In 1965, 60-year-old Ethel Wright Mohamed began embroidering scenes from her life in early 20th-century Mississippi.
“She picked up her embroidery floss and her needles, which she kept in a paper towel roll, and she started drawing her memories,” her granddaughter, Lee Ann Mohamed Moore, said.
For the next 30 years, Mohamed stitched pictures that found their way into museums, art festivals, the occasional charity auction and even a Smithsonian-sponsored folk art exhibition on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. in 1974.
This is the story Moore told the Columbus Exchange Club Thursday about Mohamed, known as “the Grandma Moses of stitchery.” Moore talked about her grandmother’s life, how she was born in 1906 in a small community outside Eupora and how she married Lebanese immigrant Hassan Mohamed — who came to America by way of France when he was 19 and found himself peddling wares in the Mississippi Delta. She also spoke of how her grandparents raised eight children and started a general store in Belzoni.
After Hassan Mohamed died in 1965, Mohamed began stitching the scenes from her life with him, Moore said. Her wedding, her pregnancy with her eighth child, Hassan working as a salesman and their 19 grandchildren playing all made their way into her embroidery. Events from American and Lebanese history and folklore soon followed.
“She had a story in every single stitchery she did,” Moore said.
Moore told many of those stories to her audience Thursday as she presented pictures of her grandmother’s art. “Old Comers” tells the story of the Mayflower landing at Plymouth. “Trading Chickens for Shoes” tells a more personal story about how Hassan bartering with a customer outside his store during the Great Depression. “Busy Bathroom” depicts Mohamed’s family crammed into one tiny room.
“With eight children and two parents and one bathroom, that’s sort of self explanatory,” Moore said.
Mohamed even stitched the scenes at the festivals she attended. “Folklife Festival” shows Mississippi folk artists set up on the National Mall with the Washington Monument towering over them. Mohamed attended the festival in 1974 after a scout with the Smithsonian discovered her work at an arts festival in Jackson. It was a big step for a woman who, Moore said, initially didn’t want to show her stitches to anyone but her grandchildren.
Nor was it the last such festival Mohamed attended. She presented her stitches at another two years later in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the scene of which she also stitched — leaving the needle she used stuck between stitches beside her signature.
That sort of thing was pretty typical of Mohamed, who sometimes incorporated paper, leaves, beads and even locks of her own hair in her embroidery, Moore said.
“She used a lot of different things other than just the embroidery,” she said.
Mohamed always began by sketching the scene in pencil and then going over it with stitches. Once she made a stitch she never removed it — even if the person she was stitching turned out ugly.
“They were born that way, as she would say,” Moore said.
The stitches are important pieces of history and art, Moore said, portraying Mississippi customs and events, and showing how people like her grandfather made a living. Many of the stitches attract tourists at Mama’s Dream World museum in Belzoni, while others are scattered in other museums.
But the stitches are also a personal account of Moore’s family’s history. Moore, herself ,appears in multiple stitches. And while she acknowledges the importance of depicting Mississippi customs, her favorite of Mohamed’s stitches is “My Grandchildren at Play.”
“Because she did that one with all the grandchildren,” Moore said.
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