However, I think that explanation-and the explanation of other
so-called coded "Negro" spirituals such as "Swing Low Sweet Chariot" and "Train A-Comin" are far too simplistic to me. As I have written on other Mudcat threads, though these songs may have been used sometimes as coded signals that a slave was preparing to run away, how many times could they have been sung and another slave disappeared before the massa and missus noticed the connection?


I think that accounts by former slaves who made it North (and later by their descendants) are probably responsible for the contemporaneous and historical views that codes were used.

~Susan