Way Up North in Dixie: A Black Family's Claim to the Confederate AnthemSince 1859, when blackface minstrel Dan Emmett first sang "I Wish I Was in Dixie's Land" before a New York City audience, the song has stirred powerful emotions on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line. Embraced as the anthem of the Confederacy, "Dixie" still epitomizes Southern pride for some, white supremacy and racism for others. In Way Up North in Dixie, Howard Sacks and Judith Rose Sacks trace the song to a nineteenth-century black family on the Ohio frontier and tell how the words, verse for verse, speak of African American experiences in the North and a black woman's memories of her life in the slaveholding South. As the Sackses reveal, African Americans in Knox County, Ohio - the home of Dan Emmett, who claimed to have written "Dixie" - have long asserted that Emmett learned the song from a local black family of musicians, the Snowdens. Drawing on family records, public documents, and the vivid memories of elders in the community, the Sackses follow the Snowdens from Maryland slavery to Ohio freedom, reconstructing a story that is complex, discordant, and ultimately as memorable as "Dixie" itself. Farmers by occupation, the Snowdens performed banjo and fiddle tunes and sang popular songs for black and white audiences throughout rural central Ohio from the 1850s to the early twentieth century. Linking the Snowdens to Dan Emmett, the Sackses focus on a central issue of American music from minstrelsy to the present: the appropriation and stereotyping of black culture by white entertainers. In a ground-breaking approach to the study of minstrelsy's origins, the authors document actual musical exchanges between African Americans and European Americans, revealing relationships longspeculated about but rarely confirmed. By documenting the black voice in "Dixie", the Sackses challenge contemporary Americans to rethink the anthem of the Old South as a symbol meaningful for a diverse society. |
Contents
Cimmon Seed and Sandy Bottom | 25 |
The Snowden Family Are Coming | 57 |
Ohios Not the Place for Me | 124 |
Copyright | |
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Way Up North in Dixie: A Black Family's Claim to the Confederate Anthem Howard L. Sacks,Judith Rose Sacks No preview available - 1993 |
Common terms and phrases
A.M.E. Church abolitionist African Americans Alexander Greer banjo blackface century Charles County circus Civil Color Line Columbus composer County's culture Dan Emmett dance Daniel Decatur Emmett death Dixie Land early Ellen Cooper Ellen Snowden entertainers family's fare Well knox farm father fiddle fiddlers Frederick Douglass Fredericktown friends George Booker Henry Cooper History horse Ibid interview with authors Knox County labor letter Lew Snowden lived Marie Moorehead Maryland master minstrel show minstrelsy mother Mount Vernon Democratic musicians Nan Simpson Nanjemoy Nathan Negro North notes Ohio Historical Society performance plantation planters played popular race recorded repertoire sentimental servants sheet music Sinful Tunes singing slavery slaves Smith's Point Smyrna Snowden collection Snowden Family Band social song South Southern story Thomas Snowden tion tobacco town township traveling Tunes and Spirituals University Press Vernon Democratic Banner violin Virginia vote William woman wrote York young