♪ Kentucky State song.

My Old Kentucky home is both a celebratory ballad that evokes the sentimental for some.

But for others, it's outrage for its glorification of chattel slavery in the pre-Civil War south.

>> Author Emily Bingham explores how the melody about America's original said has evolved, become, quote, a living symbol of a happy past.

That was never just a song that's now on.

Connect sticks.

♪ ♪ Thank you for joining me for connections today.

I'm Renee Shaw, author and historian Emily Bingham chronicles.

How a song about the inhumane slave trade, Ken, to be embraced as the signature melody of the Commonwealth of Kentucky, mild Kentucky home has been re cited in recorded by Hollywood luminaries and marks the opening of Kentucky sporting events.

How did it come to be Kentucky signature song?

What was the intention of songwriter, Stephen Foster?

And should the state still climb a song that harkens the brutality of slavery?

Author of My Old Kentucky Home, the Astonishing Life and wrecking of an iconic song.

Emily Bingham now joins me to talk about this very important project in the It's a pleasure to have you with us.

Thank You, Emily from now on it and the South.

We always start off with the formality right?

This book is really a It's a great chronicling of some of this may be hurtful for some and an awakening for other people.

I do want to first have our audience understand.

How did you come to say?

I really want to chronicle this.

How this song came to be such a treasured and cherished state anthem.

Well, I kind of avoided it the way.

I think a lot of people have avoided it for a long time.

I >> grew up loving the song it was passed down to me is a cherished tradition by my grandfather taught me how to place a bet.

>> At the you know, at that the race track at Churchill Downs itself and, you know, every time I would think of it, I would think of Helmand, right?

You know, happy memories of how he made everything fun.

it was really only as an adult.

Expecting derby guests and wanted to share with them these special Derby things and things about my state I went and just thought, wow, I don't really know what that song is that we know when it was And I did a quick check and was confronted with 3 versus that told so clearly him a story that I just had to stop.

It was clearly the story of someone.

Being sold.

It was about slavery and it was about someone being sold from Kentucky to die far away.

Never to see their loved ones.

Again.

>> And it's a it's a verse that we don't hear.

And and in fact, I learned it by the opening pages of your book.

And I'll just read this this last first.

The head must bow in the back.

We'll have to Ben wherever the dark.

He may go a few more days in that rubble.

All will end in the field.

Whether sugar canes grow a few more days for to tout the wary low.

No matter it will never be light.

A few more days to we taught her on the road.

Then my old Kentucky home.

Good night.

But those first 3.

The source thing the lines.

But this is what you're talking about.

And I I've seen where you've presented about this book and you said that to learn this song on your record or yeah, right.

We all had those recorders year in school and you learned it then and didn't think much about.

I mean what it meant.

It seems, you know, when you're you're little you, you you in French writer in print on the institution's your teachers right in your schools, your universities and the song is all through our universities and colleges as well.

>> And you imprint on your government, right?

Because this is our state song him, you know, they know, right.

And then you you know, something has emotional for those of us who care about horse racing at all or even, you know, are want to show off our state at its height of glory at the Derby.

I mean, this is the moment of moments, right?

Right.

As the horses step on the track.

Just as you know, we've been waiting in Louisville for weeks and months for it to finally happen.

the Sports Illustrated writer Frank to Ford once said this was a time when every any good man would cloud up and cry out right?

Because it was showing this at this historic race that's been going on since 18 70's, a moment where history and beauty by sect for an instant.

>> And that's the way pretty much felt to me until.

I thought about what do my tears mean?

What on Earth could that?

How can I explain that?

I'm having all these feelings.

And yet it's grounded in something from the 18 50's at a time when there was real slavery here in this in this state.

80,000 human people were sold a way just as they are in this song, actually.

And the they are it's a dehumanizing, says the one of the saddest chapters in our history and to do to have this moment of celebration and sort of.

Feeling unity and and patriotism about place just fell completely.

At odds.

So the question was, how did we get from here to this from 2 to the present from a song that originally an 18 53 by Stephen Foster's published as a black face minstrel song to entertain white people about black people.

>> But do you think that people just saying it out of ignorance?

It's it's got a nice catchy.

Slow melody.

I mean it it feels in a stout tickets feels like it feels like so many songs when you actually listen to the words and the lyrics you challengers about or really shouldn't be saying that.

Do you think it's a simple as that?

>> I do not think it's as simple as that.

But I do think there's a lot to that.

And I want to acknowledge Stephen Foster wrote an amazing and it's pretty easy to saying, right?

It's it, it has some some logically.

It has some some, you know, notes and and chat and transitions that that bring us a long emotional e absolutely.

