Carolyn

Carolyn is a female given name, a variant of Caroline. Another spelling is Karolyn, Carolyne or Carolynne. Caroline itself is one of the feminine forms of Charles.

Carolyn

Carolyn L. Mazloomi

Carolyn L. Mazloomi (born August 1948) is an American author, curator and quilter. She is a strong advocate for presenting and documenting African-American-made quilts.

Life

Mazloomi was born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, to a family of amateur artists and painters. She graduated from Northrop University in Inglewood, California, and worked in Los Angeles as an aerospace engineer. In the early 1970s, she encountered an Appalachian quilt at a market in Dallas that began her passion for quilting. She continued her quilting experiments while earning her Ph.D. in aerospace engineering from USC in 1984.

Mazloomi is now retired from her job as an aerospace engineer and Federal Aviation Administration crash site investigator. She lives in Ohio with her family.

Women of Color Quilters Network (WOCQN)

In the mid-1980s after trying unsuccessfully to expand her small Los Angeles-based African-American quilting circle, Mazloomi placed an advertisement in Quilter’s Newsletter Magazine requesting correspondence with other quilters who shared this frustration. Her advertisement and the resulting correspondence led to the formation of the Women of Color Quilters Network (WOCQN), a national organization of 1,700 members.

Women of Color Quilters Network

Women of Color Quilters Network (WCQN) is a national organization dedicated to preserving African American quiltmaking.

History

The Women of Color Quilters Network was founded in 1986 by Carolyn L. Mazloomi.

For many years in the early 1980s Mazloomi had tried unsuccessfully to expand her circle of African American quilters. She eventually placed an advertisement in Quilter’s Newsletter Magazine requesting correspondence with other quilters who shared this frustration. She received several responses to this advertisement, and the resulting correspondence led to the formation of the Women of Color Quilters Network (WCQN).

Founding members of the WCQN included Carolyn, Claire E. Carter, aRma Carter, Cuesta Benberry, Meloydy Boyd, Michael Cummings, Peggie Hartwell and Marie Wilson.

In 1992-1993, a survey of WCQN members, conducted by quilter Sandra German, indicated members had low expectations for fairness, acceptance, and success from traditional or mainstream quilting ventures (e.g., quilt guilds, magazines, contests).

Cultural heritage

Cultural heritage is the legacy of physical artifacts and intangible attributes of a group or society that are inherited from past generations, maintained in the present and bestowed for the benefit of future generations. Cultural heritage includes tangible culture (such as buildings, monuments, landscapes, books, works of art, and artifacts), intangible culture (such as folklore, traditions, language, and knowledge), and natural heritage (including culturally significant landscapes, and biodiversity).

The deliberate act of keeping cultural heritage from the present for the future is known as preservation (American English) or conservation (British English), though these terms may have more specific or technical meaning in the same contexts in the other dialect.

The ethics and rationale of cultural preservation

African Americans

African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans or Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group of Americans (citizens or residents of the United States) with total or partial ancestry from any of the Black racial groups of Africa. The term may also be used to include only those individuals who are descended from enslaved Africans. As a compound adjective the term is usually hyphenated as African-American.

African Americans constitute the third largest racial and ethnic group in the United States (after White Americans and Hispanic and Latino Americans). Most African Americans are of West and Central African descent and are descendants of enslaved blacks within the boundaries of the present United States. On average, African Americans are of 78 percent West African, 19 percent European and 3 percent Native American heritage, with very large variation between individuals. Immigrants from some African, Caribbean, Central American, and South American nations and their descendants may or may not also self-identify with the term.