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From: Christopher Densmore <>
Subject: [UNDERGROUND-RR] Some Thoughts on the "Quilt Code"
Date: Mon, 25 Mar 2002 15:17:27 -0500


Some Thoughts on Jacqueline L. Tobin and Raymond C. Dobard, Hidden in
Plain View: The Secret Story of Quilts and the Underground Railroad
(New York: Doubleday, 1999)


The central claim of Hidden in Plain View is that a ten-part
"quilt code" was used to convey information to prospective
fugitives. The successive display of ten separate quilts would
organize a group escape of enslaved African-Americans from South
Carolina plantations and direct them through the Appalachian
mountains to Cleveland, Ohio, where they could then easily cross into
Canada. This assertion fits in well with the current mythology of
the Underground Railroad which assumes that the Underground Railroad
was a wide spread and highly organized system and knowledge of the
existence of the Underground Railroad was well known among the
enslaved. The quilt code fits into this story as an explanation of
how that information was communicated to the waiting passengers on
the Underground Railroad line. The problem with the general picture
is that it does not fit with the narratives of fugitive slaves, or
with the accounts recorded in William Still¹s The Underground
Railroad (1872) or with more recent scholarship, notably John Hope
Franklin and Loren Schweniger¹s, Runaway Slaves: Rebels on the
Plantation (1999). These accounts stress the individual and ad-hoc
nature of most escapes and attempted escapes that were done on
individual initiative and involved individuals or small groups of
people. Hidden in Plain View appears to assume a regular flow of
fugitives from South Carolina into Canada. According to the 1850
census, which attempted to document the number of fugitive slaves,
South Carolina had 16 fugitives out of a total population of 284,984
enslaved people.
The use of this quilt code as described in the book seems
implausible. How many people had access to, let alone time to
manufacture, the ten quilts needed to display the signals? Why use
such a system at all? If people had the time and opportunity to
explain the code and its usage to the potential fugitives, they also
had ample opportunity to convey the information embedded in the
quilts verbally with less trouble and opportunity for
miscommunication that using the quilts.
Secret codes are part of the mythology of the Underground
Railroad. They are also a part of the reality. That some songs‹Steal
Away to Jesus, Wade in the Water, Go Down Moses‹ were understood by
those "in the know" as being references to escaping from slavery is
attested to by both Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman. Most can
be understood two ways, as a religious desire for salvation and/or
heaven, and as a secular desire for freedom in the here and now. As
codes, they are fairly obvious, much as adults using big words when
speaking about dangerous subjects in front of children. Most express
a general longing for (religious or secular) liberation; Follow the
Drinking Gourd is a notable exception as it appears to give explicit
directions to a specific route of escape.

An Oral Tradition? Ozella McDaniel Williams

What is the authority for the quilt code? On May 11, 1996,
Ozella McDaniel Williams (d. 1998), a former California school
teacher with a graduate degree from Howard University, and at this
time a maker and seller of quilts in Charleston, South Carolina told
Jacqueline Tobin a story about a quilt code used in the Underground
Railroad. According to Williams, she learned the story from her
mother, identified in the dedication as Nora Bell McDaniel, and her
grandmother (not named), while living in Calliston, McCormick
County, South Carolina. There is no indication that the authors
attempted to trace the story told by Ozella Williams back to its
possible origin. When did Williams first learn the story? When and
where was the grandmother, the earliest named teller of the story,
born? Is it possible to link the story back to slavery times? This
information, if not verifying the story, would at least help to place
it into a context of time and place.
In attempting to document the Underground Railroad, oral
traditions are important, and particularly those preserved in
African-American communities. But is it not therefore helpful to
believe everything one hears. I was recently told an elaborate
account of tunnels running from one house to another and how they
worked to hide fugitive slaves. This story was told to me by an
African-American, who received it from other African-Americans and
the story had been current among local African-Americans for
sometime. The problem was that the house was built about 1880, and
the connections were to another house built about the same time. Both
structures (and their tunnels) were at least fifteen years too late
to have been used to hide fugitive slaves. The tunnel story was told
in good faith, but could not have been true, at least not true for
this particular building. The person who told me the story had once
lived in Syracuse, and I told him that there was an AME church in
Syracuse with tunnels claimed as having been used on the Underground
Railroad. That evening, it occurred to me that I might have
misspoken, and when I checked my source, I found that it was Wesleyan
Methodist Church not the African Methodist Episcopal Church in
Syracuse with supposed Underground Railroad connections. Perhaps I
have started my own bit of mythology and someone will categorically
state that there is an AME Church in Syracuse with tunnels based on
the authority of Christopher Densmore, who should know. We cannot
simply assume that Ozella McDaniel William¹s story has passed on
unchanged and uncorrected over several generations and almost a
hundred and fifty years. It may have, or it may contain elements of
truth. It is the responsibility of those who are privileged to hear
such stories to document them as thoroughly as possible and to cross
check them against other accounts, written or oral.
I tend to operate on the assumption that people are telling
the truth, at least as far as they understand or know it. I chose to
assume that Ozella McDaniel Williams was telling her story as she
knew it, but cannot therefore overlook the fact that she was in the
business of selling quilts, and a good story helps to sell a quilt.
Certainly since the publication of Hidden in Plain View, Ozella¹s
story has helped to sell a good many quilts.

