Freedom Fighters

In a new series of quilts, celebrated Chicago artist and activist Dorothy Burge honors the radical legacy of Black veterans and freedom fighters whose struggles exceed the boundaries of the battlefield. Through textile, portraiture, and historical memory, Burge traces a lineage of Black resistance that links military service, abolition, civil rights, antiwar organizing, and movements for liberation. 

Presented in the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) Hall, built as a memorial to Union Civil War veterans and their families, Burge’s series begins with Harriet Tubman, whose Civil War service was inseparable from her larger struggle against slavery. The exhibition extends to the Fort Hood 43, a group of Black soldiers who refused to deploy to Chicago during the 1968 Democratic National Convention believing the mobilization would result in the suppression of people’s democratic rights. Burge’s quilts do not simply commemorate these figures; they place them within a living tradition of Black freedom fighters.

In Burge’s hands, quilting becomes a counter-archive: a practice of stitching together memory, mourning, political education, and freedom struggle. Freedom Fighters asks how Black veteran histories might be understood not through nationalism alone, but through the long struggle against slavery, racism, state violence, and endless war.

Featuring artist Dorothy Burge.