[minstrel songs]

Now we move from silly to serious.  Cora Linden, at the request of her friend, G.F. Root, wrote several songs intended for blackface minstrelsy, which, according to Eric Lott, "...was an established nineteenth-century theatrical practice, principally of the urban North, in which white men caricatured blacks for sport and profit." (Lott, Introduction)

The minstrel show was born on February 6, 1843 at the Bowery Theater in New York, and became the most important form of American entertainment for the next half-century.  During the 1860s, at the height of this phenomenon, there were as many as 150 minstrel troupes touring the country. (Agay, 51)

The songs in the minstrel shows often contained crude, offensive, and most importantly, spurious dialect that purported to mimic the way slaves spoke.

As we will see, it was possible to enjoy minstrelsy and still be an abolitionist.  Indeed, President Lincoln himself was a consumer (Lott, Introduction), and according to the Director of the James Madison Museum, even held blackface performances in the White House.  Moreover, according to Irwin Silber, some of the most devoted abolitionists, like Henry Clay Work, in his song, "Kingdom Coming," tried to use minstrelsy to further the cause of abolition (306).  Sometimes, however, songs were unwitting tools for abolition.  For example, the offensive trope that a slave would miss the plantation is the theme of "They've Sold Me Down the River."  Pre-Civil War songs like this drew attention to the plight of slaves.  The abolitionist Hutchinson Family singers, for example, sang "Old Folks at Home" with Stephen Foster's lyrics intact (Lott, Part II:7).  

It doesn't seem that minstrelsy was controversial among whites at the time (Silber, 306).  But what about Ms. Linden and her composer-partner, Mr. Root?  In her autobiographies, Ms. Linden speaks of her minstrel songs quite matter-of-factly.  In one instance, she simply names a few (Fanny Crosby's Life Story, Chapter 22).  In another instance, she describes "Fare Thee Well, Kitty Dear" as a song about the "grief of a colored man on the death of his beloved." (Memories of Eighty Years, 111)  There was no apology or insinuation that such songs were a blight on her career.  The fact that her name does not appear as lyricist for any of these songs may imply a certain desire to avoid association; however, Polly Carder states that it was not unusual at the time for lyricists' names to be omitted (34).  As for Mr. Root, he had aspirations of being a serious composer who reluctantly dipped his toe into the popularity that Stephen Foster was enjoying.  He used the pseudonym, G.F. Wurzel, for these songs, but on a reading of the literature it appears that his shame was regarding the "low-brow" nature of these popular songs and not their association with minstrelsy.  

Does the fact that seemingly all of America saw nothing wrong with minstrelsy exonerate Ms. Linden?  Well, she didn't write any plantation songs in heavy dialect, or songs that depict the slave in broad buffoonery.  In fact, Carder quotes a contemporary advertisement that touted "Fare Thee Well, Kitty Dear," as having "all the charms of negro minstrelsy without any of its objectionable features." (42)  At least there was one person in America who thought it had objectionable features.  There were also a few churches who disapproved of minstrelsy (Agay, 51), and if these churches disapproved, then why not Ms. Linden, who seemed to have exhibited exemplary character otherwise?  Minstrelsy had a huge hand in extending the crude practice of racist minstrelsy into the twentieth century.  If you look around on the internet, you can find even a young Judy Garland in blackface talking in dialect.  The stereotypes begun in slavery and perpetuated through minstrelsy are malevolent ancestors to an attitude that makes tragedies like the Charleston church shooting possible.

Three of the songs you are about to hear come from a very popular and curious genre about young girls and women who died young (Agay, 51).  They are ballads.  We only have time for one verse from each, so the story will not be presented intact, and with the exception of a reference to the ubiquitous "old banjo" in "Fare Thee Well, Kitty Dear," one would scarcely recognize these as minstrel songs.  “They’ve Sold Me Down the River” is a different matter.  In it, Ms. Linden tries to speak for a slave who is “treated well” and about to be sold.  Ms. Linden, with one exception, which Performer Raybon will sing as “master,” avoids the offensive dialect.  However, who is more monstrous...the callous huckster who depicts slaves clowning around and speaking in a broad and inauthentic dialect, or the “kinder” songwriter who presumes to channel the emotions of a slave who is being sold and separated from his wife and children?

The Ministry watches.

[the people: May it find virtue.]

"The Hazel Dell"

"Rosalie, the Prairie Flower"

"Fare Thee Well, Kitty Dear"

"They've Sold Me Down the River"

Now go to “rally songs.”