It rained all night the day I left
The weather it was dry
The sun so hot, I froze to death
Susannah, don't you cry.
Oh, Susannah,
Oh don't you cry for me
For I come from Alabama
With a banjo on my knee.
I had a dream the other night
When everything was still
I dreamed I saw Susannah dear
A-coming down the hill.
The buckwheat cake was in her mouth
The tear was in her eye
Says I, “I'm coming from the south,
Susannah, don't you cry.”
Oh, Susannah,
Oh don't you cry for me
For I come from Alabama
With a banjo on my knee.
I come from A-la-ba-ma
With a ban-jo on my knee,
I'm going to Lou-i-siana,
My true love for to see.
Oh, Su-san-nah, oh,
Don't you cry for me,
For I come from A-la-ba-ma
With a ban-jo on my knee.
So, where in the lyrics are slaves mentioned?
Hellooooooo. Apparently, nobody told us that “banjo” is code for “slave”. Or something. Maybe because Louisiana is included in the lyrics?
It must have been painful having that banjo attached to your knee.
Look at the original lyrics
If he’d sung of his true love DeVontre on his knees, all would be fine.
Foster was mildly antislavery, but had many ardent abolitionists among his friends (Pittsburgh was, in the Antebellum and throughout the war a hotbed of abolitionist politics.)
Foster himself required performers playing his music to be respectful of blacks, which were often the subjects of his songs, so of course, this idiotic virtue-signalling is misplaced.
It tears at the iconography of my childhood: for many years this statue sat near the crosswalk between the small park of Shenley Plaza and the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. My grade school, Frick Elementary, was just up the street, as was Children's Hospital where my father worked. Joe's brass toes were rubbed bright by school children, museum visitors, and Pirates' fans passing him by (the team's original ballpark, Forbe's Field, was diagonally across Schenley Plaza.) So much for history...