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Forgetting Stephen Foster: The Mythology of a “Great American”
Chelsea Carnes, University of Florida
3/15/2015
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Page 2-Contents
Page 3-Abstract
Page 3-Introduction
Page 6-Chapter One: Foster’s Personal Life and Privilege
Page 11-Chapter Two: Foster’s “Plantation Music”
Page 15-Chapter Three: Foster’s Political Music
Page 19-Chapter Four: The Post-Mortem Foster Revival
Page 26-Chapter Five: The 1960s Folk Music Revival and Stephen Foster Today
Page 33-Conclusion
Page 35-Appendix/Illustrations
Page 37-Bibliography
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Abstract
This paper raises questions about the unchallenged reputation of American role models by focusing on the life and context of Stephen Collins Foster. By examining Foster, a 19th century American composer, and his biographies as portrayed by numerous historians since his death, I reveal the inconsistencies between the realities of Foster’s career, and the redacted story that is currently presented to the public. In placing Foster within the historical context of Civil
War era America, studying his music, and tracking his legacy, I separate the truths of Foster’s life from the fictions, particularly emphasizing his participation in the exploitation of black culture through the musical genre of blackface minstrelsy. This essay illuminates how far from the truth historians and educators have strayed in order to protect and enhance the reputation of a famous “Great American.”
Introduction
On the 4th of July, 1826, Stephen Collins Foster was born in his family’s riverside home
in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. This young boy who preferred music to school work and was
writing waltzes by age 14 would go on to become one of the most famous and enduring
composers in American history. Even 150 years after his death, most American children would
be able to recite the lyrics to Foster’s “Oh Susanna,” Floridians and Kentuckians would instantly
recognize “Old Folks at Home” or “My Old Kentucky Home” as their state anthems, and
contemporary musicians from Bob Dylan to Sam Cooke would cover his “Hard Times” and
“Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair.” Yet, at the same time as a 20th century folk revival 4 commemorated the composer, American historians and archivists would also participate in a national forgetting of some of the most important details of Foster’s life and legacy. By the 21st century, Americans would no longer remember that Foster’s most famous songs were actually written for black-face minstrel shows; Foster memorials would overlook his contributions to
James Buchanan’s political campaign; the context of his popular tunes, most of which were written just before and during the Civil War, would be erased; and Florida politicians would go as far as altering the lyrics of their state song to corroborate in the creation of a vanilla Foster mythology. His history and legacy would be cleaned up and white-washed to fit neatly into modern narratives of an American role model. This erasure would be so effective that the 21st
century Foster would hardly resemble the actual man who lived, wrote music, and died during
one of the most developmental and important eras of United States history.
In this paper, I will use Foster’s legacy as a case study to understand and criticize
contemporary historians’ support of mythical narratives that often omit and redact significant
character flaws of early American men of privilege and fame. Evidenced in the numerous
monuments, parks, neighborhoods, museums, and even state songs honoring Foster, many
modern historians and curators have chosen to selectively glorify specific deeds and contributions that elevate and inflate the reputation of a bygone individual, rather than approaching this “American hero” with an evolved critique appropriate to current sociological and political advancement. The result of this process is the creation of larger than life “great”
Americans so untouchably sanitized and removed from historical reality that they actually serve as poor and un-relatable role models, defeating the initial purpose of their “hero” status.
Stephen Foster serves as an excellent subject for this study not only because he is a
famous white man of privilege who lived during some of the most formative years of our 5 country’s history, 1826-1864, but also because he established his fame by writing minstrel music, which openly mocked African Americans around the time of the Civil War. Over a century after his death and over 50 years after the Civil Rights Movement forced Americans to think critically about racial stereotypes and their harmful impact on our society, Stephen Foster has still been gifted long-term “great American” status in the form of dozens of monuments and tourist attractions.1 Importantly, he is to this day considered a role model for young Americans;
at least 6 elementary schools scattered around the country bear his name2 and an annual Stephen
Foster Scholarship encourages teenagers to participate in a vocal competition during which
contestants must dress as Foster or his wife and sing two of Foster’s songs in order to win a
$1,500 award.3 Even now, Florida continues to honor Foster by maintaining a 783 acre park in
his honor, and numerous volumes of scholarship both old and new ignore the historical context
of Foster’s heritage and instead contribute to his mythology by singing his praises, so to speak.
Yet, it is in the lyrics of the very songs he is recognized for that the contradiction between
modern American values and the truths of Foster’s legacy becomes so obvious.
To study the case of Stephen Foster is to reflect on historical memory. This paper seeks
to understand the hidden truths of a privileged white musician from the north and what the
renaissance of his minstrel tunes beginning in the 1930s might say about U.S. identity. What are
historians willing to edit, redact, or plainly overlook when identifying a long gone individual as a
“Great American,” and how does this reflect our values as a nation?
1 The term “Great American,” used often in this paper, is pulled from the Hall of Fame of Great Americans, where a bust of Stephen Foster commemorates the composer’s fame at New York University. 2 Data.gov. “Public Elementary Secondary University Survey 2009-2010.” Data.Gov. Inventory.data.gov/dataset. Web. 11 Nov. 2014. 3 Stockton, Ann. “Jeanie/Stephen Auditions.” Florida Federation of Music Clubs. http://www.ffmc- music.org/jeanie.htm 3 Jul. 2013. Web. 01 Dec. 2014. 6
Chapter 1 Foster’s Personal Life & Privilege
While most public exhibits and monuments, such as the Stephen Foster Music Park in
Florida, tend to simplify Foster’s narrative by beginning with his life as an adult musician, I argue that in order to objectively understand the path of Foster’s legacy and the events that led to his status as a “Great American,” one must first undertake an investigation of the tumultuous era in which he was raised. To understand the relevance of the period Foster was born into and the influence contemporary political and social issues would have had on his character and work, one must start at his birth.4
Stephen Collins Foster came into the world on Independence Day, 1826, coincidentally the same day that two of America’s “founding fathers,”5 John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, passed away.6 Although Foster was born on the outskirts of Pittsburgh at a time when the city was just starting to expand into what one day would become an industrial center, he was only two generations removed from the frontier. His paternal grandfather, James Foster, was a Scotch-
Irish pioneer of the west who settled in Pennsylvania when there was no ready-made infrastructure, at a time when white settlers like the Fosters lived in fear of and competition with
4 At this point, the paper begins examining Foster through a lens that includes and even focuses on his privilege. For more on this technique of biography, see Tim Wise’s book White Like Me. Wise encourages this process as a form of self-examination to understand one’s own privilege in order to become a more efficient anti-racist. This essay will apply the same technique to history. Much bibliographical history glorifies one man or woman without pointing out the benefits of privilege that led to their success. This can mistakenly leave one imagining that the strength of a great American’s character and hard work alone brought about their large achievements and that those who don’t succeed in the same efforts are merely lesser individuals, when truthfully, privilege often plays a very large role. 5 Quotations are used here because innumerable forgotten individuals played a role in America’s foundation and the term “founding fathers” although frequently utilized by U.S. historians, is not just paternalistic, but also incorrect, as it narrowly insinuates that the 57 men who signed the Declaration of Independence were solely responsible for the country’s liberation. 6 Howard, John Tasker. A Treasury of Stephen Foster. New York: Random House, 1946. 7 local Native American tribes.7 Concepts of white supremacy, the belief that light skinned people
