Souls Grown Deep launches free digital guide to Gee’s Bend on Bloomberg Connects

Souls Grown Deep on Tuesday launched a free digital guide to Gee’s Bend on Bloomberg Connects, the arts and culture app created by Bloomberg Philanthropies, joining more than 1,500 cultural institutions worldwide on the platform.

The guide is designed to immerse visitors “in the heart of the historic, rural Alabama community,” whose bold, improvisational quilts, pieced for generations from worn work clothes, feed sacks and salvaged cloth, are now recognized as landmarks of American art and held in the permanent collections of dozens of museums across three continents.

“For generations, the world has come to know Gee’s Bend through our quilts, but too often the benefits of that attention never made it back across the river,” said Gloria Carey, granddaughter of renowned Gee’s Bend quilter Rachel Carey George and an advisory board member of Visit Gee’s Bend, a Souls Grown Deep-supported initiative to develop community-led cultural tourism. “This guide helps change that. It invites people to come see us, to meet the makers, to buy directly from the artists and to experience this community the way we know it, on our own terms and in our own voices.”

Gee’s Bend is home to descendants of people once enslaved on plantations there. Families remained in the community for generations, came to own the land they had worked, built collective systems and risked their lives during the Civil Rights Movement to secure the right to vote.

“That history of self-determination runs through the quilts,” Gee’s Bend said in a news release.

The digital guide is designed to share the community’s broader story through the voices of artists, community members and leading curators, with exclusive audio and video, archival photography and practical visitor information. The guide is available for free on mobile devices.

The guide also supports community-led cultural tourism. It includes directions, including information about the scenic Gee’s Bend Ferry crossing from Camden, visiting hours and accessibility information. It also provides information about the annual Airing of the Quilts Festival, set for October 3, and the Gee’s Bend Spring Yard Show in April 2027.

“The collaboration between Souls Grown Deep and Bloomberg Connects is a welcome addition to the Black Belt’s tourism initiatives,” Alabama Black Belt Adventures Association Director Pam Swanner, whose organization supports the Airing of the Quilts Festival, said. “I applaud their foresight in bringing this educational tool to the Gee’s Bend destination. Not only will it help visitors plan their trip, but more importantly, it will connect them more deeply to the people, place and culture that make Gee’s Bend so distinctive, creating a truly immersive and memorable experience.”

The guide features new and archival recordings of renowned Gee’s Bend artists, including Mary Lee Bendolph, Arlonzia Pettway, Loretta Pettway, Annie Mae Young, Lucy Mingo, Essie Bendolph Pettway, Loretta Pettway Bennett and Mary Virginia Pettway.

The guide also offers a new way to experience “Between History and Memory: Dinah Miller’s Legacy in Gee’s Bend,” an exhibition honoring the community’s earliest known named quilter. Miller was forcibly brought from West Africa as a girl in 1860, likely aboard the Clotilda, the last known slave ship to enter U.S. waters. In the app, Miller’s quilt-making descendants discuss her lasting influence on their work, including in a recording with her great-granddaughter, Arlonzia Pettway.

The voices of artists and their families help guide visitors along the Gee’s Bend Heritage Trail, a self-guided driving tour highlighting the quiltmakers. The guide also includes an exploration of “A History of Gee’s Bend From 1816 to the Present,” a permanent timeline display at the Gee’s Bend Welcome Center.

Audio content includes a rare 1941 recording of Isom Mosely, one of roughly two dozen known audio recordings of formerly enslaved Americans. Quiltmakers Mary Lee Bendolph and Lucy Mingo also recount their fight to register to vote in Wilcox County.

“Bloomberg Connects offers a powerful way to fulfill Souls Grown Deep’s mission: not simply to celebrate the artistry of Gee’s Bend, but to ensure the community itself benefits from the world’s attention,” Souls Grown Deep President Maxwell L. Anderson said. “This guide gives the quiltmakers and their families a new platform to tell their own history, in their own words, and it connects that history directly to the material support—cultural tourism, direct sales, economic investment—that our organization exists to advance.”