and the end of slavery in the United States, African-Americans began to develop their own distinctive style of quilting. Harriet Powers, an African American woman born into slavery, made two famous "story quilts" and was one of the many African-American quilters who contributed to the development of quilting in the United States. This style of African-American quilts was categorized by its bright colors, organization in a strip arrangement, and asymmetrical patterns. The first nationwide recognition of African-American quilt-making came when the Gee's Bend quilting community of Alabama was celebrated in an exhibition that opened in 2002 and traveled to many museums, including the Smithsonian. Gee's Bend is a small, isolated community of African-Americans in southern Alabama with a quilt-making tradition that goes back several generations and is characterized by pattern improvisation, multiple patterning, bright and contrasting colors, visual motion, and a lack of rules. The contributions made by Harriet Powers and other quilters of Gee's Bend, Alabama have been recognized by the US Postal Service with a series of stamps. The communal nature of the quilting process (and how it can bring together women of varied races and backgrounds) was honored in the series of stamps. Themes of community and storytelling are common themes in African-American quilts. Beginning with the children's story Sweet Clara and the Freedom Quilt (1989), a legend has developed that enslaved people used quilts as a means to share and transmit secret messages to escape slavery and travel the Underground Railroad. Consensus among historians is that there is no sound basis for this belief, and no documented mention among the thousands of slave narratives or other contemporary records. Contemporary quilters such as Faith Ringgold utilize quilt making to tell stories and make political statements about the African-American experience. Ringgold, originally a painter,