Underground Railroad – A Train Song

“The Gospel train’s comin’
I hear it just at hand
I hear the car wheel rumblin’
And rollin’ thro’ the land” – The Gospel Train (Traditional)

Harriet Tubman was the most famous conductor on the Underground Railroad. She was born a slave in Dorchester County, Maryland, some time between 1820 – 1822. Called Araminta Ross at birth, she took the name Harriet (Tubman was her married name) when she escaped from a plantation with two of her brothers in 1849.

Tubman returned to the Maryland plantation several times, to rescue family members and other slaves. On one of her trips she tried to convince her husband to come with her, but he had remarried and refused to leave.

Tubman would eventually make some 13 forays back into Maryland to rescue as many as 70 people. One group at a time she would bring with her out of the state, travelling by night in extreme secrecy. She became known as “Moses”, and “never lost a passenger”.

After the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was passed, allowing runaway slaves to be retrieved from Northern “free” states to be returned to their owners in the South, Tubman began guiding the fugitives farther north, into Canada.

John Brown
Harriet Tubman

In 1858 Harriet Tubman met John Brown, helping him plan and recruit supporters for his 1859 raid on the federal armory in Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia), for which Brown was eventually tried and hanged for treason.

During the Civil War Tubman served the Union Army in a number of capacities, first as a cook and a nurse, later as an armed scout and spy. She was the first woman to lead an armed expedition in the war, when she guided the raid at Combahee Ferry, liberating more than 700 slaves.

“Get on board, little children
Get on board, little children
Get on board, little children
There’s room for many more” – The Gospel Train (Traditional)

The Underground Railroad was a secret network of routes and safe houses established in the US as early as the late 18th-century. The network was begun by abolitionist groups to aid African-American slaves in escaping to Northern free states and later, after the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act, into Canada.

The Quakers are considered the first group to actively help slaves escape bondage. George Washington claimed in 1786 that Quakers had attempted to “liberate” one of his slaves. In the Early 1800s Quakers in Philadelphia, and in North Carolina began organizing routes and shelters to aid escaping slaves.

The earliest mention of the Underground Railroad came in 1831 when a slave owner blamed an “underground railroad” for helping one of his slaves escape to freedom from Kentucky into Ohio. Then in 1839, a Washington newspaper reported an escaped slave named Jim having revealed, under torture, his plan to go north following an “underground railroad to Boston.”

In the 1830s, vigilance committees were created in New York and Philadelphia to help protect escaped slaves from bounty hunters. Soon their activities expanded to guiding fugitive slaves, and the term Underground Railroad became part of the American vernacular.

“I hear the train a-comin‘
She’s comin’ round the curve
She’s loosened all her steam and brakes
And strainin’ ev’ry nerve” – The Gospel Train (Traditional)

The Underground Railroad was not literally underground or a railroad. It was “underground” in the sense that it was organized and functioned in extreme secrecy. To reduce the risk of discovery, many of the people involved knew only their part of the route or scheme, with instructions becoming “coded” and using familiar railroad terminology.

Fugitive slaves traveled in small groups at night, led by a “conductor”, who would guide them 10-20 miles at a time, to the next “station” or “depot”, where they would rest during the day, typically hidden in a barn, under a floor, or in a cave. The depots were operated by a complicit “stationmaster”.

“Stockholders” were abolitionist supporters who may not be involved in the actual transportation of fugitive slaves, but contributed money or supplies to the organization.

Escaping slaves began using biblical terminology, referring to Canada as “heaven”, or “the promised land”, while calling the Ohio River, the “River Jordan”. Slaves planning an escape would need to “obtain a ticket” on what became known as “the freedom train” or “Gospel Train”.

“Get on board, little children
Get on board, little children
Get on board, little children
There’s room for many more” – The Gospel Train (Traditional)

William Still, sometimes called “The Father of the Underground Railroad”, was chairman of the Vigilance Committee of the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society. Sometimes hiding fugitives in his Philadelphia home, he helped hundreds of slaves to escape (as many as 60 a month). He kept careful records, including short biographies of the people that contained frequent railway metaphors. He maintained correspondence with many of them, helping to reunite families once they reached freedom. He later published these accounts in the book The Underground Railroad: Authentic Narratives and First-Hand Accounts (1872), which proved a great resource for helping historians to understand how the system worked.

