Dan Emmett in the Age of Black Lives Matter
Members of Mount Vernon’s small Black community had long been critical of the local commemoration of Dan Emmett. Ric Sheffield, who grew up on the outskirts of Mount Vernon and went on to become a professor of sociology at Kenyon College, doesn’t remember ever attending the Dan Emmett festival, or its predecessor, Dixie Days, while growing up. “I knew that I would not have been welcome at or comfortable at a Dixie Day Celebration,” he explained in 2017. Others had been dismayed that the story of the Snowdens and the possibility that they had written “Dixie”—a widely accepted view among local Black residents—had been largely dismissed by whites in Mount Vernon.
But after what Black Knox County native Tamara Parson described as a futile “25+ years of letters and debates...(and being insulted, gaslighted, and consistently dismissed)” for bringing up the problems with commemorating Emmett, the critique finally began to spread and to gain public visibility. In 2016, the Knox County Historical Society stopped handing out the “Dixie” coloring book to third-graders after a local African American mother complained. She was upset when her daughter brought home a book with a Confederate flag on its cover and a picture of Emmett’s blackface group, the Virginia Minstrels, inside. While some at the historical society didn’t understand the fuss—after all, the book’s illustrator told me, the figures in the Virginia Minstrels illustration would only be in blackface if children colored them in that way—more than twenty Knox county residents wrote to praise the society for finally acknowledging the “enduring and wide reaching problems of such a coloring book.”
Knox County in 2016 was not appreciably more diverse than it had been in previous decades; the city of Mount Vernon was still over 95 per cent white. But this small town in Ohio was not immune to the larger national conversations that had been stoked by the election of Donald Trump in 2016, the resurgence of white nationalism, and the ongoing protests against police and vigilante killings of Black men, women, and children. In the wake of Donald Trump’s election, local progressives became more politically organized and began holding weekly vigils in Mount Vernon’s central square which sometimes drew as many as a hundred residents holding signs protesting everything from Trump’s immigration policy, the Muslim ban, the retreat from environmental protections, and the administration’s overt racist and sexist language.
The country was also experiencing a profound reckoning with the Confederate symbols that marked the American landscape. In the wake of the horrific massacre of nine Black parishioners at the Mother Emanuel A.M.E. Church in Charleston by white supremacist Dylann Roof in 2015, Bree Newsome made history when she scaled a flagpole outside the South Carolina state house and took down the Confederate flag that flew there. Confederate monuments and symbols throughout the South became the focus of intense public debate, especially after a white supremacist who was protesting Charlottesville, Virginia's plan to take down a statue of Robert E. Lee drove his car into a crowd of peaceful counter-protestors, killing anti-racist activist Heather Heyer and injuring nearly thirty others in 2017.
As activists demanded the removal of Confederate symbols with some success, it was perhaps inevitable that Mount Vernon’s commemoration of Dan Emmett would come under new scrutiny. The subject, not surprisingly, arose among some of us gathered at a vigil to mourn the violence in Charlottesville in August 2017. Why weren’t we doing something locally to address our own pro-Confederacy commemoration, several of us wondered. I returned home and raised the question on the Facebook page of Ohio 7 Watch, a local progressive political group. I had soon decided to hold a meeting at my home for anyone who was interested in discussing the issue.
As the day of the meeting approached, my own anxiety grew, especially after several defenders of Emmett announced that they would attend and urged others to do the same to protest what they saw as an unfair attack by liberal outsiders. Ultimately, around forty people gathered in a large circle in my living room on the appointed day; at least a quarter were there to defend Dan Emmett. That meeting felt like my research on historical memory come to life, as I listened to arguments of all kinds that I had read and written about in other contexts.
Supporters of Dan Emmett argued that Emmett was a “way of life” around Knox County and insisted that he was not a racist figure, reminding the group that Emmett had been pro-Union in the Civil War, had disliked the South’s use of his song, and that Lincoln himself had liked “Dixie.” These arguments, while largely correct, also froze Emmett in time and ignored his later ties to Confederate heritage groups. They also equated what were purportedly Emmett's personal views with the larger cultural and political impact of blackface and the song “Dixie.” Because he was not personally racist, they suggested, neither his practice of blackface or his. most famous song could be either. But images (like caricatures of Black people as performed by Emmett) and songs (or flags) accrue meaning over time, meanings that are often independent of their origins. By the late twentieth century, both blackface and “Dixie” had become symbolic of racism and those meanings were not changed by whatever Emmett’s personal views might have been. Most uncomfortably, supporters of Emmett seemed unable or unwilling to hear the complaints of people of color that the commemoration of Emmett made them feel marginalized and unwelcome in their own town. No one is making you go to the annual festival, they were told. You could just stay home. Within five minutes, one of the few people of color at the meeting had walked out in tears.