So there is that for sure.

But I do think when we say words and we embody them, we we shouldn't we breathe them in.

We breed them out.

We.

They become part of us and I don't think we're completely unconscious at that point, right?

Right.

And but I do think that many people absolutely sing the song without having any knowledge or the racial and racist roots of of the document of the of the tax right?

Yes.

Stephen Foster, who is hailed as the father of American music wrote, Oh, Susanna.

I mean, all of these great nostalgic songs.

What were his roots or connection to Kentucky?

That's a great question.

I'm so glad you asked because sometimes even I forget to bring this up.

I learned when I went to work on the project that he from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, born lived most of his life.

There.

He may have stepped foot on the shores of Kentucky once or twice, but he never spent time here.

He had no deep connection to the place and he certainly certainly did not write my old Kentucky home in Bardstown.

Yes, you might have to say >> Have to repeat that.

Yeah, because a lot of people assume that to be the Turner's he was born in the 18 20's and Industrializing America.

>> And the most popular music of his time was this thing called Black faced in strategy for and it was more popular than any single genre of music that we even have right now.

So try to imagine the dominance of it.

It started in the 18 30's.

A lot of people don't know this.

I didn't learn in school, for instance, that.

But face Miss Chelsea was not only the most popular thing going in our country through the 19th century, but also that it was our greatest cultural export to other parts of the world.

So here's this young country.

They're kind of trying to figure out who we are and until jazz and Hollywood come along.

The biggest thing we were known for were these minstrel songs where?

White people wrote them, they acted out being enslaved.

People sometimes free black people on stages for fun.

I mean, it was entertainment.

And and sometimes it was sentimental fun.

And sometimes it was.

Even you know, literally just making fun.

But there is always a demeaning aspect to this because this was not black people writing their own songs and stories right.

And I want to get to that point about how can black people reclaim this >> I'm not sure they want from the ones that I spoke with.

But I do want to ask you about Stephen Foster that perhaps there wasn't the intent that this would become a signature anthem for a state that he was just trying to make money, right?

I mean, this man was was the first American songwriter to devote his entire career like >> professionally to do that.

People just thought he was crazy.

You couldn't do it.

If there was no structure to do that.

So the only way he could do bring in any income was too right for that popular.

What was popular the time and he tried to write other kinds of What must the fairytales be?

Are something these were the sentimental parlor music that just didn't sell.

And so he did what he needed to do.

And I do think he married some of the sentimentality of that other John Rowe, the son of Parler kind of songwriting with the light brown hair He wrote in that genre that was successful but nothing matched the level of mile Kentucky home Susanna for popularity and by kind of melding them in a way he might have made it easier for blackface minstrel songs like this to continue into our exempted, you know, be 170 years old and still kicking.

That's right.

I remember it's been a few years ago.

I was on stage with Wendell Berry and Jim Clot or and we were talking about this particular shoe.

This could have been after South Carolina.

It could have been after some tragic racial incident.

And and and I remember Wendell Berry.

>> Kind of harkening back some of the historian.

Ken Emerson had said about that.

This book was written or this song was written as to Uncle Tom's cabin by the abolitionist.

Harriet Beecher Stowe, right?

And so that really even Frederick Douglass abolition him himself, kind of defended this right this is, you know, I'm not to necessarily tusd torment those the this slavery or a black people.

But wasn't that into if you just read the lyrics and any of your listeners, I invite them a lot of viewers to to go the them themselves, right?

You would agree with Wendell Berry and certainly Frederick Douglass, the great abolitionist himself that.

>> This seems like something that would arouse people to do something about a horrible human human.

You know.

Crime against humanity, right?

Right.

Which was the slave trade and was the holding of other human beings by by others.

So but it didn't in didn't do that.

There were other songs that rouse people that, in fact, abolitionist named Joshua Simpson.

He had to write whole new lyrics to my old Kentucky home because these were so utterly inadequate.

The chorus has an enslaved man wishing himself back into slavery.

The first verse, which is the one we saying in the one we're familiar with, albeit with one.

We're jumping, right, right.

Sets up a beautiful scene of a people.

Carefree, hardly having to do anything rolling around having a good time.

The sun, the birds singing, right, this create and and a myth that slavery in Kentucky was benevolent that it was fine.

We in this century know we know that that's a myth that has harmed.

Countless generations of white and black Americans to imagine this could be an institution that to be carried out.

Without I mean, when even if you weren't sold.

Away, right, you had a chance of it happening to you at any moment with fear of that.

And you know, you you were not the you have no power.

You have no power.

We can't.

So we can't have that miss that things in Kentucky where we're better because we don't know what it felt like.

Yeah.

