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Thursday, May 22, 2003
Blankets showed slaves the way
By Victoria Aldrich | News-Journal Staff Writer
Picture this: Long ago on a frigid December night somewhere in a Southern forest, you and some friends huddle together in the dark, fearfully listening for the growls of dogs sniffing your scent as you creep through the wilderness with only the light of the North Star for guidance.
Recreating history |
One hope has drawn you down a path you may not even live to see -- freedom.
Ironically, your escape plan probably still hangs in plain sight by your abandoned cabin, unnoticed by plantation foremen and search parties too busy hunting you down.
Like thousands of other slaves who escaped through the Underground Railroad, your name and face may be lost in time but the tale of the quilts that may have mapped your route is being told only now.
"While doing this research, I learned facts that I was never taught in school, so I wanted to share this information with others," said local historian and storyteller Mary Fears, who recently discussed the meaning of the quilts, slave hymns and the story of Mary Todd Lincoln's seamstress, freed slave Elizabeth Keckley, at the Port Orange Library.
Fears said she learned the double meanings of the Sue Bonnet, Bear's Paw and other codes plantation seamstresses may have embedded in quilts during a trip several years ago to St. Helena Island, S.C., where the late artisan, Ozella McDaniel Williams, often spoke of their history to visitors. Those stories were published in 1999 in "Hidden in Plain View: A Secret Story of Quilts and the Underground Railroad," by Jacqueline L. Tobin, Raymond G. Dobard and Cuesta Ray Benberry.
Dressed like an antebellum house servant, Fears first explained the unifying effect gospel music had on slaves, who often were forcibly separated after marriage by being sold or loaned out to other households.
Plainly dressed, kerchiefed "field servant" Barbara Brockington punctuated her lecture with short bursts of these hymns, many of them now standard church fare.
"I want people to understand about our history and to understand that the hymns came out of the slave's lives," Brockington said.
"They are a gift from our people, an honor to our heritage," Fears said. "We're a musical people."
That doesn't mean the stereotype of a slave merrily crooning "Swing Low Sweet Chariot" can be taken at face value.
"We sang when we were saddest," Fears said. "The songs gave them feelings of comfort."
Considered by some musicologists to be the purest American folk form, the hymns first were mainstreamed by abolitionist newspaper publisher Frederick Douglass.
Their popularity spread when the Fisk Jubilee Singers toured the United States and Europe to raise money to build Fisk University's first permanent building, Jubilee Hall.
The school was established in 1866 in Nashville, specifically to educate newly freed slaves.
Fears said slaves paralleled their suffering with that of Jesus Christ, finding spiritual meaning in mundane places that inspired many gospel songs.
She said a worm crawling on a plant inspired the song "Inch Along," describing how the promise of salvation helped a slave to tolerate a life of bondage. Prohibited from meeting in a church, they gathered at night in the woods, inspiring "The Wilderness."
"At Christmas, when slaves were given time off from work, they took the chance to steal away," Fears said, as Brockington sampled that hymn.
Stealing away meant escaping to Canada, which refused to return renegade slaves or allow bounty hunters across its border. In 1790, Quakers established the Underground Railroad, a network of "conductors" who led slaves through wooded areas to Northern border and port cities, from which they could enter Canada more safely.
In response, federal Fugitive Slave laws were enacted in 1793 and 1850 to require non-slave states to extradite escapees, which made hiding in free Northern black colonies a dicey proposition.
Since teaching a slave to read or write was illegal and drawn plans were out of the question, Fears said plantation seamstresses improvised meanings for quilting patterns, sewing each emblem into a large quilt to teach the code.
Near departure time, other quilts with detailed escape plans were hung out to air near cabins, which also may have provided passing fugitives with directions to safe houses and food.
Few survived years of normal use, so it's hard to verify the legend's authenticity and its part in the anti-slavery resistance movement, but one fact remains: a lot can be read into the symbols if you know what to look for.
Some colors and designs, such as stars or crosses, are both tribal motifs and good luck fetishes. One prevalent example is the use of red hatchets on a white background to symbolize Shango, the fourth king of the Yoruban Oyo Empire, now a state in Nigeria. Centuries after his death, the warlord is worshipped as a Christ-like deity in many African-based religions, including Santeria and Voudoun.
Depending on their placement, blocks, triangles and circles of colored cloth also could mean the Monkey Wrench and the Wagon Wheel, instructions for slaves to pack up and meet their "conductor" in the woods. That person may have been "Moses" herself, abolitionist and former slave Harriet Tubman, who led more than 300 people to freedom. A dark triangle, the Flying Geese, marked the point of departure for a trip to Canada. Straddling the two countries, Niagara Falls was depicted by piles of colorful geometric Tumbling Blocks.
A zigzag X-like Drunkard's Path warned the refugees to walk in water, since dogs can't trace human scents in it, and to stagger their path to avoid capture, reflecting a superstition that only evil travels in a straight line.
A Bear's Paw told passing fugitives where to find food and abstract Log Cabins pointed out safe houses, where a Shoofly would help them hide. The Rev. John Rankin, code-named North Star, provided refuge at The Crossroads, or Cleveland, where they could hide while deciding whether to stay in the North or continue on to Canada.
Bow Ties warned them to dress like free men, while a Nine Patch reminded future landowners to observe African tradition by planting crops in nine sections to ensure good health.
The flower-like Dresden Plate represented a rosetted Ontario church window, the final sign they had arrived in the promised land.
Put the most relevant symbols together and you get the mnemonic, "The monkey's wrench turns the wagon wheel toward Canada on a bear's paw trail to the crossroads. Once they got to the crossroads, they dug a log cabin on the ground."
Along the way, symbols also may have pointed out churches, graveyards and other safe places to sleep in the daytime. An important factor in some pieces may have been the number and spacing of knots, known as the Ross Code. Fine quilts were stitched European-style and common spreads were finished with knots, meaning an inexperienced seamstress, or saboteur, could insert five knots at two-inch intervals to map the distance between safe houses.
Ironically, Confederate soldiers may have helped to spread the message by carrying some of those homemade quilts to their encampments and on marches instead of standard-issue woolen blankets, a tradition preserved today by the prevalence of quilts in Civil War reenactment campsites.
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