Claims of Coded Messages
Many internet sources and popular books claim that songs such as "Wade in the Water" contained explicit instructions to fugitive slaves on how to avoid capture, and on which routes to take to successfully make their way to freedom. "Wade in the Water" allegedly recommends leaving dry land and taking to the water as a strategy to throw pursuing bloodhounds off one's trail. "The Gospel Train", "Song of the Free", and "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" are likewise supposed to contain veiled references to the Underground Railroad, and many sources assert that "Follow the Drinking Gourd" contained a coded map to the Underground Railroad. The authenticity of such claims has been challenged as speculative, and critics have pointed to the apparent lack of primary source material in support of them.
Read more about this topic: Spiritual (music)
Famous quotes containing the words claims of, claims, coded and/or messages:
“All claims of education notwithstanding, the pupil will accept only that which his mind craves.”
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940)
“So immense are the claims on a mother, physical claims on her bodily and brain vigor, and moral claims on her heart and thoughts, that she cannot ... meet them all and find any large margin beyond for other cares and work. She serves the community in the very best and highest way it is possible to do, by giving birth to healthy children, whose physical strength has not been defrauded, and to whose moral and mental nature she can give the whole of her thoughts.”
—Frances Power Cobbe (1822–1904)
“We are built to make mistakes, coded for error.”
—Lewis Thomas (b. 1913)
“Joan: I hear voices telling me what to do. They come from God. Robert: They come from your imagination. Joan: Of course. That is how the messages of God come to us.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)