Whitewashing Blackface and Whistling Dixie : The Commemoration of Dan Emmett

Remembering a Local Boy

It was not foreordained that Mount Vernon would come to celebrate Dan Emmett and his famous composition. In fact, when Emmett first returned to Mount Vernon in 1888 after spending many years in Chicago, local residents did not accord him any kind of star status. While Emmett was a recognizable figure around town, an eccentric fondly referred to as “Uncle Dan,” few knew of his history. As Emmett’s first biographer put it, “none of his acquaintances seemed to have suspected that he ever did anything that had received recognition outside of the community."

But by 1894, Emmett was performing “Dixie” in blackface minstrel shows put on by the local Elks at Mount Vernon’s Woodward Opera House. Al. G. Field’s decision to ask the elderly Emmett to tour with his minstrel group further revived his reputation in Mount Vernon. At Emmett’s last public performance at the annual Elks Minstrel in 1902, the crowd helped him sing "Dixie" after he was overcome by emotion. When Emmett died in 1904, the Elks took charge of the ceremony to ensure that old “Uncle Dan” was accorded the honor they felt he deserved. His body lay in state at the Elks lodge, an Elks honor guard accompanied the body to the cemetery, Al. G. Fields—himself a member of the Columbus Elks—served as marshal, and a band played "Dixie" as Emmett was laid to rest. Stories about his death and funeral ran in hundreds of newspapers from around the country.

Preserving someone’s reputation so that they will be known beyond their death requires effort and work on the part of living people. It requires creating resources—what some historians and sociologists call “sites of memory”—that keep alive the memory of a person or event. C. B. Galbreath (1858-1934), the State Librarian of Ohio and the secretary of the Ohio State Archaeological Society, created one of these resources when he published the first biography of Dan Emmett in 1904. Galbreath made the case that Emmett deserved a place in the annals of history because of the importance of his musical legacy; much of his short biography focused on laying to rest the debate about whether Emmett had actually written Dixie. Galbreath’s work also helped pave the way for a romanticized portrait of Emmett that has shaped his public image ever since. To Galbreath, Emmett was the embodiment of America’s pioneer spirit, the descendant of migrants to Ohio who had been “led by the restless spirit that ever beckons onward the advance guard of civilization.” Emmett, Galbreath insisted, was also a “cultured gentleman” with a humble natural sense of dignity. 

By 1908, the local department store in Mount Vernon had begun selling postcards featuring drawings of Dan Emmett and his retirement cabin. Yet constructing a physical memorial to Emmett—even something as simple as a tombstone to mark his grave—would prove challenging and apparently beyond the means of the local Mount Vernon community. Shortly after Emmett's death, Mount Vernon’s mayor named Al. G. Fields to head a commission to raise money for a gravesite monument, but the effort came to nothing. The Mount Vernon Dramatic Players also tried and failed to raise enough money for the project. 

So the city was fortunate when James Lewis Smith, the wealthiest man in Ashtabula, Ohio—a small city about 150 miles north of Mount Vernon—took a tour of the state in 1914 and discovered that Emmett’s grave was still unmarked. Smith was at the time a 64-year old bachelor who had a penchant for building monuments, having already funded an Ashtabula Civil War Soldiers and Sailors Monument as well as a monument to victims of an 1876 bridge collapse. He decided to fund a granite shaft some eight feet tall to mark Emmett’s grave. He asked Ella Wheeler Wilcox, a popular poet of the day, to compose a four-line inscription. The monument was erected in late 1915, around the hundredth anniversary of Emmett’s birth.

The 1915 memorial did not last long. For some reason, the memorial degraded so quickly that within ten years an effort was already underway to replace it. This time the Mount Vernon branch of the American Legion took the lead, erecting a new memorial at Emmett’s gravesite in 1925. It’s unclear why the American Legion, a veteran’s organization, took such an interest in Emmett, but it may be because of his short stint as a fife and drummer in the army when he was young. It may also relate to Emmett's lineage. Both his grandfather and father were veterans (of the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812, respectively), and the Legion erected a marker at his father's gravesite at the same time as they erected their memorial to Emmett.

While the two memorials differ in design, they used almost the exact same, rather curious, inscription: 

To the Memory of
DANIEL DECATUR EMMETT
1815-1904
Whose Song
DIXIE LAND
Inspired the Courage and Devotion of the Southern People and now Thrills the Hearts of a Reunited Nation

Why would a memorial to Emmett located in an Ohio city that sided with the Union celebrate that his song had fueled the “courage and devotion” of the Southern people? And why would it insist so firmly that "Dixie" should be considered a national, not a sectional song? This inscription—and indeed much of the memorialization of Emmett and "Dixie" in Mount Vernon and beyond—reflected the perspective of white southerners, for whom Emmett’s famous song came to play a key role in the mythology of the “Lost Cause.” In fact, it was white southerners involved in Confederate heritage organizations who would bring the most energy and zeal to the project of commemorating Dan Emmett. Their efforts shape the memorial landscape in Mount Vernon to this day.

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