THE BLINDERS ON: "MY OLD KENTUCKY HOME", THE COMPLEXITIES FROM WHENCE WE CAME

“Poor Uncle Tom, Good Night”

Later today, we will hear it as “My Old Kentucky Home”, the sentimental melody that starts one of the most famous horse races in the world. Everyone in earshot will become Kentuckian for a few moments, shedding a tear for nostalgia few could explain if asked.

It has been our state song since 1928, its origins are antebellum, when people of African descent, were considered sub-human often treated little better than livestock. The song’s composer, Stephen Foster, was a “Yankee”, born and living most of his life in Pittsburgh. He specialized in genres of parlor and minstrel songs. The latter was a popular genre, depicting African Americans as simple minded, often self-destructive creatures-- whose trivial lives provided raucous entertainment for the culture that had kidnapped them, disrupted their family systems, stole their labor and robbed them of their spirit.

In Foster’s notebook the piece began as “Poor Uncle Tom, Good Night”, its “voice” was that of an enslaved man that had been “sold off” to a plantation far from his Kentucky “home”. Today his sorrowful lyrics have morphed into an homage to Kentucky’s magical appeal at this time of year, evoking sentiment akin to “Auld Lang Syne”. To others, it provokes quite the opposite. When Japanese students visiting the Kentucky legislature in 1996 sang the original version, there was only one black state representative sitting in the chamber, Carl Hines. His response was to sponsor H.B Resolution 159, revising the lyrics to replace the term “darkies” with "people" at all official state functions featuring the song. (Yes, in 1996 "darkies" was still in the state song.)

That same year, The Yale Glee Club was scheduled to perform three Foster songs at The Lincoln Center in Washington D.C. —including “My Old Kentucky Home”. Soon after the choir received the music, its sole African American members Kimberly Daniel and Aurore Victor announced they would refuse to sing the song—not only because of the racist lyrics, but as Ms. Victor stated: "I objected to the songs, because they were historically inaccurate, used derogatory statements, and glorified slavery.” In the end, the club chose not only to omit the song from their program for that evening, but publicly burned a copy of the sheet music.

Thus, in a way that almost nothing else does, the nagging contradiction between the melody's almost narcotic effect and the ugly realities it underplays represents the deep schisms still plaguing our society ...150 years after slavery's end.

It is said Foster, was inspired to write the song while visiting his cousins, the Rowans--who owned a Bardstown, KY plantation, Federal Hill. It is also thought that the wildly popular contemporary novel, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”, served as his muse. That story, penned by Ohio abolitionist, Harriet Beecher Stowe, was inspired by another enslaved Kentuckian, Josiah Henson, who had succeeded in escaping bondage altogether, making his way to Canada.

Despite their good intent and obvious empathies for the enslaved, Foster and Stowe perpetuated racial stereotypes that they themselves obviously embraced. The comforting imageries (e.g., nurturing Mammy or the long-suffering servant, faithful even to those who counted and sold humans like sheep, etc.) belie the gross inhumanity that fueled this country’s wealth and economy.

Even so, “My Old Kentucky Home” was a cultural rarity in that it suggested an enslaved person was more than a beast, but a human capable of love and feelings of loss. In a society where selling a black human of any age, away from all he or she knew was viewed as serious as moving a parakeet from one cage to another—Foster was going a bit "rogue".

Even Frederick Douglass spoke to the significance of Foster’s and similar works when addressing The Ladies Anti-Slavery Society in Rochester New York, at their 1855 meeting: “These are heart songs, and the finest feelings of human nature expressed in them... ‘Lucy Neal’, ‘My Old Kentucky Home’ and ‘Uncle Ned’ can make the heart feel sad and merry and can call forth a tear and a smile. They awaken the empathies for the slave, in which anti-slavery principles take root, flourish and grow.”

But in the same speech, Douglass described the incredible conditions under which the vagaries of slavery or any injustice could be routinely ignored. To do so, “…man must cease to be a man, before he can become insensible to that cry.” Stephen Foster’s serenade, was not only for Kentucky, but one of national relevance. It continues to evoke that cry, even as it placates a national psyche, still very much in denial.

The sun will indeed shine bright today in my old Kentucky home. Viewers in the stands and infield of Churchill Downs, in front of TVs across the nation, of many hues and heritages will pause and indulge in a palliative that is quite contradictory to so many truths. At Churchill Downs, the song will be sung; the race will be run and won. Then it’s "off" to Pimlico in pursuit of the 2nd jewel in the Triple Crown! It is off to Maryland, where that state’s song still contains references to the “tyrant” and “vandal” that was Lincoln and reflects its Confederate moorings by incorporating John Wilkes infamous words after shooting the President.

Another song, another horse race, another city---Baltimore, which this year sits at the fiery intersection between what America claims and what is. In their saccharin duplicity, the strains of "My Old Kentucky Home" and "Maryland, My Maryland!" continue to unite on a brief, shallow level that ends with a chalky aftertaste many won't discern. They are odes to the American delusional system, commentaries on our propensity to self sooth--as the bitter realities continue to unfold, but we will not see. It is still a place where Blacks Americans are disproportionately prone to be ”picked up” by authorities for no apparent reason and end up dead. And we still live in an America where blacks will see the atrocity for what they know and have experienced. And it is still a place where many whites will believe that a black ended his life by breaking his own back. Oh, Amerika!
/mnk