"DIXIE."

"DIXIE." The song "Dixie" traditionally is attributed to the white minstrel violinist Daniel Decatur Emmett. An immediate popular hit in 1859, "Dixie" was adopted—with new lyrics by General Albert Pike—as the Confederate anthem during the Civil War. A century later "Dixie" became inextricable from the massive resistance of white southerners to the civil rights movement. However, historical affiliations of "Dixie" with blackface minstrelsy and white southern racism have been complicated by late-twentieth-century scholarship associating the song with African American neighbors of Emmett in Mount Vernon, Ohio.

The standard account is that Emmett wrote "Dixie"—originally entitled "I Wish I Was in Dixie's Land"—for Bryant's Minstrels, who with Emmett himself on violin, premiered the song on Broadway on 4 April 1859. The etymology of the word "Dixie" is highly debatable: it has been traced to a slaveholder named Dixey; to "dix," a ten-dollar note issued in Louisiana; and to the Mason-Dixon Line. Emmett himself commented that "Dixie" was a showman's term for the black South. Hence, many scholars have interpreted Emmett's song as an inauthentic and racist product of northern minstrelsy. By contrast, critics interrogating Emmett's authorship of "Dixie" have usually questioned how a man from Ohio could have come into contact with the southern black culture evoked in the song. However, Howard and Judith Sacks have demonstrated, in Way up North in Dixie: A Black Family's Claim to the Confederate Anthem (1993), that Emmett could have learned "Dixie" from the Snowdens, an African American family of musicians resident in Emmett's hometown, Mount Vernon. Their book further argues that the original lyrics of "Dixie" may be the semi-autobiographical account of Ellen Snowden, formerly a slave in Maryland.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Nathan, Hans. Dan Emmett and the Rise of Early Negro Minstrelsy. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1962.

Sacks, Howard L., and Judith Rose Sacks. Way up North in Dixie: A Black Family's Claim to the Confederate Anthem. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1993.

MartynBone

See alsoMinstrel Shows .

Dixie an informal name for the Southern states of the US. It was used in the song ‘Dixie’ (1859), a marching song popular with Confederate soldiers in the American Civil War. The ultimate origin is uncertain, although it has been suggested that the name comes from French dix ‘ten’ on ten-dollar notes printed before the Civil War by the Citizens Bank of Louisiana, and circulating in the Southern States. (See also Heart of Dixie.)
Dixiecrat in the US, informal name for any of the Southern Democrats who seceded from the Democratic party in 1948 in opposition to its policy of extending civil rights.
Dixieland a kind of jazz with a strong two-beat rhythm and collective improvisation, which originated in New Orleans in the early 20th century.
whistle Dixie engage in unrealistic fantasies, waste one's time.

Dix·ie (also Dix·ie·land) an informal name for the southern U.S. states. It was used in the song “Dixie” (1859), a marching song popular with Confederate soldiers in the Civil War.PHRASES: whistle Dixie engage in unrealistic fantasies; waste one's time: until you nail down the facts, you're just whistling Dixie.