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From: Marilyn Demas <>
Subject: Re: [UNDERGROUND-RR] Some Thoughts on the "Quilt Code"
Date: Tue, 26 Mar 2002 08:38:36 -0800
References: <v0422080fb8c535f91199@[130.58.88.157]>


Hello Christopher,
You have certainly given us a lot to think about and to research. I agree with you that the use of following quilts was
perhaps not as open and or as wide spread as indicated, but I do believe that there were enough instances of this that it is
worth looking into - not discarding the premise altogether, which I think you yourself are suggesting.

I don't know about the Masons per se as abolitionists but in that a lot of Methodists were Masons and a lot of Methodists
were abolitionists, what we might be looking at is the Methodists and not necessarily the Masons.

Thank you for your most thoughtful & thought provoking message!!!
marilyn

Christopher Densmore wrote:

> 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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