grapevine telegraph

I Heard It Through The Grapevine, meanwhile, took its title from the days of the US Civil War, when the "grapevine telegraph" was a system of communication used by slaves.

And then in 1901 Booker T. Washington named it the “grapevine telegraph.”

He said: “Though I was a mere child during the preparation for the Civil War and during the war itself, I now recall the many late-at-night whispered discussions that I heard my mother and the other slaves on the plantation indulge in. These discussions showed that they understood the situation and that they kept themselves informed of events by what was termed the ‘grapevine telegraph.’

In black communities across the country, “the grapevine telegraph lit up” with jubilation over the Kennedys’ efforts, Tye wrote.

She quarrelled fiercely with the doctor's wife for saying that she really could not see how Sidney got her news, and for quoting the doctor's opinion that it must come over the grapevine telegraph.