Coded Resistance: Freedom Fighting and Communication

It’s nearing the end of Black History Month, and that history is inherently tied to strife, resistance, and organizing related to government surveillance and oppression. Even though programs like COINTELPRO are more well-known now, the other side of these kinds of stories are the ways the Black community has fought back through intricate networks and communication aimed at avoiding surveillance.

The Borderland Network

The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade was as a dark, cruel time in the history of much of the Americas. The horrors of slavery still casts their shadow through systemic racism today. One of the biggest obstacles enslaved Africans faced when trying to organize and fight was the fact that they were closely watched, along with being separated, abused, tortured, and brought onto a foreign land to work until their death for free. They often spoke different languages from each other, with different cultures, and beliefs. Organizing under these conditions seemed impossible. Yet even under these conditions including overbearing surveillance, they developed a way to fight back. Much of this is attributed to the brilliance of these Africans using everything they had to develop communications with each other under chattel slavery. The continued fight today reflects much of the history that was established from dealing with censorship and authoritarian surveillance.

“The white folks down south don’t seem to sleep much, nights. They are watching for runaways, and to see if any other slaves come among theirs, or theirs go off among others.” - Former Runaway, Slavery’s Exiles - Sylviane A. Diouf

As Sylvane Diouf chronicled in the book, Slavery’s Exiles, slavery was not only catastrophic for many Africans, but also thankfully never a peaceful time for white owners and overseers either. Those captured from Africa and brought to the Americas seldom gave their captors a night of rest. Through rebellion, resistance, and individual sabotage with everyday life during this horrible period, freedom remained an objective. And with that objective came a deep history of secret communications and cunning intelligence.

Runaways often returned to plantations at night for years unnoticed and undetected, mostly to stay connected to family or relay information. One married couple, as Diouf tells it,  had a simple yet effective signaling system where the wife placed a garment in a particular spot that was visible from her husband’s covert. Ben and his wife (whose name is unknown) had other systems in place if it was too dark to see. For example, shining a bright light through the cracks in their cabin for an instant, and then repeating it at intervals of two or three minutes, three or four times.

These close-proximity runaways were deemed “Borderland Maroons''. They’d create tight networks of communication from plantation to plantation. Information, like the amount of reward for capture and punishment, traveled quickly through the grapevine of the Borderland Maroons. Based on this intelligence, many would make plans around either traveling away completely or staying around longer to gather others. Former Georgia Delegates from the Continental Congress recounted:

“The negroes have a wonderful art of communicating intelligence among themselves” it will run several hundred miles in a week or fortnight”

These networks often gained runaways years out of captivity and thus the ability to maintain a network among the enslaved. Coachmen, draymen, boatmen, and others who were allowed to move around off plantations were the backbone for this chain of intelligence. The shadow network of the Borderlands was the entry point of organizing for potential runaways. So even if someone was captured, they could tap into this network again later. No one would be getting rest or sleep. As Diouf recounts, keeping a high level of surveillance took a lot of resources from the slaveholders, and that fact was well-exploited by the enslaved.

Moses

Perhaps the most famous artisan of secret communications during this period is the venerable Harriet Tubman. Her character and will is undisputed, and her impeccable timing and remarkable intuition strengthened the Underground Railroad.

Dr. Bryan Walls notes much of her written and verbal communication was through plain language that acted as a metaphor:

• “tracks” (routes fixed by abolitionist sympathizers)
• “stations” or “depots” (hiding places)
• “conductors” (guides on the Unde