were superior and entitled to a higher rank in society than those with dark skin, would have been
the common norm in families like the Fosters. Although during Foster’s lifetime Pennsylvania
was a “free state,” throughout his infancy from 1826 to 1830, the Foster family had a full-time
servant named Olivia Pise.8 Pennsylvania was the first state to establish an Act for the Gradual
Abolition of Slavery, passed by the state legislature in 1780.9 However, the act was effectually
more conservative than similar bills passed in other northern states. It prevented the import of
new slaves into the state, but still allowed for the trade and free labor of slaves already living in
Pennsylvania. Nationally, white supremacy was rapidly institutionalized as the young country
grew its economy on the bruised backs of enslaved black laborers.10 This attitude of racial
privilege would have allowed many white settlers like the Fosters to move up quickly in society
by taking land from native groups and using African American servants as cheap or free labor to
improve their own holdings and increase their own wealth. Stephen Foster was born at a time
before the emancipation of slaves, when the United States was just 50 years old and society was
heavily stratified by castes based on skin color, country of origin, religion, and wealth. He grew
up in a thoroughly patriotic time and would have been familiar with victorious participants of the
American Revolution, his father William Barclay Foster among them. Interestingly, while
7 Hodges, Fletcher Jr. The Swanee River: and a Biography of Stephen C. Foster. White Springs, FL: The Stephen Foster Memorial Association, Inc., 1958. 8 Austin, William W. “Susanna,” “Jeanie,” and “The Old Folks At Home”: The Songs of STEPHEN C. FOSTER from His Time to Ours 2nd edition. pp. xvi 9 Black History in Pennsylvania. “An Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery, March 1, 1780.” http://www.portal.state.pa.us/portal/server.pt/community/empowerment/18325/gradual_abolition_of_slavery_act/62 3285. Web. 02 Mar. 2015. 10 Slavery is one of the earliest examples of institutionalized racism in the United States. Some argue that a similar institution exists in the modern American prison and court system. See Weatherspoon, Floyd D. “The Mass Incarceration of African-American Males: a Return to Institutionalized Slavery, Oppression, and Disenfranchisement of Constitutional Rights.” Texas Wesleyan Law Review. Issue 599. 2007.
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Stephen Foster has come to be viewed as a “great American” role model in our time, the “great
Americans” of his childhood would have been veterans of the Revolutionary War and leaders of the new government such as the first five American presidents and the signers of the Declaration of Independence, all white, class-privileged, proud American men.
Foster certainly came into the world with a great deal of privilege. He was white, he was male, and he was born the youngest of ten children in a large and loving family.11 At the time of
his birth his parents were financially well-off. His family owned a large river-side home near
Pittsburgh known affectionately as the White Cottage, and his father was well connected in
Pennsylvania’s entrepreneurial and political scene. William Barclay Foster served on the
Pennsylvania State Senate and even held the position of Mayor of Allegheny for a time.12
Stephen would have been taught to look up to his father with respect as the family leader and patriarch. This was the era before women were allowed to vote or participate actively in financial or political activity, even within their own families.13 Unfortunately, William Foster was not a
flawless role model and Stephen Foster inherited two of his father’s greatest weaknesses: an
inclination towards alcohol and a propensity for business blunders and bad financial decision- making. These Achilles’ heels would play an important role in both men’s lives, as well as the lives of their families.
As carefully described in Ken Emerson’s Foster biography, Doo-Dah!, William Foster lost his home as well as much of his wealth, leading his family on a track of downward mobility.14 Having never fully settled a lawsuit with the government over reimbursement for a
11 Howard, John Tasker. “Stephen Collins Foster,” A Treasury of Stephen Foster. New York: Random House, 1946. 12 Ibid. 13 The 19th amendment, which finally allowed women the right to vote, would not be ratified until 70 years after Foster’s death, in 1920. 14 Emerson, Ken. Doo-dah! Stephen Foster and the Rise of American Popular Culture. pp. 27-32. 9 steamboat loaded with cannonballs delivered by William Foster to New Orleans during the War of 1812, the Foster family patriarch was already dealing with debt upon his youngest child’s arrival. After several additional poor financial investments, first with the Pittsburgh and
Greensburgh Turnpike Company which went bankrupt in 1818, then with the ineffective Board of Canal Commissioners for which he had traded his seat in the legislature, William Foster spent much of his adult life in debt and judicial litigation. It did not help matters that William Foster was often away from home, particularly during his years as a member of the state legislature.
During this time he was forced to spend much of his year working several hundred miles away in
Harrisburg, leaving his wife Eliza and their ten children to make-do at home. This paternal absence in Stephen Foster’s life becomes significant when one identifies similar patterns repeated later in the musician’s own adult life. The grown Stephen Foster would often abandon his own wife and children, in some cases for years at a time. William Foster struggled with alcohol abuse before finally taking the pledge of temperance in 1833. This effort at sobriety came too late to salvage the Foster family’s finances. The Foster children who had not been married off were now living in various rental houses in the Pittsburg area while the family relied heavily on handouts from Stephen Foster’s older brother, William Jr., who had a steady career as a civil engineer. Though the family managed with enough money to carry them through the economic depression of 1837, letters show that the Fosters lacked financial independence and felt the uncertainty of their position. In 1834 William Sr. wrote to William Jr., “”We are now very poor, but hope and good health keeps us up.”15
Despite the family’s fading financial privilege, opportunities for the children were still
available through William Foster Sr.’s social connections. William Foster Jr. would go on to
15 William B. Foster to William B Foster, Jr., 7 Dec. 1834 (Foster Hall Collection, C631) 10 become vice president of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company in 1833 and letters indicate that he was in a position to consistently fund the family during their hardest financial times.16 Stephen
Foster’s brother, Dunning Foster, became a partner in a steamboat agency firm. Stephen Foster’s sister, Ann Eliza, married a reverend by the name of Edward Young Buchanan. Edward was the brother of James Buchanan who would become the President of the United States in 1857, which would lead to additional elevation of the Foster family’s social status and professional connections. Stephen was raised with private tutoring as well as instruction from the Allegheny
Academy, an early education that was typical of prestigious Scotch-Irish families of Pittsburgh.17
In 1840, at the age of 14, Stephen Foster was sent to Athens, Pennsylvania to study at the Athens
Academy. Here he composed his first piece, “The Tioga Waltz,” for flute. In his year and a half away from home, Foster performed poorly in school. He transferred from the Athens Academy to the Towanda Academy, then tried Jefferson College for a week, before finally dropping out and returning home, where he continued to study with private tutors. In 1843, at age 18, he composed his first published piece, “Open Thy Lattice, Love.” The music was original but the lyrics were borrowed from a poem of the same name. By 1846, Stephen Foster’s parents were encouraging him to select a career. He first applied and was rejected from the West Point
Military Academy, then eventually moved to Cincinnati to take up a bookkeeping job in his brother Dunning’s steamboat agency, Irwin & Foster. Thanks to his familial connections in
Cincinnati, a bustling port town on the Ohio River, Foster was finally able to make the contacts necessary to begin his music career.