“The fare is cheap and all can go
The rich and poor are there
No second class aboard this train
No difference in the fare” – The Gospel Train (Traditional)

“Follow the Drinking Gourd” is an African American folk song first published in 1928. According to legend, the song was used by a conductor of the Underground Railroad, called Peg Leg Joe, to guide fugitive slaves using the Big Dipper (the Drinking Gourd), and the North Star to navigate themselves northward on their nightly “railroad” excursions.

In John A. Lomax’s 1934 book American Ballads & Folk Songs, he quotes a story from H.B Parks: “One of my great-uncles, who was connected with the railroad movement, remembered that in the records of the Anti-Slavery Society there was a story of a peg-leg sailor, known as Peg-Leg Joe, who made a number of trips through the South and induced young Negroes to run away and escape… The main scene of his activities was in the country north of Mobile, and the trail described in the song followed northward to the headwaters of the Tombigbee River, thence over the divide and down the Ohio River to Ohio… the peg-leg sailor would… teach this song to the young slaves and show them the mark of his natural left foot and the round hole made by his peg-leg. He would then go ahead of them northward and leave a print made of charcoal and mud of the outline of a human left foot and a round spot in place of the right foot.”

Peg-Leg Joe may have been a real person or composite of people but there is no reliable historical evidence of his existence.

“Get on board, little children
Get on board, little children
Get on board, little children
There’s room for many more” – The Gospel Train (Traditional)

“The Gospel Train (Get on Board)” is a traditional African-American spiritual first published in 1872 as one of the songs of the Fisk Jubilee Singers. Although the song is usually cited as traditional, several sources credit a Baptist minister from New Hampshire, John Chamberlain, with writing it. The song shares its melody and structure with a number of songs containing similar themes, and may date from an even earlier period.

Regardless of its origin, the song has come to be a representation of African Americans’ struggle to leave the bonds of slavery to journey to the Promised Land, and beyond that, has become a gospel standard, found in the hymnals of many Protestant denominations and has been recorded by numerous artists.

“Get on board, little children . . .”

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gospel_Train

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_Railroad

https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/underground-railroad

https://www.biography.com/activist/harriet-tubman

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harriet_Tubman

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Songs_of_the_Underground_Railroad

All photos sourced through internet searches, none belong to the author.

“People get ready
For the train to Jordan
Picking up passengers
From coast to coast” – People Get Ready (Mayfield) © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, Warner/Chappell Music

“In the slave period here, one of the things that was prominent was the song – how the songs extolled the glory of God . . . You know that. They needed it. Some people were so low that they had to look up to see the ground. Where were they living? On the other side of the tracks. But what will God do? God will build a bridge over the tracks for me to get across”. – Rev Earnest Palmer – Deep South, by Paul Theroux

Curtis Mayfield was born on June 3, 1942 in Chicago, Illinois. One of five children, Mayfield’s father left the family when Curtis was five. His mother (and maternal grandmother) moved the family into several Chicago public housing projects before settling into Cabrini–Green during his teen years. His mother taught him to play piano, and he was encouraged by his mother and grandmother to embrace gospel music. One of his earliest experiences performing was with the Northern Jubilee Gospel Singers at this aunt’s church.

In 1956, Mayfield joined his high school friend Jerry Butler’s group, The Roosters, to which he contributed his own original compositions. Two years later the group became The Impressions. With a varying lineup of members, The Impressions had a number of hits in the early 1960s, including their recording of “Amen”, an updated version of the old gospel tune, which was included on the soundtrack of the Sidney Poitier film, Lilies of the Field. The Impressions would reach the height of their popularity in the mid–to- late 60s with a string of Mayfield compositions that included “Keep On Pushing”, “It’s All Right”, the up-tempo “Talking about My Baby”, “Woman’s Got Soul” and “People Get Ready”.

“People, get ready
There’s a train a-coming
You don’t need no baggage
You just get on board” – People Get Ready (Mayfield)

“People Get Ready”, the title track of The Impressions’ album, People Get Ready, eventually became the group’s biggest hit. Released in 1965, it peaked at number 3 on the Billboard R&B Chart and number 14 on the Billboard Pop Chart. Mayfield said he originally wrote the song in response to both the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom and the deadly church bombing of Bloody Sunday in Birmingham. Martin Luther King Jr. chose “People Get Ready” as the unofficial anthem of the Civil Rights Movement and often used the song to get people marching or to calm and comfort them.

