Originally Posted by
Pagzz
"The idea that enslaved people would take the hundreds of hours to make the multiple quilts necessary to pass on some very simple instructions,
I know the quilt story of the underground railroad is not a fact, but it was not the slaves who made the quilts, it was the people who lived in the houses along the way. The story goes that the slaves would see a house that had been reputed to be a "safe house", and there would be a quilt hanging on the porch or on the line. The colors or pattern of the quilt communicated to the slave that: "Yes, it's safe to come here now", or "No, it's not safe right now."
Even if the quilt stories are not true, there surely was a lot of communication going on between the slaves and between the safe houses. And between slaves and those in the houses.