This song sheet, which includes both the sheet music and lyrics, describes how black Southerners longed for safety and freedom but frequently lived in fear of the Ku Klux Klan and other white Southerners. According to the song, these black Southerners were heading to Kansas "whar de shot-gun rules no mo'e." The song was written by Frank J. Smith, "a native hoosier," and was published by R. R. Meredith and Sons in Chicago. It uses a black dialect that was common in nineteenth-century depictions of African Americans.