You've heard the song and you've heard that it's from the slavery years, from the Underground Railroad. Because it's a great song you want to cite it. But when you do a quick search ( it will be easy, believe me) you'll find that the song was first published long after the Civil War. Now, if my grumpiest history teacher saw a citation that said something like " Wade in the Water, commonly accepted as a song of the Underground Railroad..." he would draw a big red circle around it and write " accepted by who? Name one". Or, as he would say, he'd jump on it like a duck on a Junebug.

So, what you really need to cite is not the song, but the work of the scholar who studied it and then decided it was indeed a song about the Underground Railroad. You'll have to track that down. Once you've got that, there are citation engines online that will show you how to turn the publication information into the right form ( APA, MLA,or Chicago). But you should point out in the text, footnote or endnote that it's this scholar's opinion that it's from the Underground Railroad.

Hi - we as mods have approved this thread, because while this is a homework question, it is asking for clarification or resources, rather than the answer itself, which is fine according to our rules. This policy is further explained in this Rules Roundtable thread and this META Thread.

As a result, we'd also like to remind potential answerers to follow our rules on homework - please make sure that your answers focus appropriately on clarifications and detailing the resources that OP could be using.

Additionally, while users may be able to help you out with specifics relating to your question, we also have plenty of information on /r/AskHistorians on how to find and understand good sources in general. For instance, please check out our six-part series, "Finding and Understanding Sources", which has a wealth of information that may be useful for finding and understanding information for your essay.