Kate Smith fallout could be used as a learning tool
“Race hatreds, social prejudices, religious bigotry — they are the diseases that eat away the fibers of peace. Unless they are exterminated it’s inevitable that we will have another war. And where are they going to be exterminated? At a conference table in Geneva? Not by a long shot. In your own city, your church, your children’s school, perhaps in your own home.
“You and I must do it, every father and mother in the world, every teacher, everyone who can rightfully call himself a human being. Yes, it seems to me that the one thing the peoples of the world have got to learn if we are ever to have a lasting peace is tolerance. Of what use will it be if the lights go on again all over the world if they don’t go on in our hearts.”
Great speech by Martin Luther King, right?
Or was it Bobby Kennedy? Or Barack Obama? No. It was Kate Smith. When the New York Yankees were made aware by an email that Smith had recorded two alarmingly racist songs in the early 1930s, “Pickaninny Heaven” and “That’s Why Darkies Were Born,” they decided to stop playing her 1939 recording of “God Bless America” during the seventh-inning stretch.
The Flyers took a more drastic step. Not only did the NHL team decide to stop playing Smith’s rendition, it had a statue dedicated to her hauled away from the Philadelphia sports complex.
“The Yankees take social, racial and cultural insensitivities very seriously,” a team spokesman said. “And while no final conclusions have been made, we are erring on the side of sensitivity.”
In light of the Philadelphia Inquirer uncovering Smith’s January 1945 radio speech this past week, a speech heard by millions that condemned racial hatred and religious bigotry, I wonder. Are the Yankees now willing to err on the side of fairness to a woman dead for three decades, and of historical nuance?
By modern standards, there is no defense of the lyrics the songs Smith recorded. Zero. None. Singing to black orphans about “great big watermelons” and “pork chops” in “Pickaninny Heaven.” Singing, “Someone had to pick the cotton. Someone had to pick the corn … That’s why darkies were born.”
Immediate revulsion not only is understandable, it is demanded.
I long have found Atticus Finch’s words to his daughter in “To Kill A Mocking
bird” to be a road map to moral decency: “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view … until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.” Still, I cannot pretend to feel the hurt the words in those songs can bring to African Americans.
Yet it also incumbent that we step back from the jerk of the knee to examine the beat of the heart and the timeline of history. Was Kate Smith a racist? Beyond those two songs when she was in her early twenties and endorsing a “Mammy Doll” in 1939, there is no further evidence. Yes, Smith, who recorded 3,000 songs, could have refused to record those two. Just as so many other white performers could have refused to sing insensitive songs during that era and did not.
“That’s Why Darkies Were Born” was performed by African American Paul Robeson at that time, and the piece was considered by many as satire on racism. Robeson, an All-American football player at Rutgers, was a scholar, singer, movie star, lawyer, civil rights activist and a communist sympathizer who received the Stalin Prize from the Soviet Union. Once scorned and dismissed, Robeson is having a plaza and statue dedicated in his honor at Rutgers. Yes, evolving historical perspective is complex, nuanced, but also necessary.
The biggest crime in American athletic history was keeping African Americans out of major league baseball until 1947. Yet it was a mind-numbing eight years after Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier that the Yankees welcomed Elston Howard as their first black player. Do we punish the Yankees now?
Should they be pulled off WFAN? Should fans boycott their games?
Should the Yankees refuse that $20 bill with Andrew Jackson’s face used to pay for their expensive beers? After all, Jackson owned as many as 300 slaves.
What about that bridge leading into Manhattan to Yankees games? George Washington owned slaves. So did Ben Franklin, whose bridge leads to Philly. Washington, Jefferson, all the way to U.S. Grant. One quarter of our presidents owned slaves.
“I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races.”
Yes, Abraham Lincoln said that in his 1858 debate with Stephen Douglas. Five years later, he issued the Emancipation Proclamation.
What about that massive statue overlooking Philly? William Penn was a slaveholder. Does that come down, too? As Stu Bykofsky, columnist for the Philadelphia Daily News, wondered, maybe the entire state should be renamed Sylvania.
And what do we about the rappers whose songs are used as stadium entertainment or walk-up music for players? Should the ones that have derogatory lyrics about women or relentlessly and gratuitously use the “N-word” be banned?
What should the Cardinals do about the Rogers Hornsby statue outside Busch Stadium? Or the Tigers about Ty Cobb outside Comerica Park? Sports writer Fred Lieb maintained Hornsby told him he joined the KKK. Cobb has been painted as a virulent racist. Is it true? Not true? How far do the teams push it?
Scattershot cleansing is dangerous business. Scattershot retro-cleansing not only is dangerous business; it’s lacking in nuance and perspective.
I covered the Flyers for five years. I missed Smith appearing four times live to perform “God Bless America,” but I do know when the recording was played the Spectrum went crazy. The team had an overpowering record when it was played. Smith was seen as a good-luck charm. Nowadays, Gritty, the 7-foot mascot, fills the role.
The Yankees began their seventh-inning tradition after 9/11. “God Bless America” served as a powerful rallying point after the terrorist attacks. Yet even before cutting out Smith, the New York Daily News reported the Yankees were considering a change on “God Bless America,” including incorporating more live performances. Maybe it was easy for the Yankees to stop playing Smith.
Maybe the woman who was bigger than life in
America 80 years ago isn’t so big anymore. Maybe the astounding $600 million she raised in war bonds to help defeat the most powerful fascist regime in history doesn’t matter anymore. Maybe it’s easier to avoid the furor and bury her song along with her Presidential Medal of Freedom.
I just want to know this: Where does the moral clarity start and stop on this stuff? Who determines history’s mortal sins that rightfully demand a statue be pulled down, and the venial sins that can and should be forgiven?
Whether it’s Abraham Lincoln or Kate Smith, for me, the growth of a person stands as so important. Smith isn’t here to defend herself, but we can look at what she sang in 1931 and what, thanks to the Inquirer, we know what she said in 1945. The difference is monumental.
The Yankees and Flyers made a mistake by reacting too quickly. They’d make a bigger one by not fully examining the evolution of Smith’s life and American history. Why can’t something like this be used as a learning tool? Why can’t we add on to our knowledge and compassion rather than rush to erase all trace of wrongdoing?
Right down to something as manageable as a song and statue. In Philly, why can’t there be a plaque critical of Smith’s two racist songs at her statue? The Yankees could have black voices performing “God Bless America” in rotation with Smith. With technology, an African American performer could perform a duet with Smith. That could play big at Yankee Stadium. Record it with proceeds going to an inclusive cause that shows how great America can be today.
Or maybe America is just too invested in the industry of divisiveness.