My Old Kentucky Home

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I never liked our state song, “My Old Kentucky Home,” the one sung at ball games, outdoor concerts and any other time white people gather. I’ve never heard it sung at black gatherings.

I would love it if My Old Kentucky Home were dumped from any band’s playlist, including the University of Kentucky peb band. It is depressing and a sorry reflection of our state during a very regrettable time in our nation.

But the simple fact is the song is still sung and played, and I have continued to live.

Still, My Old Kentucky Home is one of the saddest songs I can think of.

Some say the lyrics were inspired by letters that songwriter Stephen Collins Foster’s sister Charlotte sent home to Pennsylvania while staying in Kentucky.

But it seems more likely that the story of the song is told through the eyes of a slave who has been sold to the sugar cane fields of the South.

The song is about how the slave misses his home in Kentucky, where his family remains enslaved without him. It is the story of one of the most injurious downsides of chattel slavery: the separation of families for money.

I think we all knew My Old Kentucky Home was reflective of the plantation era of the Old South. But we had a vision of the benevolent owner sitting on his veranda, watching his slaves sing as though they didn’t have a care in the world.

But that’s not what the lyrics say.

According to the Kentucky Department for Libraries & Archives, the draft title was Poor Uncle Tom, Good Night, substituting “Poor Uncle Tom” for “my old Kentucky home” in the chorus. However, at the same time another “Uncle Tom” was coming to the forefront.

In 1853, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin was published. It was set in rural Kentucky. The similarities between the novel and the song were apparent.

The “hard times come a-knocking at the door” in the song could be the overseer coming to take the slave away from “Poor Uncle Tom,” rather than from “the old Kentucky home,” according to the Kentucky Department for Libraries & Archives Web site, www. kdla.net/Statelib/KYSong.htm.

When the song was published in 1853, the title had been changed to My Old Kentucky Home.

Kentucky adopted My Old Kentucky Home as its state song in 1928. The phrase “the darkies are gay” was officially replaced with “the people are gay” in 1986, when state Rep. Carl Hines, D-Louisville, then the only black member of the House, heard a group of Japanese children respectfully singing the song containing the original lyrics. Within the week, he sponsored a bill to change the lyrics.

I’d rather it not be the state’s anthem and rather not have it sung at all. But I’ll live with it.

Doesn’t look like it is going anywhere.

ORIGINAL VERSION

‘My Old Kentucky Home’

The sun shines bright in the old Kentucky home, ‘Tis summer, the darkies are gay; The corn-top’s ripe and the meadow’s in the bloom, While the birds make music all the day.

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, goodnight.

Chorus:

Weep no more my lady. Oh! weep no more today! We will sing one song for the old Kentucky home, For the old Kentucky home far away.

They hunt no more for the possum and the coon, On meadow, the hill and the shore, They sing no more by the glimmer of the moon, On the bench by the old cabin door.

The day goes by like a shadow o’er the heart, With sorrow, where all was delight, The time has come when the darkies have to part, Then my old Kentucky home, goodnight.

(Chorus)

The head must bow and the back will have to bend, Wherever the darky may go; A few more days, and the trouble all will end, In the field where the sugar-canes grow;

A few more days for to tote the weary load, No matter, ’twill never be light; A few more days till we totter on the road, Then my old Kentucky home, goodnight.

(Chorus)

Source: Kentucky Department for Libraries & Archives

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