What Song Makes You Feel Free?

Negro Spirituals provided comfort to our enslaved ancestors. Singing kept their faith alive. 

But hidden between their soulful notes and lyrics were coded messages about freedom. Coded songs with lyrics about traveling shoes, chariots, or wheels were “signal songs.” Those planning to escape sang these to let their friends and relatives know that their time to run was near. 

“Map songs” communicated important locations and meeting points for runaways. Spirituals about the “Jordan River” were about the Mississippi and Ohio rivers, and other major waterways that runaways would need to cross.

Songs like “Wade In the Water,” shared escape strategies. Enslavers tracked runaways by sending bloodhounds after them. The dogs would lose the scent of the runaways in the water. 

People enslaved on plantations sang “Wade in the Water” to inform runaways hiding nearby they needed to take refuge in a body of water because the hounds were coming.

Conductors on the Underground Railroad were referenced in “Swing Low Sweet Chariot.” The line about “a band of angels coming after me” meant the conductors were on their way to pick up anyone ready to escape. 

In 2025 we don’t have to use codes as our enslaved ancestors did. 

Whether we’re singing, writing, speaking, storytelling, or preaching, we have the power to spread this message: our liberation can’t be stopped.