Stephen Foster composed 125 folk melodies, His achievements in music, not necessarily his lyrics, are part of the treasured American culture.There is no reverse-racism. This is a newly-coined word. Those who use the term assume that black prejudice is good but white prejudice isn't even in the running race. Black and white bigotry are corrupt in equal amounts. Recently Civil War statues and monuments are being targeted for destruction. Bronze statues are a rarity in America. During times of war they were melted down to make bullets and war weaponry. The Stephen Foster Memorial statue is located in Pittsburgh's Oakland section next to the Stephen Foster Memorial Theater. The statue depicts Stephen Foster the first folk music composer of the United States of America. Its designer, Giuseppi Moretti, was under the direction of a committee of eminent Pittsburgh notables such as moguls Andrew W. Mellon, E. M. Bigelow, Robert Pitcairn and others. The sculptor envisioned Stephen Foster seated, wearing a jacket, bow tie, pants and shoes. He holds a pencil and sheet-music. In more recent years Paul Koch, Pittsburgh organist also playing organ at St. Paul's Cathedral, each year laid a wreath at the feet of Stephen Foster statue an elderly man sits on the ground in bare feet as he strums a banjo, that has been stolen and returned from time after time, with his pencil broken off, too. The statue's creator envisioned Foster playing a song, entitled Uncle Ned, said to have been one of the first anti-slave songs, written in 1848, but after reading these lyrics, it doesn't seem that the words fit antislave rhetoric-:
He's dead long time ago!
He had no wool on de top ob his head
De place whar de wool ought to grow
(Chorus) Den lay down de shubble and de hoe
Hang up the fiddle and de bow
No more work fo po Old Ned
He's gon whar good Niggas go
When old Ned die Massa take it berry hard
De tears ran like de rain
Old missus turn pale, and she gets berry sad
Cayse she nebber see Old Ned again.
During these racist days lasting to the present, but with much reform, it was common for musicians and writers to demean American Africans by mimicking their pronunciation. They actually should be applauded for their English knowing that they were forbidden to write or learn the language. They figured out how to read by copying labels from boxes of food and other items they observed as bonded people. Although the bronze statue ironically now depicts the two men as being dark brown over time, perhaps this memorial should be transferred inside the Foster Theater as an example of racism. Or nearby at Carnegie Museum of Natural History there could be a section for this statue and local war statues with generals and other officers mostly on horses. There were more than a million horses killed in the Civil War that divided Americans. More horses died than men. They need to have some recognition for their forced commitment. More than 620,000 soldiers died in the same war.
H.C. Smith, World Enlightened News, W.E.N.
