Jennie Pettway and another girl with the quilter Jorena Pettway, Gee's Bend 1937 After emancipation, many freed slaves and family members stayed on the plantation as sharecroppers. Many members of the community still carry the name. In 1845, the plantation was sold to Mark H. The area is named after Joseph Gee, a landowner who came from North Carolina and established a cotton plantation in 1816 with his seventeen slaves. Just southwest of Selma, in the Black Belt of Alabama, Gee's Bend (officially called Boykin) is an isolated, rural community of about seven hundred inhabitants. Arlonzia Pettway can recall her grandmother's stories of her ancestors, specifically of Dinah Miller, who was brought to the United States by slave ship in 1859.

Many of the residents in the community can trace their ancestry back to enslaved people from the Pettway Plantation. Arlonzia Pettway, Annie Mae Young and Mary Lee Bendolph are among some of the most notable quilters from Gee's Bend. The quilts of Gee's Bend are among the most important African-American visual and cultural contributions to the history of art within the United States. The quilts of Gee's Bend are quilts created by a group of women and their ancestors who live or have lived in the isolated African-American hamlet of Gee's Bend, Alabama along the Alabama River. It includes a nine-patch center block surrounded by pieced strips. A 1979 quilt by Lucy Mingo of Gee's Bend, Alabama.

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