Thanks for Listening.

Poor Kate Smith.

It really is unconscionable that we are berating Kate Smith in 2019, and removing her statue from the stadium that so proudly played her recording of “God Bless America”—because someone realized that she also recorded songs that ‘don’t reflect the character’ that the sports facility wants to reflect. 

Shall we have a séance and see if we can get Kate to apologize? I bet she would in the blink of an eye. She wasn’t a confederate general, or a white supremacist, or even a right-winger, as we think of them today. She would probably laugh out loud that anyone would judge her singing of Irving Berlin’s most famous anthem as inappropriate because she also recorded two “darkie” songs of the early 1930’s. It shows an appalling lack of understanding as to what such songs were, and why she sang them. 

Everyone is embarrassed to hear “That’s Why Darkies Were Born” because no one would write or sing such a song today. Not even white supremacists. Not even David Duke. Songs like it were the last vestige of plantation numbers that made up a solid section of vaudeville entertainment for a century or more, descending from minstrel shows. 

No one today is going to hold up Lew Brown and Ray Henderson’s lyrics as being cross-culturally inspirational, but if you read the words in the light of their vaudeville roots, the stance is not meant to be racially-biased, but skewed to the sympathetic:

Brothers, sisters, when this world began There was work to be done And it seemed that someone Left it to the colored man	This isn’t sneering or claiming superiority; it rather clumsily states that the ‘colored man’ was saddled with a huge burden of work. It’s an admission of the inequality.
Brothers, sisters, what must be, must be Though the balance is wrong Still your faith must be strong Accept your destiny. Brothers, listen to me...	The singer is sympathizing with the plight of black people, who were being treated miserably, especially in the South, to say the least. “The balance is wrong.” Supremacists don’t say that.  The exhortation “accept your destiny” is probably the harshest line in the song, but is the setup for the remainder.
Someone had to pick the cotton Someone had to pick the corn Someone had to slave and be able to sing That's why darkies were born	The rest of the song is a dichotomy—‘someone’ had to do what others didn’t want to do, and fate had it befall on black people. But note ‘able to sing’ – that’s the excuse for the song in the first place.
Someone had to laugh at trouble Though he was tired and worn Had to be contented with any old thing That's why darkies were born	This stanza is heartbreaking in its trying to understand the plight of the black worker. And the question remains: do you, the listener, think that’s why they were born, to suffer the indignities that are laid out here? It presents the Negro as a tragic figure.
Sing, sing, sing when you're weary And sing when you're blue Sing, sing, that's what you taught All them white folks to do	And again, emotionally, the lyrics speak of singing, under agonizing conditions; something they ‘taught… the white folks to do.’
Someone had to fight that old Devil Shout about Gabriel's Horn Someone had to stoke that old train That would bring God's children to green pastures That's why darkies were born	And finally, the song, in its own way, uplifts those in bondage, to overcome their supposed fate, and bring ‘God’s children’ – that is, everyone, to green pastures, superseding anything the so-called white community could do, and the ironic conclusion is that is why ‘darkies’ were born—to uplift everyone through their suffering.

Admittedly, not a great choice of a song for Kate Smith; but it was popular in 1931, on the hit chart for 12 weeks, and recorded by no less than Paul Robeson as well. As a hit song from a musical of the day, it was plugged on the radio and in sheet music (and I bet player-piano rolls as well), to keep audiences flowing into the theater. Many of the words sit on a knife-edge of being sympathetic, or downright racist. Today, most listeners would push the lyrics over that edge and brush it all under the carpet, because parsing such tinder-box poetry is too dangerous to do. 

But remember that the ‘coon-song’ was a very popular genre for at least a century, and sold many records in the Victrola days, featuring such delightful numbers as “When a Coon Sits in the Presidential Chair,” and “All Coons Look Alike to Me” – don’t flinch from them, seriously think why such things were acceptable at the time. Kate Smith didn’t record either of those. Remember too that Kate started her career on the stage in the show, “Hit the Deck,” singing Vincent Youmans’ “Hallelujah!” in blackface. As a spokesperson for Jell-O, she had, as was said, a great face for radio. She also was humiliated on stage by Bert Lahr, who ad-libbed comments about Smith’s corpulent figure, causing her great distress. 

Kate Smith, of such humble beginnings and unassuming character that when Katherine Hepburn was married to a man named Smith, she refused to take his name and be called “Kate Smith.” Kate who always began her radio show with the words “Hello, Everybody!” and ended with “Thanks for listenin’.” Kate Smith who sold $600 million in war bonds to help our country fight in the Second World War, who found her everlasting theme in Irving Berlin’s “God Bless America,” never asked Irving if he had written anything racist, maybe to the likes of: “Jake! Jake! The Yiddisher Ball Player,” “Cohen Owes Me Ninety-Seven Dollars,” “I'd Rather See a Minstrel Show,” “I'm an Indian Too,” “Look Out for That Bolsheviki Man,” “Pickaninny Mose,” “That's What the Well-Dressed Man in Harlem Will Wear,” “To My Mammy,” “Yiddisha Nightingale,” –and those are just the ones where the titles say all. The rich history of black and ethnic music in America is not one you can summarize in the performance of one song. 

By the way, who says Kate Smith asked to sing that Darky Song? Ted Collins her manager, no doubt. But for us to throw our hands up and expunge her memory because of a song that’s now obviously a bad choice to have sung, is much like getting a bad grade in school because your dad wore brown shoes with a blue suit to a teacher meeting. All right, melt down Kate’s statue, toss it from the Flyers’ Stadium, and scratch out her memory singing one of the most stirring pieces of popular music ever written for a song she sang in 1931 that is surely misunderstood in its (admittedly ambiguous) intent. She’s been thrown out of better places than that.