This song actually pre-dates its know performance by decades. You have to explore several songs of that genre to fully understand what is really going on. One must also posses a more complete knowledge of the culture of the south, and the relationship between most slaves and their owners.

Contrary to the popular belief of most people today, thanks to movies like roots, and the rantings of those leading up to and even after the civil war, most slaves were in fact treated as valuable assets. This in no way is meant to take away from the fact that slavery is wrong. Nor is this intended to say that 'some' slave owners were not brutal. It is to say that brutality was actually rare. Any businessman fully understands the need to take proper care of equipment, or treat it right. Slaves were mentally considered property, or equipment.

Just as "Follow the Drinking Gourd" was an instruction to follow the Big Dipper north to freedom, this song too told of one method to avoid being tracked by hounds.

Jimmy was in fact a direct reference to the crow. The reference is deliberately intended to mask the instruction in the song. The crow is also black. Cracking Corn was, and in some remote areas of the south, a term for pulling the cork on corn mash whiskey.

Because the massa is gone, the farm is likely to be sold off, if the widow is unable to remarry and keep the farm intact. That meant all the land and its assets would be auctioned at the courthouse. This was a perfect opportunity to slaves to leave, before taking the chance of being sold off to one of the very few, but notoriously cruel plantations. Not to mention the very real possibility of families being separated.

Pouring the pure grain alcohol on ones feet was a sure fire way to cover the scent of your tracks. The narrator is saying, the other slaves, "Blacks - Crows" are running away, but he's too upset to care and leave with them.

This is what I was told by a 98 year old black woman when I was just a kid living in Arkansas. I was fifteen at the time, 41 now, and I was working with my pops. We were remodeling her house under a HUD program. 26 years ago, a white doing something kind and good for a black was still a bit new in the middle south. My respect for her opened her up to tell me many things. I shall never forget Ole Miss Mary Foster.

I trust her version, as she was the daughter of a share cropper, a very common practice after abolition. The very home we were fixing up was the same share cropper's shack her daddy purchased through years of service. Her daddy was a slave as a boy. She was born in 1882.