“During slavery in the Americas, enslaved Black people used braided hairstyles as coded maps or communication systems to help others escape slavery without enslavers noticing.”

The American Historical Association has cautioned against accepting the braided-maps narrative without primary source verification. While enslaved people developed sophisticated communication and resistance strategies, historians emphasize that claims about specific coded practices require documentation from the period—such as slave narratives, plantation records, or abolitionist accounts—rather than retrospective cultural memory or oral tradition alone.

In the era of slavery, the enslaved used braids to hide maps and other directional instructions that would lead them to safety. In preparation for a journey through the Middle Passage, many African women would even braid rice or other grains into their hair or their children's hair to ensure that they would have food.

Oral histories from San Basilio de Palenque in Colombia describe how enslaved women used specific cornrow patterns, like curved braids representing roads to escape and thick braids tied in buns signaling plans to flee. These traditions are preserved in Afro-Colombian communities but lack contemporary written documentation from the slavery era.

Escape methods included quilts with coded patterns, songs, and lantern signals along the Underground Railroad. No historical accounts mention braided hairstyles serving as maps or communication systems for routes in North America; communication relied on trusted networks and verbal cues.

Legend has it that displaced African slaves in Colombia began to use their hair as a way to encrypt messages and maps to aid escape into remote areas. Some cornrows reportedly mapped out escape routes or signaled where to find water. They also made ideal hiding places for seeds, gold nuggets stolen while working mines, and even weapons. However, the article notes: 'It's hard say since official history has usually been told by white men and a form of resistance amongst the African diaspora by definition lacks archival evidence. Thus the only evidence for this hair history is the oral history maintained by Afro-Colombian communities.'

The precise role of cornrows in aiding escapes during slavery is debated. While no conclusive evidence has been found to directly confirm that enslaved people used cornrows as a systematic code for escape, these stories persist within oral histories and seem plausible within the context of slave resistance. For some scholars, these are 'kind of urban legends that serve a function of giving particulars to generalities.'

The claim that enslaved people used braided hairstyles as coded maps for escape routes is widely repeated in popular culture and educational materials, but historians have noted a significant lack of primary documentary evidence from the slavery era itself. Most evidence comes from oral histories, folklore, and retrospective accounts rather than contemporary written records from enslaved people or enslavers. Academic historians have expressed caution about accepting this narrative without stronger archival support, though the practice may have occurred in specific regions like Colombia's Palenque de San Basilio.

Enslaved African women forcibly taken to Colombia would communicate with their communities through braided hair, most importantly for planning escapes. For example, a braided hairstyle called 'departes' (meaning depart in English) signaled that the person wanted to escape. Black women would also record with their braids the obstacles they would encounter on their journeys to help others escape—a river was represented with a braid in the shape of a worm, a Bantu knot represented a mountain, and if there were soldiers in any part of the route they would use really thick braids still known today in the Pacific region of Colombia as 'tropas' (meaning troops in English).

The idea that enslaved women braided escape maps into cornrows circulates widely but stems from unverified claims about South America. Snopes rates it as lacking tangible evidence. No slave narratives, Underground Railroad records, or historical accounts from North America confirm this practice; it appears to be a modern myth conflating hair braiding traditions with escape methods.

By weaving specific patterns into their hair, enslaved people could encode information about escape routes, safe houses, and other resources. One of the most common hairstyles used for this purpose was cornrows. For example, one common pattern used to map escape routes was the 'North Star' pattern. This pattern consists of three cornrows that are braided in a straight line from the forehead to the nape of the neck. The North Star pattern was used to indicate that the escape route led north, towards the free states.