16 Emerson, Ken Doo-dah! Stephen Foster and the Rise of American Popular Culture. pp. 29 17 Hodges Jr., Fletcher. The Swanee River. Introduction. 11
Chapter 2: Foster’s “Plantation Music”
The genre of music that would make Stephen Collins Foster famous, minstrel music, is seen today as wincingly racist. Known by modern musical theatre scholars as the “most important American musical-theatrical development of the antebellum period,” blackface minstrelsy was incredibly popular from the mid-19th century into the 1900s, and as evidenced by
Foster’s modern popularity, remains an influence on American culture to this day.18 Although
aspects of blackface minstrelsy had been utilized in regional theatres for some time, it was in
1843 that the Virginia Minstrels, a group of white actors led by Dan Emmett, introduced the
genre with well-received performances of their self-proclaimed “Ethiopian Concert” in Boston
and New York City.19 Blackface minstrelsy was a form of entertainment wherein white (and later
also African-American) performers painted their skin black with burnt cork and used song,
dance, and comedy skits to imitate racial stereotypes of slave plantation life. Minstrel shows
were largely performed for white audiences, and were the most popular theatre form in the
United States from their introduction in the 1840s into the Reconstruction era of the 1870s. A
standardized format for these performances quickly developed as actors improvised and edited
their plays, expanding upon bits that aroused positive responses from their audiences and tossing
out material that elicited lesser reaction. Minstrelsy took the form of an irreverent and off the
cuff variety show that featured many of the earliest forms of American musical theatre including
song, dance, pantomime, burlesque, skits, and comedy. As the genre developed uniform
characteristics over time and among various troupes of actors, a repeated narrative as well as
18 Preston, Katherine K. “American Musical Theatre Before the Twentieth Century,” The Cambridge Companion to the Musical, 2nd ed. pp. 12. 19 Lhamon Jr., W. T., Raising Cain: Blackface Performance from Jim Crow to Hip Hop. pp. 31 12 several prominent characters were commonly incorporated into the shows. These characters included “Jim Crow,” a shuffling black male character created by the white performer Thomas
Rice, whose name would later be used to describe the era of legal racial segregation that followed Reconstruction. “Mamie,” “Zip Coon,” and “Uncle Tom” were also caricatures of the slave population that featured frequently in minstrel theatre. The common narrative found on fliers for traveling minstrel troupes and throughout the shows’ dialogues attempted to convince audiences that they were watching sincere displays of Southern plantation slave life. These fliers commonly referred to the music as “plantation melodies” or “Ethiopian Melody” as if the music somehow represented the actual lives of African Americans living in the south.20 Considering that most minstrel troupes were composed of white urban northern actors, many of whom would never have visited a plantation, the sincerity attempted in this narrative was farcical. In his research on blackface theatre, historian Alexander Saxton examines the origin of 43 of the most consequential popular American blackface performers born before 1838. He reveals that only 5 of the lot were born south of the Mason Dixon Line and even several of those were from
Baltimore, hardly the southern experience. The four men who were most influential in the creation and production of blackface minstrelsy, Stephen Foster, Thomas Rice of “Jim Crow” fame, Dan Emmett of the Virginia Minstrels, and Edwin Christy of the Christy Minstrels, were all from the north and mostly urban.21 While these actors may have advertised a genuine
depiction of southern plantation living, they instead delivered a mockery that played on stereotypes and prejudices while exploiting what little black culture they may have observed
from a safe distance in their travels.
20 Foster, Stephen. “Foster’s Plantation Melodies” sheet music. Baltimore: F. D. Benteen, 1850. 21 Saxton, Alexander. “Blackface Minstrelsy and Jacksonian Ideology.” pp. 5. 13
Stephen Foster himself never lived in and rarely traveled near slave territory. After his marriage to Jane McDowell and later the birth of his daughter, Marion Foster, in 1851, he and his family took a riverboat trip down the Mississippi to New Orleans. Despite having made his name and fortune on southern “plantation music,” this would be Stephen Foster’s only trip to the
South. From the distance of his steamboat, he surely would have spotted many riverside plantations, however by this time, in 1852, he had already written several of his most famous plantation songs without ever having visited a true plantation. “Old Uncle Ned” was published in
1848, “Nelly Was a Lady” came out in 1849, and “Oh! Boys Carry Me ‘Long” as well as the popular hit “Old Folks At Home” both came out in 1851.
Although blackface minstrelsy is now widely recognized as politically and ethically objectionable and is no longer performed publicly in the United States, Foster’s participation in the exploitative genre has been increasingly overlooked. Yet, one need look no further than the lyrics of Stephen Foster’s songs preserved as sheet music in many songbooks of the last century to see Foster’s role in blackface minstrelsy. Evidence of the exploitation of black culture is present in his application of rhyming pidgin, references to slaves’ clothing, hair, and appearances, and a narrative that seeks to whitewash and diminish the horrors of slavery, exchanging reality for comical characters and antidotes. In one of Foster’s first plantation hits,
“Old Uncle Ned,” the lyrics of the first verse begin, “Dere was an old nig-ga dey calld him Uncle
Ned.” The song goes on to describe the life and death of an elderly slave who had no hair or teeth, his fingers are compared to sugar cane, his hair is called “wool” linking it to imagery of sheep fur, and in the last stanza his master is said to cry over his death.22 Not only does the
physical description of this character render him less than human by comparing his very body to
22 Foster, Stephen. “Old Uncle Ned”, Stephen Foster Songbook. pp. 124-127. 14 parts of crop plants and farm animals, but the idea that his owner would feel such compassion for this elderly slave that “tears” would fall “down his cheeks …like rain” is unlikely and certainly not a truthful depiction of the typical relationship between slaves and their owners. A similar narrative is revealed to the listener in Foster’s “Massa’s In De Cold Ground,” wherein the slaves of a plantation cry over the death of their elderly owner, “All de dark-eys am a weeping Mas-sa’s in de cold, cold ground.”23 Lines in this song such as, “Massa made de dark-eys love him, Cayse
he was so kind,” depict an alternate reality in which slaves appear happy to live in captivity
working for their beloved owners. Even without having lived in the South, Stephen Foster, his
colleagues, and his audience all should have known better than to pretend that the relationship
between slaves and their masters was so idyllic. Nat Turner’s slave rebellion in Virginia in 1831
would have proved to the world a decade before blackface minstrelsy became popularized that racial relations in the slave states were precarious at best. Forewarnings of the coming Civil War
were already appearing with rising tensions between the states and fiery and divisive presidential
campaigns that often hinged on a candidate’s platform on slavery. With every new territory that
was added to the Union, the heated national argument over whether to expand, contain, or
abolish slavery was revived in furious debates over state’s rights. The Kansas/Nebraska of 1854
declared popular sovereignty would decide the fate of new states, creating a temporary solution
that in many ways increased divisiveness between the north and south. Say what one will about
Stephen Foster, it is an undeniable fact that he built his career on the exploitation of black culture
at a time when the country was near bursting at the seams with racial tension.
