of the community stayed. In 1949, a U.S Post Office was established in Gee's Bend. In 1962, the ferry service, one of the only accesses into Gee's Bend, was eliminated, contributing to the community's isolation. Among other effects, this hindered residents’ ability to register to vote. Ferry service was not restored until 2006. From the 1960s onward, the community of Gee's Bend, as well as the Freedom Quilting Bee in nearby Alberta, gained attention for the production of their quilts. Folk art collector, historian, and curator William Arnett brought further attention to this artistic production with his Souls Grown Deep Foundation in Atlanta, Georgia. Arnett organized an exhibition titled, "The Quilts of Gee's Bend", which debuted in 2002 at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston and later travelled to a dozen other locations across the country. The exhibition featured sixty quilts created by forty-five artists. This exhibition brought fame to the quilts. Arnett's management of Gee's Bend quilts was not always viewed positively. In 2007, two Gee's Bend quiltmakers, Annie Mae Young and Loretta Pettway, filed lawsuits saying that Arnett cheated them out of thousands of dollars from the sales of their quilts. The lawsuit was resolved and dismissed without comment from lawyers on either side in 2008. Despite this former controversy, Arnett's foundation Souls Grown Deep Foundation continues to collect and organize exhibitions for Gees Bend Quilts. The foundation manages multiple campaigns to support Gees Bend Quiltmakers. They aim to provide documentation, marketing, and fund-raising, as well as education and opportunity for quiltmakers. The foundation also involved in a multi-year campaign with the Artists Rights Society to gain intellectual property rights for the artists of Gee's Bend. Quilts The quilting tradition in Gee's Bend goes back beyond the 19th century and may have been influenced in part by patterned Native American textiles and African textiles. African-American women pieced together strips of cloth to make bedcovers. Throughout the post-bellum years and into the 20th century, Gee's Bend women made quilts to keep themselves and their children warm in unheated shacks that lacked running water, telephones and electricity. Along the way they developed a distinctive style, noted for its lively improvisations and geometric simplicity. Many of the quilts are a departure from classical quilt making, bringing to mind a minimalist quality. This could also have been influenced by the isolation of their location, which necessitated using whatever materials were on