Critics of the commemoration had their own disagreements which also reflected major themes in the scholarship on commemoration and historical memory. Some questioned the value of focusing on the commemoration of Emmett which they thought was primarily a form of symbolic politics that was sure to be divisive and provide ammunition for racist groups. Better instead, they argued, to focus on issues like police bias. Others argued that a better strategy would be to try to broaden and complicate the historical understanding of both Emmett and "Dixie." We could, for example, lobby to get the annual festival renamed the Dan Emmett/Snowden Festival and could organize community meetings where residents could learn the much more complicated history of “Dixie” documented in the book by Howard and Judy Sacks.
These critiques—and the concern that the longtime residents of Mount Vernon would feel like they were being scolded for their attachment to a much-loved local figure—forced me to confront my own attitudes towards commemorative politics. The idea that the festival could be turned into an opportunity to learn about the complexity of the past and the complicated history of “Dixie” seemed to me to ignore both the fact that commemorations are poor at conveying complicated histories and that “Dixie” had acquired a symbolic significance that could not easily be undone whatever the actual history of the song. The suggestion to make the festival a joint celebration of the Snowdens and Dan Emmett struck me as a form of what scholar Dell Upton has described as “dual heritage,” where monuments are added to the landscape to supplement rather than replace existing memorials, akin to this intersection of Jefferson Davis and Martin Luther King Streets in Selma, Alabama.
Adding supplementary memorials to a landscape, Upton argues, sends the message that two contradictory histories are equally valuable and worthy of commemoration. I feared that bringing in the story of the Snowdens would do little on its own to challenge or displace the symbolism of commemorating a blackface performer.
And as to the efficacy of this kind of symbolic politics? Well, for me at least, that remains an open question. Our meeting did contribute to the launching of a conversation with the festival's board of directors about its name. The longtime festival director dismissed the concerns in 2017, arguing that “Just because somebody says they're offended, it doesn't mean that you should change what you do," and expressing concern that most of the festival volunteers would walk away if the name were changed. But after a change in festival leadership in 2019, the conversation began to have more of an impact. That year, the board removed the silhouette of a minstrel from the festival's logo. They also included a question about the festival's name when they undertook a public opinion survey about the state of the festival. 54 per cent of the 660 community members who responded to the online survey supported changing the festival's name. In 2020, the board of directors announced that the Dan Emmett Arts and Music Festival would be renamed the Mount Vernon Arts and Music Festival.
That decision has not yet sparked much broader conversation or reflection about the implications of commemorating Dan Emmett, however. When they held a renaming ceremony at a downtown hotel, the festival director did not explain why the festival was being renamed. Nor has the rebranding of the festival led to plans to rename Dan Emmett Elementary School or to confront the many other ways Emmett is commemorated around town.
But whatever the impact of changing the festival's name, organizing to debate Emmett's commemoration gave momentum to other broader forms of organizing and activism. Soon after that meeting at my house, a group of people who had long wanted to form a local organization to combat racism and to help cultivate a more welcoming environment in Knox County came together and founded the Knox Alliance for Racial Equality (KARE). That organization, now three years old, has created and distributed posters that offer a message of inclusion to local businesses; has met with police about their use-of-force policies, has organized a well-attended panel discussion on the history of blackface minstrelsy; has helped support efforts to secure historical markers for two sites associated with local African American history, and has offered a free community class on the history of racism in the United States.
Has there been a meaningful reckoning with the long history of blackface, of minstrelsy, of the legacy of crafting a civic identity around a figure as problematic as Dan Emmett, and more generally, with the ways in which whiteness has shaped the commemorative landscape and culture of Knox county? I don't think so. But at least it's a start.
Supporters of Dan Emmett argued that Emmett was a “way of life” around Knox County and insisted that he was not a racist figure, reminding the group that Emmett had been pro-Union in the Civil War, had disliked the South’s use of his song, and that Lincoln himself had liked “Dixie.” These arguments, while largely correct, also froze Emmett in time and ignored his later ties to Confederate heritage groups. They also equated what were purportedly Emmett's personal views with the larger cultural and political impact of blackface and the song “Dixie.” Because he was not personally racist, they suggested, neither his practice of blackface or his. most famous song could be either. But images (like caricatures of Black people as performed by Emmett) and songs (or flags) accrue meaning over time, meanings that are often independent of their origins. By the late twentieth century, both blackface and “Dixie” had become symbolic of racism and those meanings were not changed by whatever Emmett’s personal views might have been. Most uncomfortably, supporters of Emmett seemed unable or unwilling to hear the complaints of people of color that the commemoration of Emmett made them feel marginalized and unwelcome in their own town. No one is making you go to the annual festival, they were told. You could just stay home. Within five minutes, one of the few people of color at the meeting had walked out in tears.