23 Foster, Stephen. “Massa’s In De Cold Ground”. Stephen Foster Songbook. pp. 77-80. 15
Chapter 3: Foster’s political music
Although many historians, ranging from PBS documentarians to academic curators of the
Foster Hall at the University of Pittsburgh, have made Stephen Foster out to be an abolitionist, there is a good deal of evidence that suggests otherwise.24 From Foster’s lyrics to his political
activities and associations, evidence indicates that he believed in neither abolition, nor racial
equality. H. Wiley Hitchcock, Director of the Institute for Studies in American Music at
Brooklyn College, wrote in his introduction to Foster’s biography that, “Foster had lingering
doubts about the propriety of…the slightly disreputable minstrel shows,” yet the academic offers
no citation of evidence to back up his statement. His defense is hard to believe when the bulk of
the composer’s career was based on the popularity of minstrel music.25 Many sources, such as
the PBS documentary, Stephen Foster, defend the composer with a brief quote taken from a
speech by the black abolitionist, Frederick Douglass, in 1855: ““Old Kentucky Home,” and
“Uncle Ned,” can make the heart sad as well as merry, and can call forth a tear as well as a smile.
They awaken the sympathies for the slave, in which anti-slavery principles take root and flourish.”26 Frederick Douglass was indeed a remarkable abolitionist, but to take one token quote
from a famous black activist and use it to defend an entire career built on exploitation does not
create a strong argument in favor of Foster’s abolitionism. Also, Douglass’ comment does not
defend Foster, it merely describes one possible interpretation of a single Foster song. As a black escaped slave advocating for an unpopular cause to an unsympathetic white audience, Douglas
would have said what was necessary to increase support for black liberation. Douglas had bigger
problems to address than racist micro-aggressions in popular music, and would have gained little
24 "Stephen Foster film". PBS.com. PBS Online. Retrieved 20 March 2015. 25 Hitchcock, H. Wiley. Stephen Foster Minstrel-Show Songs. 26 Philip Foner, Ed., The Life and Writings of Frederic Douglass. pp. 356-357. 16 from scrutinizing Foster’s lyrics during his speeches.27 Still other historians claim that Foster’s
allegiance to anti-slavery ideology was clear from the songs that he wrote in favor of the Union.
Yet, the Fosters were ardent Democrats, and Stephen Foster only publicly supported Lincoln
after the commencement of the Civil War.
When one attempts to understand Stephen Foster’s life, one finds that his actions and
behaviors are rife with contradictions. It is true that he wrote several patriotic songs such as
“Better Times Are Coming,” which praised Lincoln and the Union army.
Abra’m Lincoln has the army and the navy in his hands,
While Seward keeps our honor bright abroad in foreign lands;
And Stanton is a man, who is sturdy as a rock,
With brave men to back him up and stand the battle’s shock.28
However, before the Civil War began, Foster was an outspoken supporter of, and employed by, the Democratic Party. This was the party supported by wealthy southern slave-owning planters
who sought to expand slavery and resisted government interference in states’ rights. When
Stephen Foster’s brother-in-law, James Buchanan, ran for the Presidential office under the
Democratic ticket in 1856, Stephen Foster was given the job of musical director for the
campaign’s glee club. He was paid to write songs praising the Democrats while mocking
Republicans. He led a band which followed Buchanan on his campaign trail, raising pomp and
27 Frederick Douglass also recruited and pressured African American men to fight during the Civil War, arguing that by fighting they could assert their manhood and gain freedom. Thousands of black men sacrificed their lives in this fight only to have reconstruction abandoned within a few short years. For more on this see: Blight, David W. “The Meaning of the Fight: Frederick Douglass and the Memory of the Fifty Fourth of Massachusetts.” The Massachusetts Review, Vol. 36, No. 1 (Spring, 1995), pp. 141-153. The Massachusetts Review, Inc. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25090590. Web. 25/01/15. 28 Foster, Stephen. “Better Times Are Coming”. Stephen Foster Songbook. pp. 107-109. 17 enthusiasm for the candidate’s platforms. Significant among these platforms was Buchanan’s opposition to abolition. Among the many democratic anthems Foster composed for Buchanan’s campaign was the rarely re-printed song, “The Abolition Show,” also known as “The Great Baby
Show.” The song’s original lyrics chastise and mock abolitionists, insinuating that giving the vote to black men and women (at this time only adult white men had the legal right to vote) would be as good as giving the vote to children or “raccoons and oxen.”
On the Seventeenth day of September, you know,
Took place in our city the great baby show;
they shut up the factories and let out the schools,
For the Seventeenth day was the day of all fools.
Chorus:
|: Sing tu ral lal lu ral la lu ral lal lay, :|
|: Sing tu ral lal lu ral la lu ral lal lay. :|
They made a procession of wagons and boats,
of raccoons and oxen (they all have their votes)
Sledge hammers, triangles and carpenter's tools,
One thousand and eight hundred horses and mules.
Chorus
They had gemmen ob color to join in their games
and jokers and clowns of all ages and names. 18
They had pop guns and tin pans and all kinds of toys
and a very fine party of women and boys.29
With these satirical and scathing published lyrics, today easily available to view in Foster’s own
hand in his sketchbook which has been digitized by the University of Pittsburgh, it is difficult to
imagine that any historian would defend Foster as an abolitionist. Yet, repeatedly this part of
Foster’s legacy is either completely ignored or simply brushed over, as Foster’s biographers
choose instead to highlight the softer aspects of his musical career. On the rare occasion that
“The Great Baby Show” is published, as in Fletcher Hodges Jr.’s 1938 text, A Pittsburgh
Composer and His Memorial, the lyrics are unquestioned and even warmly referred to as
“unsurpassed for satirical purposes.”30 Foster’s support for the Democrats during Buchanan’s
campaign paid off and the following year, within days of the Supreme Court’s Dred Scott
Decision ruling African Americans non-citizens, James Buchanan, the openly anti-abolition
Democrat, was elected President.
After one term in office, Buchanan was replaced by Republican candidate Abraham
Lincoln in the election of 1860. The Civil War would commence shortly thereafter and a dramatic shift in Foster’s writing would indicate fluctuating allegiances in the North. The onset of the war left northerners who rode the fence or saw no problem with slavery no options but to
take a side, and most, for reasons of self-preservation, sided with their state.
