Follow the Drinking Gourd

In the early days of slavery in the United States, many slaves tried to escape their cruel bondage by fleeing north—usually to Canada—to freedom. By the 1840s, a loosely organized group of free blacks, slaves, and white sympathizers formed a secret network of people and places that hid escaped slaves on their dangerous journey to freedom—a network that came to be known as the Underground Railroad.

Traveling along darkened roads at night, hiding out by day, moving slowly upriver along hundreds of miles of connecting waterways, the fugitive slaves endured many hardships. Slave catchers hunted them down with dogs. Many were shot or hanged And even after crossing into the “free” states, runaway slaves could still be captured and returned to their masters for a reward.

The most famous conductor on the Underground Railroad was Harriet Tubman, a runaway slave herself, who led hundreds of her people to freedom. Among other conductors, there was a onelegged sailor named Peg Leg Joe. Joe hired himself out to plantation owners as a handyman. Then he made friends with the slaves and taught them what seemed a harmless folk song—“Follow the Drinking Gourd.” But hidden in the lyrics of the song were directions for following the Underground Railroad. The Drinking Gourd is the Big Dipper, which points to the North Star. “When the sun comes back, and the first quail calls” meant spring, when travel might be least hazardous.

As the runaway slaves followed the stars north, they would come across marks Peg Leg Joe had made in the mud or in charcoal on dead trees—a left foot and a peg foot—and they would know they were on the right trail.

The river that “ends between two hills” was the Tombigbee River The second was the Tennessee River, and the “great big river” was the Ohio River, where Peg Leg Joe would be waiting to ferry them across to the free states on the other side. From there the fugitives were guided from one hiding place to the next until—with luck—they made it to Canada or other safe places in the North.

L
ong ago,

before the Civil War,

there was an old sailor called Peg Leg Joe

who did what he could to help free the slaves.

Joe had a plan.

He’d use hammer and nail and saw

and work for the master, the man

who owned slaves

on the cotton plantation.

Joe had a plan.

At night when work was done,

he’d teach the slaves a song

that secretly told the way

to freedom.

Just follow the drinking gourd, it said.

When the song was learned

and sung all day,

Peg Leg Joe would slip away

to work for another master

and teach the song again.

One day

a slave called Molly saw her man James

sold to another master.

James would be taken away,

their family torn apart.

Just one more night together.

A quail called in the trees that night.

Molly and James remembered Joe’s song.

They sang it low.

They looked to the sky and saw the stars.