Fritz's Stitches

09/01/2023

The quilts are on display through the end of the month at Gilmer Arts in Ellijay, Georgia. If you’re nearby and can make it, it would be wonderful if you could go and give them some love ❤️

02/06/2022

Holding a benefit auction on my Instagram page (@ fritzs.stitches) for the survivors/families of the Uvalde shooting. Auction ends tomorrow (6/3) at noon. Please check it out and place a bid if you can ♥️

09/05/2022

The quilts will be spending the rest of May in downtown Decorah, IA(130 West Water Street) Thank you, Nori, for displaying, hosting, and organizing events around them ♥️

08/04/2022

The quilts are on display at Luther College in Iowa through the end of this month. Press Release by Luther College can be found here: https://www.luther.edu/headlines/?story_id=968909

09/03/2022

The quilts are on their way to Iowa! Thank you to Luther College for hosting through the month of April ♥️

06/01/2022

A year and a half ago, I stitched this portrait of Breonna Taylor. Shortly after, I put a call out to see if anyone would be willing to join me in using the cross-stitch medium to memorialize and honor Black people killed in the US by racial violence, transphobia, and other forms of hate. And here we are. 116 portraits stitched. 116 stories shared. 116 lives cut short. Countless loved ones grieving. And, of course, 116 represents only a fraction.

I hope that by reading these biographies and seeing these portraits, you’ve learned about someone you hadn’t heard of before. That you were able to put a face to a hashtag. That you were able to learn about someone beyond just what happened in the last moments of their life. That you saw clearer the magnitude of issues with our (in)justice system and how our society stigmatizes and criminalizes mental health. That you were reminded that we are all here on this earth trying to love and be loved.

Perhaps more importantly, I hope that these portraits have sparked conversations that may not have otherwise happened. That they have inspired us to move beyond cross-stitch and find other ways to advance anti-racist work in all the facets of our lives: in our homes, ours schools, our neighborhoods, our places of worship, our workplaces, our corners of the internet. I hope that we reminded folks that their loved ones have not and will not be forgotten.

Thank you so much to everyone who has contributed to this project in some way. And immense gratitude to those I’ve spoken to who have lost a loved one. I am honored and humbled that you would share a piece of your time, grief, and precious memories with me.

While the sharing of portraits/biographies has come to end, you’ll still find updates here on the two traveling quilts. They are currently at until the end of February. You can also always find up-to-date info on our website (stitchtheirnamesmemorialproject.com).

Let us continue doing the work until the phrase Black Lives Matter is not only engrained in all of our hearts but also our institutions.

♥️ Holli

P.S. It’s been 663 days since was killed in her own home & there still have been no arrests.

27/12/2021

Carol Jenkins grew up in the rural community of Rushville, Indiana. She was described as polite and shy. When she was younger, she dreamed of becoming a fashion model. She lived with her mother, and step-father. Her step-father married her mother when Carol was just a toddler, and she considered him her dad. Carol had five half-siblings. As a young adult, she worked in a factory, on an assembly-line, making large appliances. When the factory workers went on strike, Carol took a job selling encyclopedias door-to-door.

On September 16, 1968, Carol had her first day selling encyclopedias in Martinsville, Indiana. Martinsville had a reputation of being a “whites-only” town and was a place that Black people typically avoided. Perhaps Carol didn’t know this reputation, or she felt uncomfortable telling her boss “no” on her first day, or perhaps she felt safe since she would be going with three other co-workers. In any case, Carol went to Martinsville and arrived around 4:30pm. While on her route, two men started harassing, cat-calling, and yelling racial slurs at her. She approached the home of a young married couple and asked for assistance and accompaniment to find her co-workers on their routes. When they couldn’t find her co-workers, the couple offered to let Carol return with them to their home. Carol declined the offer and decided to make her way to the pre-decided rendezvous site where she was supposed to meet her co-workers at the end of the day. Approximately 15 minutes later, two men got out of their car and chased Carol down. One man held her down, while the other stabbed her in the heart with a screwdriver. The men then left her to die in the street. She was 20 years old.

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14/12/2021

A beautiful and heartbreaking article written by the Associated Press about the Stitch Their Names Memorial Project. So grateful to Margaret Walker Center for their thoughtful displaying and sharing of the quilts. The quilts will be in Jackson for the rest of this week and then will be heading to the Noyes Art Garage in Atlantic City, New Jersey through February 2022.

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Long after he was killed, Myrtle Green-Burton wouldn't let anyone wear her 17-year-old son's high school track team jacket. James Earl Green, an aspiring Olympic runner, was supposed to receive the green and yellow coat at his graduation in Mississippi half a century ago.