By the beginning of the Civil War, Foster’s career was not what it had been in its heyday
during the 1850s. Although he had written many of his most famous songs during the decade
prior, “Oh! Susanna” in 1848, “My Old Kentucky Home” in 1853, “Jeanie with the Light Brown
29 Foster, Stephen. “The Abolition Show”, Stephen Foster’s Sketchbook, 1856. 30 Hodges, Fletcher Jr. A Pittsburgh Composer and His Memorial. 19
Hair” in 1854, and “Hard Times Come Again No More” in 1855, he had also made a series of poor business choices, selling the rights to some of his most profitable songs including “Old
Folks at Home” and “Oh! Boys Carry Me ‘Long.” For the satisfaction of immediate payouts from music companies, the composer accepted deals that would result in long-term economic losses. He had separated from his wife in 1853 and would reunite with his family only rarely during the remainder of his life. His parents both died in 1855. He moved to New York City alone in 1860, renting an apartment on the Bowery from whence he would churn out cheap patriotic military anthems, sentimental ballads, and even Sunday school hymns for the remainder of his life.31 In 1864, a year after the Emancipation Proclamation and the year before the Civil
War would finally come to an end, Foster died with little money and no family in New York after reportedly injuring himself during a fall in his apartment.
Chapter 4: The post-mortem foster revival
By the time of his death in 1864, Foster’s fame had receded to such a point that no one could have possibly predicted the 20th century Foster revival that was to come. Although over the
last four years of his life, he had written more songs than in any prior period, only one of the
many, “Beautiful Dreamer,” was a success. Out of financial despair, he had sold nearly all of the
royalties to his earlier hits to either his publishing company, Firth, Pond & Co, or to Edwin P.
Christy of the Christy Minstrels, so that even some of the compositions he had written which
remained popular in the 1860s no longer bore his attachment. The sheet music to “Old Folks at
Home,” for instance, inaccurately read, “Written and composed by E. P. Christy.”32 In his
31 Hodges, Fletcher Jr. The Swanee River. pp. 3 32 Hodges, Fletcher, Jr. The Swanee River. pp. 12. 20 introduction to Stephen Foster: Minstrel Show Songs, H. Wiley Hitchcock argues unconvincingly that Foster “allowed E.P. Christy to claim Old Folks at Home as his,” because he did not want his name attached to the seedy industry of minstrel music.33 However, Hitchcock’s
defense of Foster is easily discredited with a letter from Foster written to Christy on May 25th of
1852, which asks for his name to be reinstated on the songs once more.
I had the intention of omitting my name on my Ethiopian songs owing to the
prejudice against them by some, which might injure my reputation as a writer of
another style of music, but I find that by my efforts I have done a great deal to
build up a taste for the Ethiopian songs among refined people by making the
words suitable to their taste, instead of the trashy and really offensive words
which belong to some songs of that order.34
This source again calls into question Foster’s motives for writing even the gentler sympathetic plantation songs in his repertoire, such as those that Frederick Douglas found empathetic. This letter to Christy makes it clear that Foster was never writing with the interest of slaves or free
African-Americans in mind. The audience he was concerned with was that of “refined” whites,
whom he feared offending with crude humor or tasteless language. In any case, Christy did not
agree to Foster’s request, and the performer’s name would remain on the work in place of
Foster’s until Christy’s copyright wore off decades after the true author’s death.
Various admirers of Foster have speculated over the cause of the Foster revival in the
1940s. Historians agree that Foster was penniless and not widely known by the time of his death, and for the next eighty years, almost nothing was published about the man nor in his honor.
33 Hitchcock, H. Wiley. Stephen Foster: Minstrel Show Songs. New York: Da Capo Press, 1980. 34 Letter from Stephen Foster to E. P. Christy, May 25, 1852. 21
Then, seemingly suddenly, a national Foster revival commenced. There is some evidence that initial attention to Foster’s legacy might have been provoked in the 20th century by his heirs.
Evelyn Foster Morneweck, who wrote two carefully researched dramatic volumes about her family’s history that were published in 1944, was Foster’s niece, the daughter of Stephen
Foster’s older brother Morrison. Morneweck’s research put her in contact with several of the key
Foster historians who would become responsible for the songwriter’s revival.
In 1939, the Florida Legislature passed an appropriation act that allotted $25,000 towards
the purchase of 243 acres along the Suwannee River to build a monumental park that would
honor Foster’s memory.35 The concept for the park was suggested by a millionaire philanthropist
named Josiah Kirby Lilly. Lilly pointed out that Florida owed something to Foster in
consideration of his song “Old Folks at Home,” which had advertised the state so widely.
Although it is true that the song spread the name of Florida’s Suwannee River far and wide, there
is some unintended irony in Lilly’s argument. Not only had Foster never visited the state of
Florida, but it’s also known that he pulled the river’s name arbitrarily from an almanac after
discarding his initial placeholders, the South Carolinian Pedee River and the Mississippian
Yazoo River, all located in southern states that he’d never visited. Even after resolving to use the
Suwannee in his song, Foster opted to intentionally misspell the river’s name as Swanee, in order
to shorten its length to two syllables. Sacrificing accuracy for wordplay, it appears that it was
rhyme meter rather than a respect for the state or its waters that led Foster to compose what
would become Florida’s official state song in 1935.
35 Stephen Foster Memorial Commission, “Florida’s Tribute to Stephen Foster,” Stephen Foster. 22
The wealthy Lilly was a Foster enthusiast who founded the Foster Hall Collection, which would eventually come to rest at the University of Pittsburgh. It was also Lilly who donated to assist the publication of Stephen Foster’s niece’s family chronicles.36 Around the time
Morneweck’s volumes came out in print, in 1946, Random House published A Treasury of
Stephen Foster, a 222 page anthology of reprinted sheet music by Foster that included 50 of his
most popular songs, aided by illustrations, and a glowing introduction to Foster by Deems Taylor
and John Tasker Howard. Taylor and Howard were two keen musicologists who apparently had nothing bad to say about Stephen Foster in their short and affectionate descriptions of his life.
