THE UNSEEN HAND | GRACE WISHER AND THE FLAG'S HIDDEN STORY

An artist's depiction of the sewing of the Star Spangled Banner. Grace Wisher is one of the girls in the upper right.

Before the Star-Spangled Banner became America's most recognizable symbol, a ten-year-old free Black girl named Grace Wisher helped stitch it into existence. Apprenticed to Baltimore flag-maker Mary Pickersgill around 1810, Grace spent six weeks sewing the flag that would later inspire Francis Scott Key to write the national anthem. When the story was told, however, Pickersgill, her daughter, and her nieces received the credit. Grace — poor, Black, and a girl — was erased entirely.

Historians Daina Berry and Kali Gross have written that Black girls and women like Grace "literally stitched themselves into our nation's history," even as mainstream accounts continuously overlooked their contributions. Grace had three strikes against her in a society that marginalized Black women and girls to what scholar Treva Lindsey calls the "margins of the margins." Her labor was essential. Her name was not considered worth remembering.

That erasure is precisely what makes Pigment International's exhibition Glory! Glory! so urgent and so timely. The exhibition, which concluded its celebrated run at Chicago's Zhou B Art Center in March 2026, is now traveling across Illinois — carrying its message to new communities and audiences statewide. Featuring works by Paul Branton, Chris Clark, Nnaemeka Ekwelum, Candace Hunter, Reggie McFly, Nate Austin, and Robert Lewis Clark, the show reclaims the American flag as a site of Black testimony, protest, and public memory.

Where history failed to record Grace Wisher's hand in this national symbol, these six contemporary Black artists refuse the same silence — completing what was left undone.