“Riders up!” is the familiar cry that starts a horse race, as it did this year at the 153rd running of the Kentucky Derby. And then, as the horses make their way from the paddock to the starting gate, “My Old Kentucky Home” is sung, as it has been since about 1921 and, since 1936, by the University of Louisville Cardinal Singers. The initial working title was “Poor Uncle Tom, Goodnight” because the song was influenced by Harriet Beecher Stowe’s book, Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
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But the song today isn’t quite the same song that had been sung for so many decades; the words were revised in 1986. The word “darkies” was changed to “people.”
Today’s version goes:
The sun shines bright in the old Kentucky home,
’Tis summer, the people [originally “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, good-night!
Chorus:
Weep no more my lady.
Oh! Weep no more today!
We will sing one song
For my old Kentucky home
For my old Kentucky home, far away.
But why was “my old Kentucky home” far away? And why was the lady weeping? Because slaves could be sold and then transported far away to serve their new masters. What sense does the phrase “my old Kentucky home far away” make in the new version?
Verses 2 and 3 in the original version go:
Verse 2:
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, [why?]
Then my old Kentucky home, goodnight.
Chorus
Verse 3:
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.
The “darkies” will have to “part”—some will be sold away; others will totter and die on the road. Just another day in the Democrat Party’s slavery world. You can see why Democrat politicians wanted to be rid of the words and their implications.
It’s easy to understand how the state of Kentucky—the people who ran Kentucky—could be embarrassed by the words. But it isn’t that far back to 1986, and today, so many years after the original, you might think keeping the original words would be instructive on who it was that supported slavery. Certainly not the Republican Party, which was founded to oppose slavery.
The problem for the Democrats, the party of slavery, is that they’re still at it: keeping the “darkies” (now “blacks”) down. Probably their most egregious position today is their solid opposition to school choice. The Democrats can’t risk an educated black population. Blacks in charter schools might learn something, and then, my old Democrat Party, good night.
When Barack Hussein Obama was president, he opposed—dressed up in obfuscating language, of course—the creation or expansion of private school voucher programs, which would have been advantageous for blacks. Recent polls show black support for various versions of school choice ranges from 73 to 81 percent.
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And what about voter ID? One recent poll found that 88 percent of black voters favor voter ID, as do 74 percent of white voters, 77 percent of Hispanic voters, and 81 percent of other minority voters.
Why? They have probably realized that without voter ID, illegal immigrants, many of whom can barely speak English, will flood the country the next time the Democrats take power, and then vote for Democrats who will shower money on them, and they will soak up jobs and resources (especially school resources) to the disadvantage of blacks and other people (many very poor) whose families have been here for generations.
But even though today’s blacks in the US favor by a large margin requiring some sort of ID for voting, the Democrat Party will have none of that stuff. They are busy calling Republicans’ attempt to institute voter ID for federal elections “Jim Crow 2.0.”
Well, it seems fair to say, if any group should know about Jim Crow, it’s Democrats. They were the ones who passed the Jim Crow laws in the South to enforce racial segregation and disenfranchise blacks following the period of Reconstruction. The Democrats know they’re pulling a fast one, or trying to, and from the polling data, it’s clear that everyone else knows it too.
If the Hakeem Jeffries and the Chuck Schumers ever take power again, we’ll all—”whities” and “darkies” together—be longing for our old Kentucky homes, far away.
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Daniel Oliver is Chairman Emeritus of the Board of the Education and Research Institute and a Director of Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy in Pasadena, CA. In addition to serving as Chairman of the Federal Trade Commission under President Reagan, he was Executive Editor and subsequently Chairman of the Board of William F. Buckley Jr.’s National Review.
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Email Daniel Oliver at [email protected].