“My Old Kentucky Home:” The Complicated History of a Derby Day Tradition

This Saturday, September 5, 20 horses will step on to the historic dirt course at Churchill Downs for the 146th running of the Kentucky Derby. For two minutes every year, the world travels back in time to fervently spectate a dying sport, a pillar of Kentuckian culture that will never fall, so long as there are still Kentuckians to fight for it. In Louisville, “the Derby” is an institution first and a sporting event second.

This year, the grandstands will be empty, but it won’t be silent as the 20 hopefuls prepare to enter the starting gate. What 2020’s rendition will lack in fanfare, it will make up for with a heralded tradition. For the past 90 years, the official state song has accompanied the horses through the post parade. 

One of songwriter Stephen Foster’s most famous songs, “My Old Kentucky Home,” has become synonymous with the sport of horse racing and bluegrass, but its history goes back even further.

Since its release in 1853, “My Old Kentucky Home” has taken on many different meanings for people around the world. In general, the song could be a source of state pride, describing the beauty and culture of the southern state. The loss of one’s home was also a regular theme in Foster’s music, and this is where this piece strikes a chord with outsiders; “Kentucky” can stand in for anything, a beloved home that one can’t return to. A cover by cellist Ben Sollee was recently used in a Woodford Reserve advertisement following the postponement of racing at Churchill Downs.

Written in the 1850s, historical context surrounding the song has also led to more radical interpretations. Some claim that the song conjures images of the Lost Cause, the apparent destruction of southern culture leading up to and during the Civil War. The “Kentucky Home” in that sense serves as a way of life that can never be reclaimed, “a Civilization gone with the wind.”

Based on what is normally presented to modern listeners, all these interpretations can be dug up within the song. Usually, the first verse and chorus serve as the shortened, contemporary version. This is the one used every year at Churchill:

“The sun shines bright in the old Kentucky home,

Tis summer, the people 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!

Weep no more my lady.

Oh! Weep no more today!

We will sing one song for the old Kentucky home

For the old Kentucky home, far away.”

That small part of the song is often enough to bring some to tears on Derby Day, such is the emotional sway of the piece. The second and third verses are included in certain versions, but for the most part, they’re omitted when the song is used prominently. Here are the additional verses provided by the Kentucky state government:

“They hunt no more for the ‘possum and the coon,

On the 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 people have to part,

Then my old Kentucky home, good night!

Weep no more my lady.

Oh! Weep no more today!

We will sing one song for the old Kentucky home

For the old Kentucky home, far away.

The head must bow and the back will have to bend,

Wherever the people 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, good-night!

Weep no more my lady.

Oh! Weep no more today!

We will sing one song for the old Kentucky home

For the old Kentucky home, far away.”

With further context, the meaning of the song becomes clearer. Whether or not it’s a song of state pride is up to debate. The theme of missing home is still prevalent, but the circumstances under which it was lost take on a drastically different tone. The public’s tears are well earned but misidentified, and it certainly isn’t a nostalgic tribute to the Old South.

Foster’s original title for the song was, “Poor Uncle Tom, Good Night!” In 1986, the official version replaced all uses of the word “darkies” with “people.” It tells the story of an enslaved man in Kentucky being separated from his family, sold down the Mississippi River, and dying prematurely on a sugar plantation in the Deep South.

This song is much more than the bittersweet tale from the bluegrass that it’s mistaken for every year at Churchill Downs; it’s a sympathetic minstrel song. It was praised by abolitionists but regularly performed in blackface. It was heavily based on Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel, but its melody was appropriated by the Ku Klux Klan. It’s become a rallying cry for all those lost in the world, but was originally depicting the experiences of those who had never had a way to begin with. Its legacy is impossibly messy, but is merely another chapter in the career of one of the most well-remembered and divisive songwriters in American history.

Born in Pennsylvania in 1826, Stephen Foster was a northerner from a financially comfortable family. In his adolescence, he taught himself how to play music, and never abandoned the practice while bouncing between jobs. In 1848, at just 22 years old, he wrote several popular songs that kickstarted his career. One of them was “Oh! Susanna,” a song that’s still remembered — in part — today.

Modern audiences are still familiar with the song, as it’s often sung in elementary school music classes. The version used today, however, is heavily revised for two reasons. The first is that Foster’s original from 1848 was written and performed in dialect, meaning that the language was made to sound unintelligent because it was sung from an enslaved person’s perspective. 

The second reason is because the lyrics had to be changed with additional verses. The language used in these original verses can easily be found but will not be quoted in this article. They’re horrendous and highly degrading to enslaved persons in any context, but they’re not exceptional in Foster’s early work.

In subsequent years, Foster wrote many more songs in the same vein. He almost always sold the royalties to his songs to sheet music companies, who spread his work around the country. He rarely used racial epithets as he did in “Oh! Susanna,” but he continued to write in dialect. His songs were immensely popular in blackface minstrel shows, including “Camptown Races” and “Swanee River.” The latter is the official state song of Florida, the tale of an enslaved man longing for his old plantation.

If Foster had stopped writing music in 1851, he would be remembered as an extremely damaging voice at a time of radical social change. With an increasingly prominent platform, he portrayed enslaved persons as foolish, vulnerable, and most damningly, content with their lives in chains. However, he continued to write, and several different influences slowly took hold of his music.

In 1852, Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” the tale of a pious and upstanding enslaved man being sold by his owner in Kentucky, which separates him from his family and leads to his death on a plantation in Louisiana.

“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!”