Several other publishing companies put out similar reprints of Foster’s sheet music between
1939 and 1950. Although Foster was a prolific songwriter who wrote hundreds of pieces in his
lifetime, these publications all tended to reprint the same handful of songs. They often included a
couple of his most famous plantation tunes, but usually focused primarily on his sentimental
ballads, waltzes, and romantic songs. The introductions and biographies included in these
publications drip with compliments to the great Stephen Foster, commencing the national
forgetting of Stephen Foster’s actual legacy and historical significance. Hodges liberally tosses
around terms such as “beloved” and “Genius” when referring to Foster, and is even less critical
when describing the man’s songs, which he refers to as, “remarkable contribution to the music of
our nation and of all mankind.”37 Even when describing Foster’s faults as a young man, such as his poor performance in school, the author provides excuses writing, “an intense individualist, he
[Foster] wished to study those things which interested him,” as if all students would not prefer to
study the things that most interest them rather than a standard school curriculum. Hodges goes
36 Morneweck, vol. 1 pp. vii. 37 Hodges, Fletcher Jr. A Pittsburgh Composer and His Memorial. pp. 7. 23 even further: “Stephen Foster was a genius, with an originality, a simplicity, and a gift for pure melody that education could not have improved.”38
Hodges is not alone in his unchecked flattery. His contemporary, Deems Taylor, also
referred to the minstrel songwriter as a “genius,” barely noting that “Foster’s acquaintance with
the Negro may have been superficial, may even have been confined to the phony Negro of darky
minstrelsy. Nevertheless, that acquaintance… produced songs that find an eternal echo in our
hearts.”39 In trying to explain the separations that occurred throughout the marriage of Stephen
and Jane Foster, John Tasker Howard imagined elaborate assumptions attacking Jane in order to
spare Stephen, writing, “Although there were several separations…it is not clear that they were
caused by estrangements, and certainly not because Stephen loved another woman…Perhaps
Jane was not overfond of music and had a lukewarm interest in Stephen’s song-writing. It is
probable that she nagged him, and that Stephen resented her trying to make him more of a
businessman. Stephen was a dreamer, improvident and temperamentally difficult. Yet he was
generous, sociable and lovable.”40 With these indulgent presumptions and unrestrained flatteries
came the birth of the Stephen Collins Foster caricature that exists today. The contemporized
Foster is a flawless genius and modern writers seem to struggle to make up for lost time,
elevating him now to make up for the 19th century’s lacking appreciation.
The ethnomusicologists and historians who wrote the introductions and short biographies
of Foster that would be included in the Foster songbooks of the 20th century had cause to speak
highly of Foster. After all, the publishers would want an introduction to the sheet music that
would bolster Foster’s acclaim in order to generate interest in his music and increase sales. Some
38 Hodges, Fletcher Jr. A Pittsburgh Composer and his memorial. pp. 13. 39 Taylor, Deems. A Treasury of Stephen Foster. pp. 8. 40 Howard, John Tasker. A Treasury of Stephen Foster. pp. 10. 24 of these writers and publishers, such as Fletcher Hodges Jr. and Josiah Kirby Lilly, were also members of the Stephen Foster Memorial Committee. Hodges was also primary curator of the
Foster Hall at the University of Pittsburgh. These men would have invested financial interest in keeping Foster’s memory alive and celebrated. The state of Florida had increased its economic focus on the tourist industry in the 20th century following the construction of Flagler’s railroads,
so the state could only stand to benefit from the tourist attraction that the music park honoring its
prodigal honorary son would become. As Foster’s niece, Evelyn Morneweck would also benefit from Foster’s positive celebrity, making her liberally embellished research impossible to trust.
The American public at the peak of the Foster revival would have no trouble ignoring the racist implications of Foster’s work. This was the time of federally sanctioned racism. The era itself was referred to as Jim Crow, named after the very character from black-face theatre who would have performed some of Foster’s plantation songs in 19th century minstrel shows. Early
20th century white Foster fans like Lilly, Hodges, and Morneweck, as well as most of those that
would purchase republished Foster songbooks, or sing “The Swanee River” to their children,
were not concerned with the racist implications in Foster’s music. They had not yet lived through
the national consciousness raising era that was to come in the 1960s. They knew little or nothing
of the Civil Rights struggle that was to come. White tourists strolling along the Suwannee River
in the Foster Music Park while on vacation in legally segregated Florida would hardly be
bothered by the prejudiced history of the park’s namesake.
At the same time as Foster’s songs were becoming increasingly reprinted, monuments
began appearing around the country in Foster’s honor. In the appendices of her family
chronicles, Morneweck devotes 73 pages to descriptions of the plaques, obelisks, parks, schools, 25 and clubs that honor her uncle.41 She lists these monuments by state and although Pennsylvania
and Florida understandably claimed more of these relics than the other 48 states, nearly every
state in the union housed some sort of Stephen Foster Commemorative object by the time of
Morneweck’s book’s publication in 1944. In 1940, Stephen Foster was inducted into the Hall of
Fame of Great Americans in New York City. A bust of the musician, sculpted by Walter
Hancock, was placed alongside the likes of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ulysses S. Grant, Benjamin
Franklin and less than 100 other mostly white and male honorees in the revered sculpture gallery
of New York University. The gallery still stands today as a Romanesque shrine to individuals
such as Foster, whom Americans have come to know as role models. The limited diversity of the
busts presented in the gallery also serves as further evidence of American historians’ failure to
diversify the country’s conservative status quo of “greatness.”
At the time of the Foster revival, America was experiencing a morally traditionalist time
in its history. Pearl Harbor set off a nationalistic outcry against things considered un-American.
The patriotism of individuals and celebrities was scrutinized by friends and family members, and
even publicly in committee hearings following World War II and the commencement of the Cold
War. As Americans clung to nationalist propaganda, allowing the fear-fueled witch hunts of
McCarthyism, while cowering in fear of foreign attacks from the sky or the sea, the ‘good old days’ of the 19th century became beatified in the national consciousness. Despite the truth that
the 19th century was arguably just as faulty, bloody, and frightening (if not more so) than the 20th century, the deadly weaponry of the new century and the atomic bomb, convinced Americans that the past was rosy and deserved glorification and conservation. American historians were not above this delusion, their writings from the 1940s prove just as biased as the rest of the country
41 Morneweck’s Chronicles of Stephen Foster Vol II pp. 666-739. 26 in recalling “the good old days” of Foster, before the Civil War, as if the country were not better off since the abolition of slavery. With this historical context in mind, it is not a great surprise that by the 1960s, Stephen Foster was more famous and his music more celebrated than it had ever been when he lived.
Chapter 5: The 1960s Folk Music Revival and Stephen Foster Today
By the 1960s, a national folk music revival, which included and reinvented Stephen
Foster, was powerfully present in American culture. The origins of the 1960s folk revival are
difficult to pin down. Evidence reveals folk’s introduction to mainstream radio may have begun
with early 20th century labor music. In the 1930s, popular communist labor organizing movements associated the proletariat with the folk culture and music of the hardworking rural regions of the nation.42 The Industrial Workers of the World, an anarchist labor union, used folk
songs to agitate for solidarity in working class communities around the country. In 1909, the
IWW had begun distributing songs related to the labor movement in a serial publication
affectionately referred to as The Little Red Songbook. Popular pro-union musicians such as Joe
Hill arose to a status of folk hero by writing and performing songs for the movement. Folk
musicians from Woody Guthrie to Pete Seeger would continue the tradition of agitating with folk
music over the next generations. These anthems were effective not only because of folk music’s
association with the working class, but also because folk music is inherently accessible. Besides
its obvious popular origins, ethnomusicologists also identify American folk music by its simple
melodic phrasing, pentatonic melody, duple meter, and elements of both European and African-
42 Jens Lund and R. Serge Denisoff. “The Folk Music Revival and the Counter Culture: Contributions and Contradictions.” The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 84, No. 334 (Oct. - Dec., 1971), pp. 395. 27
American music stylings.43 The lyrics of these songs are often modified as they are passed down
through oral tradition. Like its Western European and Latin counterparts, North American folk
music does not often stray from a I-IV-V chord structure. Thus, folk songs are by nature easy to
understand and simply performed with limited knowledge of an acoustic guitar, or even a
cappella. Stephen Foster’s compositions, which featured a blend of influences that prominently
borrowed from black spiritual tradition as well as the English ballad, would fit seamlessly into
the folk music category, leading to their inclusion in many 20th century American folk
songbooks.