13/12/2021

Malcolm X was born in Omaha, Nebraska on May 19, 1925 to Earl and Louise Little. When Malcolm was young, the Little family moved to Lansing, Michigan where Earl Little joined Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) and publicly advocated black nationalist beliefs. In response, local white supremacists set fire to the Little home. Earl Little was killed by a streetcar in 1931. Authorities ruled it a su***de, but the family believed he was killed by white supremacists.

Although he excelled in school, Malcolm dropped out of high school after feeling that the white world offered no place for a career-oriented Black man. He then moved to the Roxbury district of Boston, Massachusetts to live with an older half-sister, Ella Little Collins. Malcolm found work in Boston for several years before moving to Harlem in 1943. There he turned to a life of drug dealing, pimping, gambling and other forms of “hustling.” In 1946, he was arrested for burglary and sentenced to eight to ten years.

While in Prison, he joined the Nation Of Islam. Upon his release in 1953, Malcolm moved to Chicago at the request of NOI’s leader, the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. Malcolm soon changed his surname to X, symbolizing, he said, the rejection of slave names and his inability to claim his ancestral African name. Malcolm was sent to Boston to be the Minister of Temple Number Eleven and later reassigned to Temple Number Seven in Harlem in 1954. While in Harlem, Malcolm met Sister Betty X, who he would go on to marry and eventually have six daughters with.

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21/11/2021

Timothy Russell was born in Cleveland, Ohio on December 9, 1968. Unfortunately, not much is publicly known about his life prior to November 29, 2012. At the time, he was homeless and living in a shelter in Cleveland. He struggled with mental illness and substance use.

On the night of the 29th, he was with a friend, Malissa Williams. When a plain clothed officer followed Russell’s car, after seeing it in an area “known for drug deals,” the pair got scared and sped away. The result was a sixty-two-police car chase at speeds up to 100 miles per hour through the streets of Cleveland.

Throughout the chase, officers gave false live reports on the radio broadcast. Perhaps the most crucial of these false reports was a statement by one of the officers saying that one of the suspects was pointing a gun from the window of the car, when in fact Russell was putting his hand out of the window to signal to the officers to stop firing at them.

Over a dozen officers began firing at the vehicle before it collided with a police vehicle. One officer got on the hood of Russell’s car and fired at least fifteen shots at the couple at close range. In the end, 137 shots were fired into the vehicle and Russell was struck 23 times. He was 43 years old. There were no fi****ms found in the vehicle.

One officer was charged with voluntary manslaughter, but found not guilty by a Cuyahoga Common Pleas Judge. Six officers involved were later fired; at least five of them were eventually reinstated.

Prior to his death, Timothy Russell lived in the Metropolitan Ministry Shelter. To donate to the shelter, visit https://www.lutheranmetro.org/home-page/donate/

This portrait of Timothy Russell was stitched by Emily Vigneaux

11/11/2021

Marsha P. Johnson was born on August 24, 1945 in Elizabeth, New Jersey. Raised as male, Johnson began to dress as a girl around the age of five, which drew ire and harassment from her parents as well as her community.

Upon completion of high school, Marsha moved to Greenwich Village, a neighborhood in New York City. Homeless and living in poverty, Johnson turned to s*x work to survive. In the nightlife of Christopher Street, Johnson found a community. After going by the name Black Marsha for a period of time, she settled on Marsha P. Johnson (the P standing for “Pay It No Mind,” a reference to her response to people asking about her gender). She quickly became one of the faces of the Q***r Revolution of the 60s and has been credited for spearheading the Stonewall Uprising.

In 1970, Johnson and her friend Sylvia Rivera founded Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR), which clothed, fed, housed, and advocated for transgender youth on the lower eastside. For two decades, Johnson performed in New York and London with the popular drag theater company, Hot Peaches.

As time went on, Johnson struggled with society’s views, constant harassment by police officers, and her own mental health issues. An AIDS activist herself, Johnson was diagnosed with H.I.V in 1990. On July 6, 1992, Johnson was found drowned in the Hudson River off the West Village Piers. The death was ruled a su***de, but those close to her have disputed that claim. Several witnesses tried to come forward with information, but the police were not interested in investigating a case involving a “gay black man.” Multiple people in the intervening years have worked to reopen the case and have successfully released previously sealed witness statements. In 2002, after re-investigation, Johnson’s cause of death was changed from “su***de” to “undetermined.” A 2017 documentary, “The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson,” follows activist, Victoria Cruz, as she tries to investigate Johnson’s murder.

The Marsha P. Johnson Institute was founded to protect and defend the human rights of BLACK transgender people. To learn more and to donate, visit marshap.org.