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Whitewashing Blackface and Whistling Dixie : The Commemoration of Dan Emmett

Bibliographic Citation, Mary Fitzhugh Darby letter to Board of Directors, Dixie National Memorial, 1935

Mary Fitzhugh Darby, form letter to Board of Directors of the Dixie National Memorial, 23 August 1935, Daniel Decatur Emmett Papers, MSS355, Box 2, Folder 25, Ohio History Connection, Columbus, Ohio.

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Mary Darby Fitzhugh's Dixie Obsession In 1935, native Kentuckian Mary Darby Fitzhugh journeyed to Mount Vernon with a dream she hoped to make a reality. Her goal? To build a national memorial to "Dixie" and Dan Emmett.

Fitzhugh was a newspaper woman and amateur composer who was then in her early 50s. A staunch advocate for women's rights, she had fought for women's suffrage in the early decades of the twentieth century and she later served on the finance committee of the National Women's Party. In the 1920s and 30s, she worked on campaigns to improve auto safety. She was also a member of the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC), whose father, she often explained, had fought for the Confederacy at the Battle of Shiloh.

It's not clear when or why Fitzhugh became fascinated by Daniel Decatur Emmett. Perhaps it was her own background as a composer that first piqued her interest in Emmett. But it is obvious that it was Emmett's most famous composition, "Dixie," that grabbed her attention. For her, "Dixie" was more than a song; it was a symbol of national unity and reconciliation. It was, in short, the musical theme for the whole narrative of the Lost Cause that former Confederates developed and popularized after the Civil War. No group was more central to that project than the UDC, and for Fitzhugh, no symbol more evocative than Dan Emmett and his famous song. In an undated poem, she described "Dixie" as a song that "cements the ties of nationalism," while in a 1934 address to the Ohio State Convention of the United Daughters of the Confederacy she opined that the very name of Dan Emmett “brings to us all tears of joy—tears of reverence—tears of loyalty—withal, tears joyous of complete reconciliation.” In a lengthy and apparently unpublished essay on "Dixie," Fitzhugh waxed poetic, describing Emmett as “a gallant, heroic spirit! A passionate believer in people! A great enthusiast! Withal one whose song ‘Dixie’ will echo throughout the ages.” Fitzhugh even developed a rudimentary pitch for a motion picture about Emmett, “based upon American history, showing how an immortal song merged into international recognition." "Dixie," she wrote, was a "song created in the State of New York, immortalized in the South, gathered momentum in the North, and to-day, symbolizes the complete union of a reunited nation.”

Fitzhugh’s admiration for Emmett and "Dixie" reflected the deep and casual racism of her day. She wrote of Abraham Lincoln patting his foot as he sat listening to the famous song and “watching little darkies demonstrate with rolling eyes and string-wrapped kinks...” She described the South as “that Elysium….where masters were kind, where care never came and where joy held sway the whole year round.” And she recalled her own “old black mammy” holding “her chile” (Fitzhugh) on her lap while singing "Old Dan Tucker," another of Emmett’s compositions.

Fitzhugh was a formidable woman, one with a can-do attitude and seemingly boundless energy. In 1935, she channeled her obsession with Emmett and his song into a concrete plan: she would organize a subscription campaign to construct “The ‘Dixie’ National Memorial, honoring Daniel Decatur Emmett, Ohio Composer” either in Mount Vernon or the state capital of Columbus, or perhaps even in Washington, D.C.

Fitzhugh planned her campaign with the same level of detail one might expect to find on the battlefield. She collected information about all extant material relating to Emmett, including papers held at the Library of Congress and libraries in Ohio, as well as objects and documents in the private collection of Mount Vernon collector H. Ogden Wintermute and Emmett biographer C. B. Galbreath. She sought letters of endorsement from Ohio’s governor, both Ohio senators, the Ohio Secretary of State, and the mayor of Columbus. She put together a Board of Directors for the "Dixie" National Memorial that included the State Commander of the American Legion, the secretary of the Ohio Chamber of Commerce, several faculty members from Ohio State University, and the Supervisor of Music for the State Department of Education, among others. In August 1935, the “Dixie” National Memorial incorporated as a nonprofit in the state of Ohio so that Fitzhugh, now the Secretary and General Director of the Campaign, could begin fundraising. Fitzhugh even got so far as designing and pricing out the costs for the brochure she planned to use to seek donations.

Fitzhugh gave a nod to Mount Vernon, travelling there to organize and hold a mass meeting to publicly launch her memorial campaign. But this was not a local effort. There were no residents of Mount Vernon on the campaign’s Board of Trustees, and while the local press gave their approval of the effort and Mount Vernon’s mayor offered an official welcome at the mass meeting held at Memorial Theater in early August, Fitzhugh was appalled that only ten local residents attended. That may have been because they had little notice of it; she had only secured the use of the hall four days earlier. But this low local turnout suggests that Fitzhugh expended much more energy cultivating connections and support at the state level than she did in Mount Vernon.

Fitzhugh's campaign quickly fizzled; just two weeks after the "Dixie" Memorial was formally incorporated, Fitzhugh resigned from the project. While her correspondence only hints at the reason, it appears that she came into conflict with the leadership of the Dan Emmett League, a commemorative group based near Columbus, Ohio. Just weeks after Fitzhugh publicly launched her memorial campaign, the Dan Emmett League organized a celebration at a Columbus park to celebrate the 120th anniversary of Emmett’s birth. Fitzhugh apparently resented this independent organizing, and especially the efforts by the League to solicit donations to fund the picnic. She requested that the Columbus Better Business Bureau investigate the league’s fundraising. The day after the bureau reported that they had found no irregularities, Fitzhugh stepped down from her position, writing to the new Board of Directors that her decision was made “because I can not subscribe to existing conditions in the city of Columbus, in which personalities and facts have entered.” Who knows what those “conditions” were? Perhaps members of the Emmett League resented the idea of a southern woman taking charge of the fight to preserve Emmett’s memory.

Whatever the cause of the rift, Fitzhugh’s vision would not be realized. But her efforts demonstrate both the intense interest promoters of Lost Cause had in commemorating Emmett and "Dixie" and their success in shaping the northern narrative about the importance of both the man and the song. Indeed, many of the Ohioans whom Fitzhugh approached to join her campaign echoed the Confederate heritage organization's understandings of "Dixie" as a song that symbolized the reunited nation. And it seems likely that the attention the UDC directed at Emmett and “Dixie” helped influence local residents in Mount Vernon, who would soon come to embrace Emmett with a new commemorative zeal.