Historical Speculation

Hidden in Plain View is filled with historical errors great
and small. William Wells Brown, who worked on boats on Lake Erie is
elevated to the status of "sea captain" (116, 118); Charleston,
South Carolina, was not the first place slaves set foot on American
soil (15); the 54th Massachusetts was a regiment, not a brigade, and
was certainly not stationed in Charleston in 1863, which did not fall
to the Union Army until 1865 (175); Robert Purvis was head of the
Philadelphia, not the New York, Vigilance Committee (173); it was
John Brown, not Nat Turner, who attempted to take a Virginia Armory
(172); George Rawick, born in 1929, did not compile slave interviews
for the WPA in 1936 to 1938 (62); the American Revolution was not
over by 1776 (57). The list could go on.
The book also contains many speculations, particularly about
Prince Hall Masons. The author suggest that it is not "too
far-fetched to believe that free blacks in North, some of the Prince
Hall Masons, would have traveled to South Carolina prior to the Civil
War to conduct business" (105). It is in fact very far-fetched to
think of free African-Americans traveling to South Carolina before
the Civil War given that state¹s laws to prevent just such a thing
from occurring. We are told (11) that "many abolitionists were
Masons" but no source is given for this claim. Possibly, but many
abolitionists also mistrusted secret societies such as the Masons as
a matter of principle. Certainly the Prince Hall Masons, and other
African-American organizations, were important in the North and in
Canada, but can we therefore assume that their reach extended deep
into the South? Perhaps, but we need more documentation.

African and Masonic Symbolism

Much of Hidden in Plain View concerns designs and meanings of
designs from African and/or Masonic traditions and cultures. While
this discussion is interesting, it seems largely extraneous. It does
reinforce the concept that designs can carry meaning to those who can
interpret them, but the designs in the quilt code are common to
quilters of the nineteenth century, white and black, and it is not
remarkable that quilters have names and stories about the meanings
of designs. The fact that quilt designs can convey information, and
that information may be specific to a particular group of people,
does little to prove or disprove this particular story.

Conclusion

In the end we have an interesting story about a secret code
carried in quilts. This story may contain authentic elements of
remembered lore; it may have been a patchwork of some remembered
information pieced together with the tellers own speculations,
speculations which may be influenced by the 20th century mythology of
the Underground Railroad; it may be a fabrication intended to sell
quilts. It should not be assumed to be, in the form that it was
presented by Ozella McDaniel Williams in 1996, an unquestionable
account of how the Underground Railroad worked one hundred and fifty
years before. It contradicts what is known about escapes from the
deep south‹ the efforts of individuals or very small groups done on
their own initiative largely without the help of or knowledge of an
Underground Railroad.. Hidden in Plain View is an interesting story
about a code and an interesting account of African and
African-American design and quilting, but fails, in my mind, to
support the claim that there was an elaborate quilt code used in a
well organized escape route from South Carolina to Canada.

Christopher Densmore
March 20, 2002


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