Critics of the commemoration had their own disagreements which also reflected major themes in the scholarship on commemoration and historical memory. Some questioned the value of focusing on the commemoration of Emmett which they thought was primarily a form of symbolic politics that was sure to be divisive and provide ammunition for racist groups. Better instead, they argued, to focus on issues like police bias. Others argued that a better strategy would be to try to broaden and complicate the historical understanding of both Emmett and "Dixie." We could, for example, lobby to get the annual festival renamed the Dan Emmett/Snowden Festival and could organize community meetings where residents could learn the much more complicated history of “Dixie” documented in the book by Howard and Judy Sacks.
These critiques—and the concern that the longtime residents of Mount Vernon would feel like they were being scolded for their attachment to a much-loved local figure—forced me to confront my own attitudes towards commemorative politics. The idea that the festival could be turned into an opportunity to learn about the complexity of the past and the complicated history of “Dixie” seemed to me to ignore both the fact that commemorations are poor at conveying complicated histories and that “Dixie” had acquired a symbolic significance that could not easily be undone whatever the actual history of the song. The suggestion to make the festival a joint celebration of the Snowdens and Dan Emmett struck me as a form of what scholar Dell Upton has described as “dual heritage,” where monuments are added to the landscape to supplement rather than replace existing memorials, akin to this intersection of Jefferson Davis and Martin Luther King Streets in Selma, Alabama.
Adding supplementary memorials to a landscape, Upton argues, sends the message that two contradictory histories are equally valuable and worthy of commemoration. I feared that bringing in the story of the Snowdens would do little on its own to challenge or displace the symbolism of commemorating a blackface performer.
And as to the efficacy of this kind of symbolic politics? Well, for me at least, that remains an open question. Our meeting did contribute to the launching of a conversation with the festival's board of directors about its name. The longtime festival director dismissed the concerns in 2017, arguing that “Just because somebody says they're offended, it doesn't mean that you should change what you do," and expressing concern that most of the festival volunteers would walk away if the name were changed. But after a change in festival leadership in 2019, the conversation began to have more of an impact. That year, the board removed the silhouette of a minstrel from the festival's logo. They also included a question about the festival's name when they undertook a public opinion survey about the state of the festival. 54 per cent of the 660 community members who responded to the online survey supported changing the festival's name. In 2020, the board of directors announced that the Dan Emmett Arts and Music Festival would be renamed the Mount Vernon Arts and Music Festival.
That decision has not yet sparked much broader conversation or reflection about the implications of commemorating Dan Emmett, however. When they held a renaming ceremony at a downtown hotel, the festival director did not explain why the festival was being renamed. Nor has the rebranding of the festival led to plans to rename Dan Emmett Elementary School or to confront the many other ways Emmett is commemorated around town.
But whatever the impact of changing the festival's name, organizing to debate Emmett's commemoration gave momentum to other broader forms of organizing and activism. Soon after that meeting at my house, a group of people who had long wanted to form a local organization to combat racism and to help cultivate a more welcoming environment in Knox County came together and founded the Knox Alliance for Racial Equality (KARE). That organization, now three years old, has created and distributed posters that offer a message of inclusion to local businesses; has met with police about their use-of-force policies, has organized a well-attended panel discussion on the history of blackface minstrelsy; has helped support efforts to secure historical markers for two sites associated with local African American history, and has offered a free community class on the history of racism in the United States.
Has there been a meaningful reckoning with the long history of blackface, of minstrelsy, of the legacy of crafting a civic identity around a figure as problematic as Dan Emmett, and more generally, with the ways in which whiteness has shaped the commemorative landscape and culture of Knox county? I don't think so. But at least it's a start.
This page has paths:
This page references:
- Poster advertising panel on Blackface, Knox Alliance for Racial Equality, 2019
- Renee Romano, Facebook Posting to Ohio 7 Watch, August 16, 2017
- Picture of the Virginia Minstrels from "Dixie" coloring book
- Knox Alliance for Racial Equality Logo
- Bibliographic Citation, renaming of Dan Emmett festival
- Racial Demographics, Mount Vernon, OH, 2019
- Signs on the Square, February 24, 2018
- The intersection of Jefferson Davis and Martin Luther King Streets in Selma, Alabama
- Bibliographic Citation, debate over naming over renaming Dan Emmett Festival
- Bibliographic Citation, gaslighted quote
- Bibliographic Citation, letter in support of ending distribution of "Dixie" Coloring book by the Knox County Historical Society