Primary-Source Set 4 · ELA, Arts & History

Reading between the lines

When the law forbade plain speech, meaning went underground, in plain sight.

For most of the last century, LGBTQ+ artists could not say plainly who they loved. So they coded it, into a blues lyric, into the numbers on a painting, and trusted that the people who needed to understand would. This set gives students two real coded works to decode, and teaches the close-reading skill at the center of all literature: separating what a work states on the surface from what it means underneath.

Grades 6-12 Subjects ELA, Visual Art, Music, History Time 1-2 class periods Exhibits Sound, Visual Art

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How to use this set

Hand students Documents B and C and have them work as code-breakers: what does the work say on its surface, and what does it really mean? The skill is close reading, the difference between the stated and the implied, taught on works where the gap between the two was a matter of survival. The Stated vs. Implied and Symbol Key handouts give students a place to write.

Verified Corroborated Oral / Interpretation Unknown

Document A · Context

Why people had to code at all

Historical context for the works that follow Verified

For much of the twentieth century, being openly LGBTQ+ could cost a person their job, their freedom, or their life. Censors policed the stage, recordings, and print. So queer meaning often went encoded: hidden in a double meaning, a symbol, a number, a turn of phrase that looked innocent to a hostile eye but spoke clearly to those who shared the key.

What this is: the frame for the two works below. Coding is not only a queer story; it is how any silenced group has spoken past a censor. That makes this a transferable lesson in subtext, irony, and reading for the unsaid.

Document B

A blues that dared the listener to "prove it"

Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, "Prove It On Me Blues," Paramount, 1928 Verified

"They must've been women, 'cause I don't like no men."

What this is: a line from a 1928 blues recording in which Ma Rainey, one of the most famous singers of her day, sang openly of going out with women and dressing in a man's clothes, then teased that no one could "prove it on me." Paramount's own advertisement for the record pictured her in a man's jacket and tie, talking with two women on a street corner while a policeman watched. The historian Jonathan Ned Katz called the song "an assertive song of lesbian self-affirmation." The code here is daring: she half-hides the meaning and half-flaunts it.

Document C

A love letter painted as a soldier's portrait

Marsden Hartley, "Portrait of a German Officer," 1914 (The Met) Verified

The painting shows no face. It is built from military symbols, flags, badges, an Iron Cross, and a few numbers and letters. Decoded, they spell a private grief: K.v.F. are the initials of Karl von Freyburg, a German officer Hartley loved, killed early in World War I. The 4 is von Freyburg's regiment number (and the number of Hartley's own house in Berlin). The 24 is his age when he died. The Iron Cross is the medal he was awarded just before his death.

What this is: a public painting that is secretly a love letter. To a 1914 viewer it read as patriotic abstraction; to Hartley it was a coded memorial to a man he could not openly mourn. Every symbol is a word in a private language.

Questions for students

Stated vs implied (B). What does Ma Rainey's line say on the surface? What does it imply underneath? Why might she choose to "half-hide and half-flaunt" the meaning rather than do one or the other?
Decode the symbols (C). Match each element to its hidden meaning: K.v.F., 4, 24, the Iron Cross. Then state, in one sentence, the whole secret message of the painting.
The cost of the code. Using Document A, explain why each artist could not simply state their meaning plainly. What did coding let them do that silence would not?
Audience and key. A code only works if some readers hold the key and others do not. Who was each work's hidden audience? Who was it hiding from?
Confidence check. Which claims in this set are documented fact (a date, a recording, the Met's symbol key) and which are interpretation (what a work "really means")? How sure can we be, and how do you mark the difference?
Make your own. Write a two-line message that states one thing on the surface and means another underneath, then trade with a partner and decode each other's. What made yours easy or hard to crack?

Teacher key & standards

Sample responses and discussion notes.

Sample responses

Q1. Surface: she went out with a crowd that turned out to be women. Implied: she desires women and presents in a masculine way. Half-hiding gave deniability ("prove it") while still letting her community hear the truth and feel seen.
Q2. K.v.F. = Karl von Freyburg (initials); 4 = his regiment number, also Hartley's Berlin house number; 24 = his age at death; the Iron Cross = the medal awarded just before his death. Whole message: a coded memorial to the man Hartley loved and lost in the war.
Q3. Open expression could mean arrest, ruin, or violence, and censors policed stage and print; coding let artists tell the truth to those who could read it while staying safe from those who could not.
Q4. Rainey's hidden audience was queer listeners and Black communities who shared the slang; she hid from censors and hostile authorities (the watching policeman in the ad). Hartley's audience was himself and those who knew von Freyburg; he hid from a public that would condemn the love.
Q5. Fact: the 1928 recording and its lyric; the 1914 painting and the Met's documented symbol key; the men's biographies. Interpretation: the deeper "meaning" and intent. Mark facts Verified and readings as interpretation, attributed to a scholar where possible (e.g., Katz on Rainey).
Q6. No single answer; the point is to feel how a shared key makes a hidden message legible. Debrief on what signals (context, repeated symbols) helped them crack a partner's code.

Discussion notes

The transferable skill is subtext: separating the literal from the intended. It applies to satire, propaganda, advertising, and any text where the surface is not the whole message.
Keep interpretation honest. Students should attribute readings ("Katz argues...") rather than state them as fact, the same discipline the museum uses on its walls.
Extend to today: ask where students already use coded language (slang, memes, group in-jokes) and who holds the key.

Standards alignment (confirm against your district's current adoption)

CCSS ELA Reading (Literature & Informational) 6-12: R.1 (textual evidence), R.2 (theme / central idea), R.4 (figurative and connotative meaning), R.6 (point of view, purpose, and what is left unsaid).
National Core Arts Standards: Responding (analyze and interpret artistic work, including context and intent).
MA frameworks: ELA close reading and analysis; arts analysis; historical context of expression and censorship.

Sources behind this set

Ma Rainey, "Prove It On Me Blues" (Paramount, 1928); Jonathan Ned Katz on OutHistory; the National Museum of African American History and Culture. Marsden Hartley, "Portrait of a German Officer" (1914), The Metropolitan Museum of Art (object record and symbol key). See the museum's Sound and Visual Art exhibits and Our Method.

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