>> I have so many things to ask you buy before forget what's been the response?

From Kentuckians to this book?

I mean, I think so many of my readers are fascinated.

They just didn't.

They really didn't know.

Many of them are disturbed that that because they for >> felt I had a child asked me the other day.

She's learned the song and school herself and her music class.

And she said, why aren't my teachers telling me this?

And I can answer her.

I was unsure and desert heat or not know or does the teacher not want to talk about something that is uncomfortable, which is.

>> More would be fearful of retaliation if the teacher did go into this is part of that critical race theory conversation.

Teachers have been resisting this especially black teachers.

>> Who KET that this song demeaned their own students for generations.

Lyman, Johnson, yes, at Central High School, the first high school for black people in this state.

Yeah.

Todd Muhammad Ali and every student who came through his school do not stand up for that song.

Never sing that song.

And I've had a veteran of the civil rights movement in Louisville.

Sit INS was rearrested put in jail, say to me and this is where I think it gets personal right?

She says to me.

>> Emily now, you know, why do you cling to it so hard?

Why do you and choose be sure yet about the plurality?

Yeah, you know, this has hurt me.

I could never sing it.

It's not my song.

And another example would be Dorian Hairston who was here, the captain of the University of Kentucky baseball team to he can't stay in Rupp Arena when this song comes on, he says, what would it be if my state song?

Took me into account as a human being.

Instead of someone who was owned and I I truly believe because I did not know Renee, I truly believe that most Kentucky hands.

I don't know that those feelings exist.

4 fellow Kentuckians fun.

And I like to say that it's like we have a segregated memory.

And the system has wanted us to stay on those 2 tracks.

Not because we're so segregated.

I didn't hear that from Muhammad Ali's best friend until I interviewed him.

He said that's not my song.

That's your song.

Yeah.

And I don't want I don't want my fellow Kentuckians to feel that way about a symbol of our state and the reality is, as I mentioned, Stephen Foster's from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

But face minutes, we'll see developed in urban spaces, cities around this in the north.

Not here.

Not in the Deep South at all.

It was an entertainment for in big crowds of people on Broadway and theaters throughout the country.

We only took it in.

100 years ago.

Yeah, we're approaching 100 years of what I like to call the trifecta.

We opened a tourist attraction.

And 1920's 1923. in Bardstown.

The cause.

This state was not looking too good in the public mind we were.

It was like future in Appalachia.

All those, you know, families armed to the teeth, fighting each other to the death.

You know, something that it turned out that all around the world, people KET the song about Kentucky.

The Kentucky had nothing to do with it until they saw its popularity elsewhere and said, how about we use that to bring people in and change their view of maybe a gracious a gracious state, a gracious place, not a place of fighting where it's dangerous to live or visit or do business.

How about let's make it into something, you know, palatable and sure enough millions of people have come to see my old Kentucky home and the old and they do, you so so-called.

So the second part of the trifecta.

Was making a state song in 1928.

The 3rd was and and it was in its original form.

Believe me.

The 3rd was the Derby replacing the national anthem with my old Kentucky home in 1930.

So in that space, Kentucky laid a lot of bets on this and it has I'll call it mild, Kentucky home right?

It has paid right.

But I do think if we if we listen to this song as and see and the book goes into this are of him, how it was passed through an aide.

It was it was such a soothing song through those Jim Crow years through all through the civil rights fights.

It was a fighting song to fight back with actually.

Finally, we drop the offending word that you use.

I call it the D word.

Finally, we drop that.

But very gradually, I mean, it wasn't until the late 80's.

The state officially decided.

Well, we better do something about that.

And it was only because a bunch of Japanese school kids showed up in Frankfort on a tour and decided to sing the song that they have been taught in Japan.

That's how global eyes right?

Right.

And Wild.

One member of the legislature was a black man from Kentuckyian he said I cannot believe I'm hearing this and everybody standing up.

Yeah, yes.

>> And I'm curious about because you're in the company of some prolific African-American writers, Hannah Drake.

Frank Tex Walker at it.

There's a community of the community.

There's a tight literary Friday in Kentucky.

And so I'm curious about do they in your conversations, tell you what?

There is a place for my old Kentucky home and where would that be >> I have never heard any of them.

Tell me where they would like.

>> To see the song I've only heard them feel frustrated.

They haven't been.

They and people have come before them because this has been going on for generations in the black community, though, of course, that's often been bigger problems to address in a song.

But they've just been frustrated that that most white people just don't know and don't seem to care if they do know.

So that's been their main thing.

I.

>> Can it be reclaimed?

By African-Americans?

Well, I would leave that to African-Americans.

