A banner across this quilt proudly proclaims "Clara J. Martin Age 82 July 14, 1964." Martin had a hard life. She received little formal education and had no occupational training. After her husband was incapacitated and no longer able to work, she took to tailoring, alterations, and mending; she cut hair; and anything else she could do from home to support her family. Between 1916 and 1919, she is listed among the charitable recipients for boarding of up to two children. Her hardships did not prevent her engagement with and participation in the democratic process. Her unique textile is constructed in the irregular crazy quilt fashion, popular when Martin was born in 1882. It includes portraits, hand-painted on canvas, of the thirty-five presidents who held office until 1964. Martin herself had lived through fifteen presidential cycles and was eligible to vote in ten of those elections after women earned the vote in 1919. John F. Kennedy is featured most prominently; he and Lyndon Baines Johnson are the only two whose presidencies are not numbered. Kennedy is also the only president portrayed with members of his family: his wife, Jacqueline, and daughter, Caroline, on her pony, Macaroni. Rather than the date of his assassination, Martin has chosen to note April 13, 1963, when Kennedy received a telegram informing him that Dr. Marin Luther King Jr. and Reverend Ralph Abernathy had been arrested while demonstrating in Birmingham, Mississippi, and placed in solitary confinement. An earlier date in April of that year appears with Jackie Kennedy’s portrait: On April 9, 1963, she had taken part in a ceremony awarding honorary citizenship to Winston Churchill—two events that seem to have held meaning in Martin’s memories.

Stacy C. Hollander, "Presidents Quilt," exhibition copy for American Perspectives: Stories from the American Folk Art Museum Collection. Stacy C. Hollander, curator. New York: American Folk Art Museum, 2020.