Stephen Foster is a national treasure.
Posted on 05/07/2022 9:50:50 PM PDT by MarvinStinson
The controversy behind Kentucky’s state song is again brought to light, this time from a member of one of the most prominent families in Louisville history.
Emily Bingham picked the lunch spot for our interview, and the choice of restaurant was smart and shrewd on her part.
We slid into a booth at Wagner’s Pharmacy, a century-old place in Louisville’s South End that has transitioned over the years into a no-frills diner and gift shop. It is located across the street from Churchill Downs, feeding horsemen and racing fans soup and sandwiches and eggs and bacon. The place is a shrine to the sport, and to the Kentucky Derby specifically.
This was the perfect—and perfectly cheeky—location to discuss Bingham’s new book, My Old Kentucky Home: The Astonishing Life and Reckoning of an Iconic American Song. It is an unflinching, brilliantly written study of the song that is synonymous with the Derby—the one that will bring as many as 150,000 horse racing fans to their feet at Churchill on Saturday, many with tears in their eyes, as they boozily sing along to Stephen Foster’s 1853 tune.
How many of those 150,000 know that “My Old Kentucky Home” is steeped in racism? Whitewashed and inauthentically presented as Southern sentimentalism? Packaged as a paean to soft-edged nostalgia, when in reality its lyrics tell a tale of a slave being taken from his family and sold downriver to die on a sugarcane plantation?
It's not just that racist terms for Black people had to be changed to “people” in the latter half of the 20th century, in varying stages by various institutions, to make the singing more palatable. It’s not just the second and third verses, rarely sung, that paint an increasingly bleak picture of a displaced slave’s existence. It’s more than that.
(Excerpt) Read more at si.com ...
Despite the song’s controversial lyrics, Churchill Downs continues to have it be part of its Kentucky Derby pageantry.
There is always a reporter (or blogger) around, hoping to rain on everybody’s parade.
Yep, ever since they didn’t get a date to their high school prom, they’ve taken it out on everybody else.
Maybe the reporter was voted “Most Likely to become a “Carrie” full buckets and all!”
GO TO HELL, you creep, trying to destroy every morsel of Americana. Stephen C. Foster is a national treasure.
I was born in Fort Campbell KY. Grandad told me boy:
“It used to be the state with fast horses and beautiful women.
Now it’s the state with beautiful horses and fast women.”
This post don’t have Jack to do with the song. It’s just what grandad used to tell me 😜
There are renditions that have brought tears to my eyes.
Sincerely - we don't care. Now GFY.
Signed, normal Americans
Bump
Oh, he’s just bummed because he was going to spot a twenty on the long shot but had to get another 150 words into his opinion piece before the race.
The racist left loves racism and injecting it into everything possible. They don’t want people to be able to enjoy their lives.
That’s it. I’m boycotting Sports Illustrated — oh, wait, the Swimsuit Issue! /sarc
The leftists forced the removal of the Stephen Foster statue from outside of the Carnegie Museum & Library in Pittsburgh. They didn’t like the fact there was a black male sculpted also. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Foster_(sculpture)
Everything is always “racist” to the far left, crap-eating maggots. Screw them. If they don’t like My Old Kentucky Home, I suggest they move their asses to Red China or North Korea. Racist slobs.
The song is a about the plight of slaves who have been cruelly sold down the river.
Foster originally wrote the song in response to Stowe’s novel as “Poor Uncle Tom, Good Night.”
Let me tell you about my Ol’ Kentucky Home. A hardscrabble company shack on the side of Big Black Mountain. No running water, out house. Four kids amd Mon pregnant with our yougest brother. My father killed in a mining accident. My dad died in the company hospital. Before his body was cold my Mom got a bill from the company hospital and an eviction notice from coal company. Thank you Black Diamond Coal Company.
My Mom had grit. My oldest brother went to work in the mines. I had to quit school at ghe age of 15 and take a job in Cincinnati. So much for my old Kentucky home.
My old buddy Ed and I still watch the Derby and drink big Mint Julips out of large sterling beakers. Get smashed we do.
If the left didn’t have rascism they’d invent it.
Merriam Webster has the gall to define “darky” in their racist dictionary. It, and all other dictionaries, should be banned.
Remember the Democratic Party was the mainstay of the KKK and still uses a version of hidden plantation racism to get votes
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