Folk music was not only associated with the working class, but also with early African
American music. In an essay regarding the folk music revival, Jens Lund and R. Serge Denisoff
argue that disgust after the violence of World War II and the conservative censorship of the
McCarthy era drove the beat generation of popular poets to reject identification with American
values and instead ally with the African American culture of the Harlem Renaissance.44 Norman
Mailer referred to this conceptual identity as that of the “White Negro.”45 These young, mostly
white counter-culturists who idolized jazz and African-American culture soon mingled with folk
music lovers in artists’ nurseries like Greenwich Village and Berkeley. Large festivals such as
the Newport Jazz Fest, which featured a mélange of jazz and folk, became increasingly popular.
These festivals were initiated into mainstream culture through exploitation by big time promoters
who capitalized on the nation’s trends, as well as popular bands such as the Kingston Trio. The
Civil Rights Movement also borrowed from African American spirituals in the 1950s and 1960s
to promote the message of racial equality. The Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee’s
43 Rich, Arthur L. “American Folk Music.” Music & Letters, Vol. 19, No. 4 (Oct., 1938), Pg. 450-452. 44 Jens Lund and R. Serge Denisoff. “The Folk Music Revival and the Counter Culture: Contributions and Contradictions.” The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 84, No. 334 (Oct. - Dec., 1971), Pg. 395-397. 45 Mailer, Norman. “The White Negro.” Dissent Magazine. Fall, 1957. Web. 14 Feb. 2015. 28
Freedom Singers who were often joined by Pete Seeger while touring the country parodied classic Christian hymns with anti-racist lyrics. They aligned the early American folk music of
Foster’s time with contemporary struggles of Vietnam protests and civil rights organizing.
Foster’s music, with its simple folk chord structure and catchy 19th century melodies was swept
up in the folk revival. Songs that were written in the 1850s to encourage racial stereotypes and
exploit black culture were tossed on the same set list as folk civil rights anthems in an
unexamined rush to repurpose early American folk music.
As the late 20th century folk revival associated working class pride, negritude, and social justice with the American folk genre, many of Foster’s songs were somewhat mistakenly acculturated, despite the very different objectives of their composer. The popular folk tune songbook Rise Up Singing, for example, includes several of Foster’s tunes in its index.46 Rise Up
Singing, like The Little Red Songbook, is popularly used by activist groups and counter-culture collectives. The songbook takes its name from lyrics from the jazz standard “Summertime,” written by George Gershwin for the early race-related play Porgy and Bess, and highlights social justice music and folk songs of the people.47 Through a process of transculturation, a term
ethnomusicologists use to imply the colonization of one group by another dominant group
(intentionally or unintentionally), Foster is found without disclaimer along with genuine black
spirituals and people’s anthems in people’s folk collections.
Understandably, reviving Foster’s compositions in the 21st century, in the era following
the Civil Rights Movement, has its difficulties. Modern performers are forced to navigate the raw
racism in the language of Foster’s minstrel pieces in various ways. Recordings by American
46 Rise up and Sing: Hope & Change through Song. Web. 02 Mar. 2015. 47 Hutchison, James. “DuBose Heyward: A Charleston Gentleman and the World of Porgy and Bess.” 29 baritone singer, Thomas Hampson, serve as an example of one modern performer’s selective use of Foster’s tunes.48 Hampson and a group of backing musicians produced an album titled,
“American Dreamer: Songs of Stephen Foster.” Out of the 17 Foster songs that Hampson and his
backing band chose to record, Foster’s most famous pieces, his minstrel tunes, were tellingly
absent. Only one of Foster’s show tunes, “Old Folks At Home,” is included on Hampson’s
album, and even this was turned into a single medley without lyrics. The violin carries the
melody of the tune and the singer opts to sit out. Rather than the minstrel tunes that made Foster
famous, Hampson chose selections from the composer’s less popular English ballad-influenced
love songs, such as “Open Thy Lattice, Love” the lyrics of which Foster did not actually write,
but rather borrowed from the popular poet, George Pope Morris.
Some modern Foster lovers have had a hard time letting go of Foster’s lyrics, despite
their controversial nature. Adopted in 1913, “Florida, My Florida” had been the official song of
the sunshine state for several decades. It was set to the tune of “Oh Christmas Tree,” a patriotic
march-like melody which it shared unoriginally with the similarly titled, “Maryland, My
Maryland,” “Michigan, My Michigan,” and “The Song of Iowa.” The song’s congenial lyrics,
which mostly praised Florida’s natural resources and industry including phosphate mining and
citrus, were written in 1894 by Rev. Dr. C. V. Waugh, a languages professor at the Florida
Agricultural College of Lake City.49 However, in 1935, a state house representative from Miami named S. P. Robineau successfully introduced Foster’s “Old Folks At Home” as the new state song to replace “Florida, My Florida” through House Concurrent Resolution no. 22.50 “Old Folks
At Home” would remain Florida’s State Song, performed during state ceremonies and every
48 Hampson, Thomas. American Dreamer: songs of Stephen Foster. CD. 49 50States.com. “The Official State Song of Florida.” Web. 19 Feb. 2015. 50 Florida Department of State. “State Song.” Web. 19 Feb. 2015. 30
Florida governor’s inauguration until 2007, when Republican governor Charlie Crist declined to have the song performed because of its racially charged lyrics. As far back as the 1970s, singers both black and otherwise who sensed the songs outdated and offensive language, had begun altering its lyrics on the sly at public performances. This included lessening the outdated African
American Vernacular and changing the word “darkies” to “brothers,” and “plantation” to
“connection.”51 In 1983, Governor Bob Graham suggested the song be replaced, without success.
Then in 1997, a bill was finally introduced by Representative Willie Logan to permanently change the song. However, pushback from politicians who lived in the Suwannee River region prevented acceptance of the bill.52
To illustrate the controversial nature of the original song, below is a section of lyrics from
the first version, which was initially written in an imitation of southern African-American dialect
for Foster’s black-face minstrel performers.
All up and down de whole creation
Sadly I roam, Still longing for de old plantation
And for de old folks at home.