Robert F. Darden, a contributor to the Dallas News, comments about Mayfield’s song: “The allusion to the railroad is no accident. It immediately resonates not just with the spirituals, but with older blues songs as well, where references to trains quickly show up in the lyrics. A host of writers have noted, during the Civil War and Reconstruction, railroads still evoked awe and wonder among African Americans in the South. The unofficial pathways to freedom in the North were called the Underground Railroad, where passengers were summoned by the spiritual ‘Swing Low, Sweet Chariot’. And when freedom did come, those still-magical vehicles enabled the formerly enslaved people to join in the Great Migration north”.

“All you need is faith
To hear the diesels humming
Don’t need no ticket
You just thank the Lord” – People Get Ready (Mayfield)

According to Curtis Mayfield’s son Todd, their ancestors had been enslaved in Louisiana and carried their stories with them on the Illinois Central Railroad to the South Side projects of Chicago. Mayfield’s grandmother, Annie Bell, was a devoutly religious woman and encouraged her grandson’s love of music, especially gospel. Mayfield himself says that “People Get Ready” probably came from the subconscious “preachings of my grandmothers and most ministers when they reflect from the Bible.”

Social commentator Juan Williams has been quoted as saying, “The train that is coming in the song speaks to a chance for redemption – the long sought chance to rise above racism, to stand apart from despair and any desire for retaliation – an end to the cycle of pain.”

Music critic Stanley Crouch wrote, “by saying, ‘There’s a train a-comin’, get ready,’ that was like saying, OK, so regardless of what happens, get yourself together for this because you are going to get a chance. Your chance is coming.”

“Faith is the key
Open the doors and board them
There’s hope for all
Among those loved the most” – People Get Ready (Mayfield)

Robert F. Darden also writes, “’People Get Ready’ has been interpreted as both an allusion to the religious apocalypse known as the second coming in many Christian denominations and as a warning to those who oppose equality and civil rights in the modern day. And, as is the case with the best songwriters, both interpretations can be right”.

“There ain’t no room
For the hopeless sinner
Who would hurt all mankind
Just to save his own

“Have pity on those
Whose chances are thinner
‘Cause there’s no hiding place
From the kingdom’s throne” – People Get Ready (Mayfield)

Curtis Mayfield’s song has stood the test of time. In 2000 it was chosen by a panel of 20 songwriters – including Paul McCartney and Brian Wilson – as among the top 10 songs of all time. They ranked it at number nine. In 2004, Rolling Stone placed it at number 24 in its 500 greatest hits of all time, and also placed it at number 20 on their list of the 100 Greatest Guitar Tracks. The song was included in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll. “People Get Ready” was named as one of the Top 10 Best Songs of All Time by Mojo music magazine, and was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1998. In 2016, the song was selected for preservation in the National Recording Registry due to its “cultural, historic, or artistic significance”. It has been recorded and performed by dozens of artists.

Singer Curtis Mayfield (L) poses with the first annual Soul Train Quincy Jones Award for outstanding career achievement. /Photo by Fred Prouser REUTERS REUTERS

In August 1990, Curtis Mayfield was injured when lighting equipment fell on him during an outdoor concert in Brooklyn. Paralyzed from the neck down, and no longer able to play the guitar, he continued composing, singing and recording music. He received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1995 and was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in of March 1999. He died from complications of type 2 diabetes on December 26, 1999.

Todd Mayfield, who is his father’s biographer, writes, “Though he isn’t here, my father is still part of that fight. His music speaks as powerfully to the times we live in as it did to his own. His songs remain vital, uncompromising, and true. His message endures — a message he refused to abandon even in the darkest of times. If he were alive today, he’d urge us to keep on pushing, to never give up, to get ready for something better. He wouldn’t be able to help himself.”

“So people get ready
For the train a-comin‘
You don’t need no ticket
You just get on board” – People Get Ready (Mayfield) © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, Warner/Chappell Music

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtis_Mayfield

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People_Get_Ready

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiritual_(music)

https://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/a_f/brown/folkexpression.htm –

https://blogs.loc.gov/folklife/2015/08/folklore-of-trains-in-usa-part-two/

https://www.hopechannel.com/au/read/people-get-ready

All photos sourced through internet searches, none belong to the author.

Tag: Underground Railroad

Get on Board, Little Children

You Don’t Need No Ticket