Follow the Drinking Gourd

If you’ve been following along with this years Learning through Literature Series, More FIAR – Inspired Literature-Based Lesson Plans, you know we usually have been doing a review each time. This week, due to the fact that this is a completely new topic and because the subject matter is heavy, especially for little hearts – I chose to skip the review of past lessons, and get started right away introducing the topic. 

Introduce the Story:

Tell the class, “Today we’re going to talk about some hard, yucky things.”

A long time ago, many people in the world decided it was okay to steal other people out of their homes and turn them into slaves to make them do whatever they wanted.

Does that sound okay? (there should be a resounding NO from the class)

About 500 years ago, some people visited Africa. (show Africa/western coast of Africa on the world map).  They needed some workers, and they thought they could trade something to get some workers. It started small, but eventually, they were stealing millions of people, going into their homes, splitting apart their families. This wasn’t just one person, or a few people or one country … this was happening all over the world. Somehow, so much darkness had come in that people convinced themselves that because someone had a different color skin than they did, and they lived a little bit differently than they did – that they weren’t really people.

Does that sounds okay? (another resounding no)They thought that because someone looked a little different and acted a little different and talked a little different … that they weren’t really people.

Does that sound right?

• Some people in India (point to India on the map) eat with their hands – that’s a little different – but are they still peopple? (yes!)
• Some people in Alaska (point to Alaska on the map) eat whales and make houses out of their bones – that’s a little different – but are they still people? (yes!)
• There are people in China with yellow skin and people in Inda with brown skin and people in Africa with black skin and people over here with white skin … but are they still people (yes!)

Of course. You guys know better than much of the world did a few hundred years ago.But such a darkness had come in, and somehow people thought these evil things were okay. Many people. Many countries started trading supplies for people. Many people started stealing and selling people and making them do whatever they wanted for them.

Some would make the slaves walk miles and miles out of the jungles. (If you are comfortable, you can quickly show these pictures, or you can print them out to show up close. I chose to just show them quickly, as these are still heavy themes for youngers.)

They would sell them to others who would make them squish together in dark, empty, slave castles, by the sea. (If you want to do more research, look up the Cape Coast Slave Castle on YouTube.  There are quite a few former Slave “Castles” still in existence, but this one I personally have visited. It is every bit as horrible as the ships.

Those who ran the castles would sell these innocent men and women and children to others, who would take them on a horrible boat ride accross the sea. (torn from families, home, and everything then knew, and forced into the bottom of a boat, packed in like fish instead of living men, women, and children. An estimated 15-25% died along the way)

If they survived the voyage – they were then “seasoned” and prepared to sell as slaves, usually in the Americas on the Auction Block.

From then on, most slaves in America worked in the cottom fields picking cottom from morning til night with no pay, little food, and usually, extremely harsh treatment. Or anything your master asked you to do. Any resistence meant beatings with a whip, or worse. At night, you slept on the floor. During the day, you may have eaten your food around a trough, with a spoon, like cattle. You could be split apart from your momma your papa at any moment. This was a very very sad time in America’s History  (in this picture, I just pointed out the slaves with the big cotton bags, and the masters that were overseeing them.  We emphasized that they were working but they were not getting paid. If they didn’t work, they would get beaten – or worse.)

But –  some of these people remembered how they used to be free in another country. They knew who they were on the inside. They sang songs to encourage each other. When a master would tell them they couldn’t talk to each other, they would leave hidden messages in quilts or in songs. They would come up with secret codes to tell each other things. They would sings songs that talked about “wheels” or “moving” or “being carried” or “crossing” … all a hidden code for getting ready to move. They communicated with songs especially, and that’s what our story today is about.

Stop and pause often to introduce and explain the concept of “the Underground Railroad” and how far this distance actually is. We asked if anyone had relatives who lived super far away. A few had grandparents that lived 8-10 hours away. We discussed how many of these people walked that same distance or more, traveling house to house on the underground railroad. Also, explain that the underground railroad is not actually a railroad that goes underground at all, but a secret way of escape to help the slaves get to Freedom Land (their code name for Canada)

As you go through this wonderful story, there are two points that we repeatedly mentioned:

• In the midst of darkness, when everyone else was doing what was wrong, a few people were willing to risk their lives to do what was right. Would you do what was right if everyone around you was not?
• We also continued to emphasize the “code” that they used. The kiddos loved this. There was a code to tell someone you were there, the “hoo hoo” of an owl. There were codes in the songs. We talked about Wade in the Water (so the dogs won’t catch your scent), and of course Follow the Drinking Gourd. We talked about code words for run and travel (there was a group about ready to leave) and home (being Canada). There are several stories about quilts being set out, or messages being woven into quilts.
• I made myself quite familiar with the song, Follow the Drinking Gourd, so that I was actually able to sing the “song”parts of the book. I set aside my slight embarrassment and just sang. The class seemed to really enjoy it. Then, when we did our activity afterwards, and I played Wade in the Water and Follow the Drinking Gourd and a few of them, already familiar from my singing, sang along.

If you choose to show a map of the railroad routes, a printable version, like the one below, is available here.  I just chose to memorize this map (as well as the places mentioned in the Foreward of the book, Tombigbee River, Ohio River, etc, and showed the class as we read on our USA State Map.