Written in the first person from the perspective of a black slave (at a time when slavery was legal in half of the states of the US), the song has its narrator “longing for de old plantation,”[4] which has long drawn criticism as romanticizing slavery, although Foster himself supported the North during the American Civil War and supported abolition of slavery.[citation needed] The mid-19th-century sheet music cover, pictured here, promotes the song as an “Ethiopian melody.”
A word now long reckoned to be an ethnic slur, “darkies,” used in Foster’s lyrics, has become such an embarrassment for singers and audiences alike that, for example, the word “brothers” was sung in place of the offensive word at the dedication of the new Florida state capitol building in 1978.[5] In general, at public performances another word like “lordy,” “mama,” “darling,” “brothers,” “children,” or “dear ones” is typically substituted.
The text is written, as is usual in minstrel songs, is a cross between the dialect historically spoken by African slaves and standard American English — the former attested to as being in use as late as the 1940s, in the works of the African American folklorist from Florida, Zora Neale Hurston.[6] It is an archaic form of African American vernacular English — and this is seen by some[who?] as racism against black Americans (because the music’s lyrics were written by a white Anglo-American).[citation needed]
In practice, the pronunciation, as written in dialect, has long been disregarded in favor of the corresponding standard American English usage, as demonstrated by the song’s performances at the 1955 Florida Folk Festival.[7]Old Folks at Home - Wikipedia
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The minstrel show, or minstrelsy, was a US form of entertainment developed in the 19th century, consisting of comic skits, variety acts, dancing, and music, performed by white people in blackface or, especially after the U.S. Civil War, by black people.
