Just a few miles away from the famous Gee's Bend Quilters in Boykin, Alabama, lies another Wilcox County community with a rich history of making magic with fabric and thread-though few know its story. The original Freedom Quilting Bee Collective ("The Bee") was established in the rural town of Alberta by Civil Rights activists Francis X Walter and Estelle Witherspoon in 1966. At a time when Black people were being evicted from their homes and losing their jobs for registering to vote, Walter, an Episcopal priest, saw the beautiful quilts hanging on clotheslines as a way for local women to make some much-needed money for their families.