[...] [W]hile Florida embraced "Old Folks at Home" as a promotional tool in the 19th century, its relationship with the song has grown more complex with time. The fact that Foster never visited is among a litany of complaints voiced by Floridians who have proposed finding a new state song over the years — and one of the more minor ones, at that.
Many have said the song is racially offensive. Foster wrote the lyrics in 1851 in what he imagined to be slave dialect, in the voice of a black man longing to return to his family on "de old plantation."
"The language is awkward," said Kathryn Haines, associate director of the Stephen Foster Memorial at the University of Pittsburgh, near where Foster grew up. "But at heart, it's about nostalgia for a distant home and being separated from one's family."
Other complaints have focused on the melancholy timbre of "Old Folks," a sharp contrast with the sun-splashed, paradisiacal image Florida likes to put forth. When Senator Bob Graham was governor in the 1980's, he discussed adding a second state song that was more upbeat, one that praised more of Florida than a single river.
"Florida is sunshine, waterways and sand," went the lyrics of a song by a Miami composer that Mr. Graham suggested. "Florida's a special kind of promised land."
(Florida's first state song, traded for "Old Folks," was equally bubbly, praising "thy gardens and thy phosphate mines.")
A former state representative, Willy Logan, called for dumping "Old Folks" as the state song in 1997 on the ground that it was racist, but his campaign went nowhere.
The state did, however, sanitize the original lyrics years ago, substituting "brothers" or "dear ones" for "darkeys," among other things. A sanitized version was sung at Gov. Jeb Bush's second inauguration last year, according to The Tallahassee Democrat, with "still longing for the old plantation" becoming "still longing for my old connection."
| Continue Abby Goodnough's New York Times article "Saluting a Songwriter Far From Home"
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