At around this time, Foster was in Pennsylvania writing alongside his friend and prominent abolitionist Charles Shiras. The two worked on an abolitionist play, though the degree to which they collaborated beyond that is unknown today. What’s important is that Foster’s notions of slavery were changing in his music, and Stowe’s novel had a profound effect and led him to one of his most culturally significant songs.

In that same year, 1852, Foster wrote “Poor Uncle Tom, Good Night!” originally written from the perspective of the titular character and using many elements from the book. He eventually renamed it, “My Old Kentucky Home, Good Night!” removing references to the book but maintaining a similar tone and story.

It quickly became a song representative of the abolitionist movement. After mentioning it by name in his autobiography, Frederick Douglass said that songs like it could “make the heart sad as well as merry, and can call forth a tear as well as a smile. They awaken sympathies for the slave, in which anti-slavery principles take root, grow, and flourish.”

A modern criticism of the song, however, is its glorification of slavery in Kentucky as opposed to the practices used in the Deep South. At that point in time, Kentucky farmers’ need for slaves was lessening as the work became less intensive, so they were often sold south to an increasingly booming market. 

In Stowe’s novel as well as in Foster’s song, the enslaved man is being separated from his family and forced into a much more labor intensive situation, and that creates the impression that he yearns for his bondage in Kentucky. The man’s “Kentucky Home” in the song was one of relative comfort with his family, but it also included the very same dynamic of ownership that shouldn’t have been portrayed positively in any sense. This has spurned a debate over what exactly Foster intended for the enslaved man to yearn for.

Despite its more sympathetic tone, it didn’t take long for the song to enter more historically unsavory circles. Like many of his other songs, Foster sold the royalties to a sheet music company, who in turn sold it to blackface minstrel shows. The songwriter knew that this would happen, because heroes seldom exist in history. 

He wasn’t looking to end the tradition of minstrel music; he wanted to reform the practice. He was no longer using racial epithets or dialect, but he still used the term “darkies.” As Douglass said, Foster wasn’t necessarily taking an abolitionist stance; he was “awakening sympathies.” He was one of many that started a conversation that others eventually settled. He was the product of a changing time, and he was merely changing with it.

In the 167 years since its release, the song’s use and interpretations have become increasingly varied. Despite never actually visiting the South for any significant period of time, Foster’s work became revered throughout the area. “My Old Kentucky Home” was adopted as Kentucky’s state song in 1928. Since about that time, it’s been played annually at the Kentucky Derby and regularly at University of Kentucky and Louisville basketball games. Notorious singer and blackface actor Al Jolson recorded several versions in the 1940s and ’50s. Like many of Foster’s songs, the Ku Klux Klan recycled the melody in renditions of “The Old Klansman’s Home.” 

In 1986, a youth group from Japan performed the song in front of the Kentucky General Assembly using the original lyrics and the term “darkies.” This led to a vote to revise the lyrics and change “darkies” to “people,” removing any reference to race from the song. The change was another step in diverting from the song’s original meaning to one of more generic state pride.

In the modern day, Americans are becoming increasingly aware of the damaging effects of racism throughout the country’s cultural history, and Stephen Foster’s work has appeared in several of these debates. Footage was unearthed of Bugs Bunny singing “Camptown Races” in blackface in an old episode of Looney Tunes. “Oh! Susanna” is still performed by children around the country, despite its formerly degrading lyrics.

“My Old Kentucky Home” has been left relatively unscathed, but several discussions in the past have come up and proved to be extremely muddled. The song in its original context was well-intentioned and praised by some of the most prominent abolitionists of the era. The manner in which the song has been used since, however, has given it an extremely checkered history.

Some are of the opinion that its original intentions save it from the criticism of Foster’s earlier work, while others argue that its use (or misuse) since have made it a racially and culturally damaging piece worthy of removal from such prominent places as Kentucky Derby proceedings.

Regardless, at around 6:30 p.m. EDT on Saturday, many people reading this article will tune in to NBC to watch a historic sporting event, “the Most Exciting Two Minutes in Sports.” They’ll hear a song playing as the horses walk on to the track, and they’ll likely be moved by what they hear. It’s important that they learn why.

“My Old Kentucky Home” is a song deserving of people’s tears, but their emotion shouldn’t be motivated by the beauty of Kentucky. As hard as it may be, they shouldn’t think of a home that they miss, or a place to which they can’t return. Their tears should be shed for millions of men, women and children robbed of their culture, rights, homelands, families and freedom for well over a century as this country became what it is today. They should think back on the worst systemic atrocity performed on American soil in its history, and the significant portion of the country that’s been suffering the consequences since.

Even more importantly, they should perhaps consider what’s changed in the country since the song was written, and what hasn’t. The country has come a long way toward social equality since, but ongoing progress has required constant effort from many, many individuals, and will have to continue into the future with the same fervor. The effects of events from Foster’s time are still very much prevalent today. There’s work to be done.

Stephen Foster helped start a conversation in 1853 with a song of noble, but often misinterpreted, sentiment. Since then, different groups of people took his work and gave it all sorts of different meanings, some positive and some negative, but many far removed from his original intention to “awaken sympathies” for enslaved persons. In an effort to recover some of what he originally set out to do, perhaps it’s time to give his song a new meaning for a new era of change: one of solemn remembrance and acceptance of the past and present, followed by an emphatic promise from the listener to continue working forward to an ever-brighter future.

“Weep no more my lady.

Oh! Weep no more today!

We will sing one song for the old Kentucky home

For the old Kentucky home, far away.”

Special thanks to Jillian Rice for her edits and insight, as well as Esmé Bleecker-Adams for the beautiful graphic at the top of the page.