Churchill Downer: The Forgotten Racial History Of Kentucky's State Song

Every year at the Kentucky Derby, crazy hat-wearing, mint julep-guzzling horse-gazers break into a passionate rendition of Kentucky's state song, "My Old Kentucky Home." ..... But Frank X Walker, Kentucky's former poet laureate, suspects that most people are missing the point.

He refers to these lyrics:

"The young folks roll on the little cabin floor,
All merry, all happy and bright.
By 'n by hard times comes a-knocking at the door,
Then my old Kentucky home, good night."

Walker says that though it may sound like "a happy family environment in a humble cabin experience," there's definitely something more going on. "My Old Kentucky Home" was written by Stephen Foster in 1852, years before the Civil War. Foster was an American composer, famous in part for his minstrel music. The characters he references — the ones who had to leave Kentucky — were slaves.

Slave auction in New Orleans, 1842, "Sale of Estates, Pictures and Slaves in the Rotunda, New Orleans." The nation's most active slave market was in New Orleans. Slaves who had been "sold down the river" were auctioned off to plantation owners.

What Does 'Sold Down The River' Really Mean? The Answer Isn't Pretty
In fact, "My Old Kentucky Home" was originally sold as an anti-slavery song. The final verse shows slaves being "sold down the river," as it was called in those days — sent down the Ohio and Mississippi to serve on sugar cane plantations, where they might be worked to death in the sun.

It includes the lyrics, "A few more days and the trouble all will end, in the field where the sugar cane grows." Paul Robeson sang that verse generations ago; today, people rarely do.

Another part of the song has vanished today. Foster's lyrics called the enslaved people "darkies." These days, that word is no longer sung, which leaves no explicit reference to black people.

But Walker wants people to know the real story behind Kentucky's state song, even if they always thought they were hearing a simple, romantic song of home.....


http://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2016/05/06/476890004/churchill-downer-the-forgotten-racial-history-of-kentuckys-state-song#