I would leave that to our citizens in Kentucky.

>> And our artists who are black to decide how and whether this song conserve them in a way that is useful or productive or rewarding because it's been serving the people, the white people of Kentucky and its institutions.

And it has not yet for again 100 years and whether this is a brand that makes sense for us in the next century is I think a question for all Kentuckians, but we're not going to move or decide that by just leaving it up to our blacks are blacks, brothers and sisters.

We remember kind of its zenith of the modern civil rights for social justice era.

2020, just a couple years ago, we had George Floyd and Breonna Taylor who hailed from Louisville.

>> And there were calls for one, not even have the Derby run.

That's right by protesters.

But then once again, those renewed calls to abandon the song and Churchill defended having the Derby and defended having the song and they said we're going to have a moment of silence.

Proceed and all of that.

So is it your position that Kentucky should abandon the song outright?

Not saying it at the Derby, not seeing it.

It banquets and dinners and sporting events has almost part of an ceremony.

>> I believe that in and it's taken I worked on this for so long And so I have to I just want to have the that I've been processing this story for years.

I used to sing this song to my children.

I used to cry to it myself.

I mean, every single year and I can't sing it anymore.

It because of what I know of how it makes others feel.

Do you stand?

No, I would not stand for the song again.

So.

I'm not trying to tell people what to do.

I want people to sit with the understanding that there's more than they KET right?

I do feel that in spaces that have not taken put put the the the the rights, our dignity of black citizens at the forefront for them to presume that this is just great is a presumption that truly believe deserves reconsideration.

But I want it to be done thoughtfully because just pushing a button and turning something off leaves a lot of people confused and we don't.

We I'm not offering replacements because this is a time a rare chance because of what happened in this country in the last couple of years where we are learning.

Well, things are going on that a lot of us didn't want to believe were And I think this is in a small way.

Another thing that for 100 years, something has being going on.

That's been harmful that we didn't think was PA. How could that be something we felt most of us felt so nice and warm about, right?

Yeah.

Did he have any water that relevance?

Well, you know, the replacement been blue Moon of Kentucky, Kentucky Waltz but >> you know, I I that's a whole different conversation about that.

But I do want the time remaining because I hope that a lot of Kentuckyian of course, recognize your name and the family legacy of the Bingham's.

And you've been very honest about when your family owned the Courier Journal that I think you apologize for the family being going slow on racial justice was how the headline read in 2021, I want to quickly explain that.

And now where we can maybe see some of the Bingham family of those good days of the courier, which I'm probably going to get bad remarks well, it was a different time in general is right, right >> so, yes, I have been public about being aware that I grew up in one of the most.

Consider one of those liberal families are institutions.

The Courier Journal in the state right.

And yet that doesn't mean that there aren't things to be regretted her to be faced and to apologize for.

So I regret in being brought up to think that, well, we were just crusaders all the time.

I come to learn that when students is U of L we're asking for as a black student, you know, center and somewhere to to gather and books about black history and African American studies that the Courier Journal said, OK, let's not push the trustees too far.

Right now it's let's let's take it easy.

Your your demands are too much.

That's the kind of tone that has, you know, has made.

>> All white folks feel that.

Being called to listen people have been treated differently so differently in our society is sort of a bother, right?

Not something we really have to do.

And in my own memory, I tell the story in the book and I Do Thread my story through the book because I don't claim to be outside of any of these systems.

Muhammad Ali was looking at moving to the big house near mine as a child.

When I told my parents over dinner.

You want to excite I thought, oh, my God, he's the greatest.

Yeah.

>> And I internalized what that was.

And you know, that's that's in the 1970's.

None of us has a history.

We can all be totally proud of.

How could we live?

>> Whether so much Emily Bingham had to talk with you about and I hope that I'll have an opportunity with you and a few others that I think would be good to have a nice form of discussion about this, about your work and about so much of where we are right now at this point in time.

But thank you for this work.

It's called my old Kentucky home.

The astonishing life recognition of an iconic American song.

Emily Bingham.

>> Thank you for watching connections today.

I'm Renee Shaw.

You can follow us on Facebook and Twitter.

Watch Kentucky Edition each week night at 6.30, Eastern 5.30, central.

So I see you again.

Take really good care.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ >> 2021.

>> And with their song.

And historian at the time said, you know, when it comes to state songs, I don't really want to have to have a 10 minute lecture.

his ecologist, yeah.

What this thing is, you just want to say.

You just want to say that the yeah.

Yeah, right?

Yeah.

That that that that think that boils it down to exactly the essence of it.

We are crossed.

>> Yeah.

Yeah.

What's your next work?

>> You know, I've got a couple spinoffs from.