Atca song circle tonight I was asked to teach this song out of RISE UP SINGING. There are verses in that version about children drowning during the escapes of enslaved people and it disturbs me to think that particular slant has been promulgated as the definitive story of the songs or the people who originated the song, because the world of that time and that song were far more complex (see any Ira Berlin book on slavery).

While it is true that crying children or babies have sometimes been 'silenced' with fatal results, most white folks do not know that culturally, many civilizations have not put children first when species survival is threatened-- that's a white, privileged, recent ethic. The elders and their accumulated wisdom have more often been the priority group.


But the song was a work song first, a code song second as well as a bible-teaching song among folks prohibited from reading. IMNSHO, only much later did some well-intentioned person add verses about 'drownings.'

Also, few know that only towards the end of slavery was it so difficult and dangerous to travel as to have left the plantation at night (See Berlin) that children would be drowned.

~Susan