All de world am sad and dreary,
Ebry where I roam,
Oh! darkies how my heart grows weary,
51 Roberts, Diane, K. Dream State: Eight Generations of Swamp Lawyers, Conquistadors, Confederate Daughters, Banana Republicans, and other Florida Wildlife. pp. 97. 52 "Old Folks No More?" The Orlando Sentinel. March 29, 2007. Retrieved 01 May 2011. 31
Far from de old folks at home.53
Foster would surely have been surprised to learn that his minstrel show ditty would be
appropriated as an official state symbol of Florida in the 20th century. When Governor Crist
petitioned to have the song replaced after entering office, he joined forces with Senator Tony
Hill, Representative Ed Homan, and the Florida Music Educators Association to promote a state-
wide contest to encourage the creation of a new state song in 2008 before drafting a bill to
officially replace Foster’s song.54 Songwriter, Briton Jan Hinton, won the contest with her song,
“Florida (Where the Sawgrass Meets the Sky).” This new song returns to the same themes as
“Florida, My Florida,” non-controversially celebrating Florida’s natural beauty. A new
promising bill, SB 1558, was introduced to solidify Hinton’s composition as the official Florida
state song of the 21st century. However, once again, the progressive bill met push back from
conservative North Floridian representatives who felt their regions benefited from the “Swanee
River” song. A compromise was finally reached in 2009, wherein Crist signed in “Where the
Sawgrass Meets the Sky” as Florida’s official state anthem and maintained “Old Folks At Home”
as the official state song. Crist was unhappy with the compromise, however, the state legislature
did allow the governor to consult with the University of Pittsburgh and Foster Memorial scholars to create a revised official version of “Old Folks At Home.” The song’s lyrics were updated to be rid of the old vernacular, as well as some of the more offensive language. Below is an example of the currently accepted censored version of Florida’s state song.
All up and down the whole creation,
53 Hodges, Jr., Fletcher. The Swanee River. 54 Colavecchio-Van Sickler, Shannon "Crist signs state song, state anthem." St. Petersburg Times. Web. 29 April 2011. 32
Sadly I roam,
Still longing for the old plantation,
And for the old folks at home.
All the world is sad and dreary
Everywhere I roam.
O brothers, how my heart grows weary,
Far from the old folks at home.55
Although the offensive slang and racial slurs have been removed, the theme of the song, which
has been accused of romanticizing slavery, remains intact. Also, despite the fact that this revised
version is the now official version of the state song, most web searches for “Florida state song”
will still lead to Foster’s original unedited version. The new state anthem, “Where the Sawgrass
Meets the Sky,” has not popularly caught on in the state, and is still relatively unknown to most
Floridians. Thus, the years of political fighting in the Florida legislature over Foster’s song may
have resulted in little more than lip service and formalities as Foster’s song, complete with
cultural appropriation and painful themes, remains.
Today, Stephen Foster’s reputation shines as bright as ever. This year he appeared in The
Atlantic’s list of America’s top 100 most influential Americans, placed at number 97 between
Booker T. Washington and Ralph Nader. 56 Interestingly, Duke Ellington, the black composer
known to jazz lovers as America’s greatest composer, did not make the list. Foster is
55 State Symbols USA. “Florida State Song.” http://www.statesymbolsusa.org/Florida/floridastatesong.html. Web. 19 Feb. 2015 56 “The 100 Most Influential Figures in American History.” The Atlantic. Web. 18 Nov. 2014. 33 remembered by thousands of visitors each year at the annual Florida Folk Festival, which celebrates its 62nd anniversary at the Stephen Foster Music Park in White Springs, Florida this
May.57 His music, now over 150 years old, appeared on film and television at least 69 times from
2005 to 2014.58 Foster’s life has been featured in at least two documentaries and three
Hollywood movies. A glowing biography on Stephen Foster’s Wikipedia page, which refers to
the composer as an abolitionist, reveals the extent to which his history has been forgotten in the
public memory.59 Although American society ascribes to an increased intolerance for racism and
sensitivity towards the plight and history of black Americans, Foster’s ties to blackface theatre
continue to be increasingly forgotten and covered up.
Conclusion
The progress of Stephen Foster’s legacy illustrates the false and seemingly limitless
alterations that can be made to modify and enhance the reputation of an American hero. When
historians are more focused on celebrating a “Great American” than on scrutinizing sources and
tracking the truth of an individual’s past, the integrity of American history suffers. As historical
memory changes over time, historians and educators should complicate our consideration of the
past as our understanding of prejudice expands. In light of the advancements made by American
social justice movements, items that were not so significant 100 or even 50 years ago may
become very significant to today’s students. The memory of Stephen Foster has gone through
many stages over the years, from promising songwriter to successful composer in his lifetime,
57 Florida State Parks. “Florida Folk Festival.” Web. 19 Feb. 2015. 58 Imdb.com. “Stephen Foster.” Web. 19 Feb. 2015. 59 Wikipedia. “Stephen Foster.” Web. 2 Mar. 15. 34 then from forgotten musician to “Great American” status after his death. These simplified impressions of Stephen Foster are easy to swallow, but defeat their own purpose by creating an unapproachable hero void of meaning. If the aim of an historian is to present engaging questions and arguments through the study and interpretation of the past, must be told in full, as intact as possible. What if historians filled the space between the impressions we have of bygone great
Americans with the colorful details of a real man’s life? What would result if we could use history to add dimension, realism, and character to our heroes, rather than mutating them into
Stepford-like unrealistic idealizations?60
A more human description of a multi-faceted individual, complete with the flaws,
privileges, and problems could only make that person more accessible as a role model for future
generations. How can children ever hope to live up to an image like the unapproachable one that
has been painted of Stephen Foster? In the real world humans make mistakes, individuals are
affected by the era in which they live, they have prejudices, and they are imperfect. Faults and
poor decisions say as much about a person, and about the time and place in which they existed,
as do their successes. Why erase an interesting and educational historical context when we could
use it to enhance teachable tales in a world that still deals with many of the same issues as the
past? Let’s remove our rose colored glasses and look at Stephen Foster and others in full detail,
even if some of these details are uncomfortable to observe.
60 The term Stepford Wife comes from Ira Levin’s novel, Stepford Wives, wherein it is discovered that the women of a fictional town are not as perfect as they initially appear, but have actually been turned into robots by their husbands. (Levin, Ira. Stepford Wives. Random House, 1972.) 35
Appendix/Illustrations
The painting “Beautiful Dreamer,” by Howard Chandler Christy that now hangs in the museum at Florida’s Stephen Foster Memorial Park. (Stephen Foster Memorial Commission. Stephen Foster. White Springs, Fl: Stephen Foster Memorial, 1951)
36
Cover of a Stephen Foster Songbook advertising Stephen Foster's minstrel songs. (Stephen Foster Sesqui-Centennial Song Book Carlstadt, N.J.: Ashley Publications, Inc., 1975.)
37
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Elliker, Calvin. Stephen Collins Foster: A Guide to Research. New York & London: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1988.
Emerson, Ken. Doo-dah! Stephen Foster and the Rise of American Popular Culture. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 1997.
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Foner, Philip Ed., The Life and Writings of Frederic Douglass. New York: International Publishers, 1950. pp. 356-357.
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38
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