03-05-2025
Why My Old Kentucky Home is so controversial
Why My Old Kentucky Home is so controversial
You'll hear My Old Kentucky Home sung at Churchill Downs as you usually do before the Kentucky Derby, but did you know that the Kentucky state song is actually controversial?
You will now. The Louisville Courier-Journal broke down the Stephen Foster-penned song with the history of it, and a call for a new state song: "The song was sung frequently in minstrel shows by white men wearing blackface and has been sung at every Kentucky Derby since 1930. Now it is time to turn a collective corner and find a new state song to point us in a new direction."
The Smithsonian magazine has more about Foster and the parts of the song that were actually anti-slavery, although racist language was used in the lyrics originally before it was changed:
"Few of those singing along, however, may realize that the original lyrics were not a 'Dixie'-esque paean but actually a condemnation of Kentucky's enslavers who sold husbands away from their wives and mothers away from their children. As Foster wrote it, 'My Old Kentucky Home' is actually the lament of an enslaved person who has been forcibly separated from his family and his painful longing to return to the cabin with his wife and children. ...
The song emphasizes the humanity and close family ties of the enslaved population at a time when African Americans were routinely dehumanized and caricatured.
And then there's this from Louisville Public Media, a quote from historian Emily Bingham:
'It was written by a white man about a Black person being sold down river from Kentucky to the deep south to be sung by white men pretending to be black men on stages for white audiences,' Bingham said.
Because of that complicated history, there are questions every year if the tune should be sung or if it should even be Kentucky's state song. Seems like it's time to pick a new one.
