UNDERGROUND RAILROAD STORY FOR KIDS PRINATBLE CODE
When doing research for this post, I found fairly recent YouTube videos of lectures that posited the Code as a historical truth. It’s hard to accept that the Quilt Code is a myth, and many people don’t. Given the beautiful illustrations by Hudson Talbott and the silver Newbery Honor Book sticker on the book’s cover, Show Way will perpetuate the myth of the Quilt Code for years to come. While Show Way is about more than the Underground Railroad Quilt Code, it relies on the idea of the code to frame the story.
One of the most beautiful (and beautifully written) of these books is Show Way by Jacqueline Woodson, which follows an African-American family through many generations, from slavery to freedom to the Civil Rights movement to the present day. Books that feature quilts as guides for slaves making their way north to freedom include Aunt Harriet’s Underground Railroad Quilt in the Sky by Faith Ringgold, Sweet Clara and the Freedom Quilt by Deborah Hopkinson, The Patchwork Path: A Quilt Map to Freedom by Bettye Stroud, Under the Quilt of Dark by Deborah Hopkinson, The Secret to Freedom by Marcia Vaughan, Unspoken: A Story of the Underground Railroad by Henry Cole … and the list goes on. Given what a marvelous story this is, it’s also no surprise that more than one children’s book writer has latched onto it. Slaves escaping to freedom via the Underground Railroad in the dark of night, their way mapped for them by quilts hanging on clotheslines or low-hanging branches–all the elements of a great saga are here: heroes, villains, dangerous journeys, secret knowledge, the dream of freedom. It’s no big surprise that the Quilt Code story caught on. –The Underground Railroad Quilt Code, according to Ozella Williams, reported in Hidden in Plain View: A Secret Story of Quilts and the Underground Railroad by Jacqueline L. Flying Geese stay on the Drunkard’s Path and follow the Stars. Shoofly told them to dress up in cotton and satin Bow Ties and go to the cathedral church, get married and exchange Double Wedding Rings. Once they got to the Crossroads, they dug a Log Cabin on the ground.
The Monkey Wrench turns the Wagon Wheel toward Canada on a Bear’s Paw trail to the Crossroads.
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