Join historian, retired teacher, and Illinois Humanities Road Scholar Connie Martin as she explains the meanings, interpretations, and connections of plantation songs, or Negro Spirituals, used in regions of the American South that signaled signs and tips that aided freedom seekers as they headed to Canada. These powerful, sacred songs, derived from the heart of the enslaved Africans, were a melodic outflowing of religious expression, passion, and the hope to be free. Negro spirituals, as originated in America, tell of sorrow, trials and tribulations, secrecy and hiding, and hope for a sense of community.

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