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Whitewashing Blackface and Whistling Dixie : The Commemoration of Dan Emmett

Dan Emmett Postcards

Postcards featuring drawings of Dan Emmett and his birth home were being produced in Mount Vernon by a local department store as early as 1908, just four years after his death. These early postcards reflect the early efforts to commemorate Emmett on the part of Mount Vernon locals. Later postcards would feature the memorial boulder gifted to Mount Vernon by the United Daughters of the Confederacy in 1931, seamlessly interconnecting the commemorative stream emerging locally with that coming from those seeking to promote the Confederacy.

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Back of Postcard, Emmett Memorial Boulder on the Lawn of the Knox County Memorial Building, 1936. Back text reads: Caption (back) Daniel Decatur Emmett, Author of "Dixie" was born at Mount Vernon, Ohio, Oct. 29, 1815. In 1859, Mr. Emmett, then a member of Bryant's Minstrels, composed the words and music of "Dixie" which was used by the minstrel troup in New York for the first time. The song "Dixie" was on the lips of the Southern soldiers as they marched to the field of battle. It was the battle cry of Pickett's men when they charged at Gettysburg; the peace offering of Lincoln at the dawn of a reunited nation, and the air to which the boys in blue kept step as they marched forth for the liberation of Cuba. Emmett died June 28, 1904 at his old home in Mount Vernon, Ohio and his remains were laid to rest in beautiful Mound View Cemetery."