For Teachers: Activities and Lesson Plans:
Secret Songs

Context and Knowledge

Communicating through song is an African tradition that goes back hundreds, even thousands of years.  On the plantation, slaves passed secret messages through a “call and response” method of singing and by dancing in a way that contained hidden rhythms.  Ring shouts and drum circles communicated messages that their captors could not understand.  Plantation songs later became known as spirituals.  African American sacred music instructed the slaves on when to leave, where to go and what to bring.

Grade Level

This lesson, which is designed for grade 7, can be adapted across the curriculum for elementary and middle school students. 

Educational Goals

  • expose children to the musical and oral traditions that were part of African-American slave culture

  • enhance their understanding of topographic and environmental factors influencing slave travel  

  • show the importance of maps and celestial navigation in the Underground Railroad

Activities

  • Introduce your students to the following three songs. 

  • Find recordings to enliven the lesson.*
  • View the segment from the film, Safe Harbor, entitled “And they shall live among you,” which opens with “Follow the Drinking Gourd.” 
  • Provide students with copies of the words, then ask them to provide their own interpretations of each song.

  • Examine the Big Dipper constellation and ask the students to find the North Star. 

  • End with a sing-along.

Steal Away

The song “Steal Away” tells the slaves to escape during a thunder storm when “green trees are bending.”  Trees are at their greenest and have the suppleness to bend in springtime.  If you left during the storm, you would not be discovered for several days.  The rain would wash away any scent from your body and the dogs sent to find you would have nothing to go by.

(Chorus)
Steal away, steal away,
Steal away to Jesus!
Steal away, steal away home,
I ain't got long to stay here.

My Lord calls me;
He calls me by thunder;
The Trumpet sounds within my soul,
I ain't got long to stay here.

Chorus

Green trees are bending;
Poor sinner stands atrembling;
The Trumpet sounds within my soul;
I ain't got long to stay here.

Chorus

Tombstones are bursting;
Poor sinner stands atrembling;
The Trumpet sounds within my soul;
I ain't got long to stay here.

Chorus

Wade in the Water

“Wade in the Water” referred to a Bible story where God “troubled the water” at the pool of Bethesda.  People would gather around the pool, and when an angel touched the pool with its finger, ripples would extend to the people nearby. The first ones in the water would be cured of whatever physical or emotional illness they had.   During the time of the Underground Railroad the song had a deeper meaning. Freedom seekers followed the rivers and streams so that they would leave no scent or footprint for those who were trying to find them.

 (Chorus)

Wade in the water.
Wade in the water, children.
Wade in the water.
God's gonna trouble the water.

Well, who are these children all dressed in red?
God's a-gonna trouble the water
Must be the children that Moses led
God's a-gonna trouble the water.

Chorus

Who's that young girl dressed in white
Wade in the Water
Must be the Children of Israelites
God's gonna trouble the Water.

Chorus

Who’s that yonder dressed in blue
Wade in water
Must be the Children that’s comin’ through
God’s gonna trouble the water
God’s gonna trouble the water

Chorus

Jordan's water is chilly and cold.
God's gonna trouble the water.
It chills the body, but not the soul.
God's gonna trouble the water.

Chorus

If you get there before I do.
God's gonna trouble the water.
Tell all of my friends I'm coming too.
God's gonna trouble the water.

Chorus

Follow the Drinking Gourd

How did fugitive slaves know where to go?  Where did they get directions?  One story tells of a sailor named Peg Leg Joe who traveled throughout the South working odd jobs on the plantations.  He would befriend the slaves and teach them a song called “Follow the Drinking Gourd.”  By the following spring, those same slaves had disappeared.  The song told the slaves to leave in the winter, using the Big Dipper, or Drinking Gourd as a guide.  The trail followed the Tombigbee River to the Tennessee River to the Ohio River.  Eventually they would meet a guide who would take them the rest of the way.

When the Sun comes back
And the first quail calls
Follow the Drinking Gourd.
For the old man is a-waiting for to carry you to freedom
If you follow the Drinking Gourd.

The riverbank makes a very good road.
The dead trees will show you the way.
Left foot, peg foot, traveling on,
Follow the Drinking Gourd.

The river ends between two hills
Follow the Drinking Gourd.
There's another river on the other side
Follow the Drinking Gourd.

When the great big river meets the little river
Follow the Drinking Gourd.
For the old man is a-waiting for to carry you to freedom
If you follow the Drinking Gourd.

Materials/Resources

Song lyrics

*Two of these songs, “Wade in the Water” and “Follow the Drinking Gourd” can be found on the Safe Harbor companion DVD.

Songs for Teaching website

Follow the Drinking Gourd, Jeanette Winter

Map of the constellations

Map of the United States

Duration

45 minutes or one class period