In 2017 I wrote a column about the song “Follow the Drinking Gourd.” The column told how within the stories of the Underground Railroad as a pathway to freedom for enslaved people in the antebellum South one account merges into local history.

It is a story that began in song and has been enlarged by sources ranging from the National Geographic to popular literature. It is a song whose origin and veracity are uncertain, but whose story illustrates a deeper truth. The song is “Follow the Drinking Gourd.”

I have recently obtained an original copy of the 1928 Publication of the Texas Folklore Society, which first published an account of the song and its history. It is a fascinating story and tends to show that a branch of the Underground Railroad ran through Columbus. In pre-Civil War Lowndes County, there were a few people who were opposed to slavery. However, there is no record of any of them actively participating or having a station on the Underground Railroad, but those stations were closely guarded secrets. The song “Follow the Drinking Gourd,” provides musical folklore that suggests there could have been a local connection.

“Follow the Drinking Gourd” is an African American spiritual that is said to be a verbal road map for slaves escaping from the Tombigbee River Valley north of Mobile, Alabama. Although there is some question as to whether the song was associated with the Underground Railroad, it has through recordings, books and tradition become a part of the story.

The oldest surviving version of the song was published by H.B. Parks in the1928 Journal of the Texas Folklore Society. Parks’ account is based on his hearing in 1912 a version of the song being sung by a Black child who was picking up sticks beside a cabin in Hot Springs, North Carolina. The child was reprimanded by his grandfather for singing the song. Parks asked what was wrong with the song, and the grandfather said it was “bad luck.”

Then a year later Parks again heard the song being sung – this time by a Black fisherman on the bank of the Ohio River in Louisville, Kentucky. Parks said he asked the man about the song, but the man replied he knew nothing about it and would not talk about it.

In 1918, Parks heard two young Black musicians in Texas playing the tune, which they said had been taught them by a “colored revivalist” to be played at revival meetings. Finally, Parks became friends with an elderly Black man in College Station, Texas, who told him the story behind the song.

Whether the song’s lyrics provide a verbal road map is open to interpretation, but it sure fits the Tombigbee River. In Park’s 1912 version, which was published in 1928, verses could easily lay out a route to freedom.

The song begins:

“When the sun come back
When the firs Quail call
Then the time is come
Foller the drinkin’ gou’d”

This verse seems to say that in the spring, when quail start to nest, it is the time to leave and to follow the drinking gourd, or North Star. If you head north, then there will be help along the way.

The verses continue:

“The riva’s bank am a very good road
The dead trees show the way…”

The banks of the Tombigbee River will be the road, and dead trees along the river bank will be marked to show the way. The story goes that the route was marked by a man called “Peg Leg” Joe. The marks of a foot and a circle for a peg leg will be on dead trees. A peg legged sailor is said to be mentioned in some traditions of the Underground Railroad.

The final directions are:

“The riva ends a-tween two hills
Foller the drinkin’ gou’d
‘Nuther riva on the other side…
Wha the little riva
meet the grea’ big un
The ole man waits…”

The headwaters of the Tombigbee are in the hills of southern Tishomingo County. Across those hills, still traveling north, one finds the Tennessee River. The “road” continued north along that river. At Paducah, Kentucky, the Tennessee River flows into the Ohio River. Across the Ohio River was freedom, and there would be someone there to help the escaping enslaved people to safety.

The oldest reference to the song was in Mary Austin’s autobiography, written in 1934, which recalled her hearing the song as a child around 1873. A slightly more refined version of the song was arranged by Lee Hays in 1947, and it entered the realm of popular music.

Is “Follow the Drinking Gourd” actually a verbal road map for the Underground Railroad? I don’t think it really matters, as the song has become a part of the lore of people seeking their freedom, and as such, it helps tell their story.

Some credence to the story is found in the writings of Alexander Ross, an abolitionist secretly working in the South in the 1850s to help enslaved people escape. Ross wrote of helping two enslaved people escape from Columbus in 1858 using the North Star as their guide.

They traveled north across creeks and marshes and through woods to freedom across the Ohio River. It was a route that would have taken them up the Tombigbee using the riverbank and the North Star as their guide just as in the song. It was around 1859 that Parks mentions a Peg Leg Joe figure working with the Underground Railroad along the Tombigbee north of Mobile.

Sam Kaye, Carolyn Kaye and I often talked about the potential for a “Follow the Drinking Gourd” African American Heritage Trail along the river. The Riverwalk itself follows a real pathway to freedom as it follows the route of “Follow the Drinking Gourd.” It is a story that has received national attention and is the basis for an international bicycle trail. The Adventure Cycling Association promotes a 2,100-mile bicycle trail from Mobile, to Ontario, Canada, following the route of the Underground Railroad as described in the song. By turning the Riverwalk into a heritage trail based on the old song and marking the six or seven Black history sites along it, we could tell the often overlooked story of the enslaved African-Americans whose labor built Columbus in its earliest days.

Rufus Ward is a Columbus native a local historian. E-mail your questions about local history to Rufus at [email protected].