Linda Blackford: Emily Bingham is tired of KY's racist state song. On Derby Day, she'll take action

She’s already written an entire book about the racist history of Kentucky’s state song.

But now, Louisville historian Emily Bingham is trying another tack: a social media campaign to encourage folks to stop singing “My Old Kentucky Home” on Derby Day.

On Saturday, Bingham will be at Churchill Downs with guests, and when they play “My Old Kentucky Home” before the race, she will simply turn her back.

Starting Friday, she’ll start posting about her plan on social media:

“When Churchill Downs plays ‘My Old Kentucky Home’ each year before the Derby, the crowd stands, listens, and even cries together in the excitement before the race,” she writes.

“Many don’t know that playing ‘My Old Kentucky Home’ ritualizes a song about a slave being sold away from his family to die. If celebrating this song with the crowd doesn’t sit right with you, join me in turning your back to the track if you are there, or to the TV wherever you are. Tell your friends. #myoldkentuckyhome #turnyourbacktothetrack and tag @churchilldowns.

“Together we can let this Jim Crow icon go and find a song to represent all Kentuckians! Traditions change.”

Bingham, the author of “My Old Kentucky Home: The Astonishing Life and Reckoning of an Iconic American Song,” said that after she published the book in 2022, she realized how Pavlovian the response is for many people, emotionally embedded for childhood, despite its racist roots.

“I was looking for a way to interrupt that, but taking a knee at Churchill Downs would work,” she said in an interview Thursday with the Herald-Leader. “Many Black people at the track do not stand up for the song. I had this idea that if I turned around, it would be more visible and more noticeable and perhaps people would wonder why someone was doing it.”

Bingham, whose family owned the The Courier-Journal in Louisville for many years before selling it to the Gannett Co., in 1986, said she’s celebrating the 150th Kentucky Derby with the rest of her community.

“But this is one thing I can’t celebrate,” she said.

Bingham has spoken throughout the state about Stephen Foster’s celebrated song. Last year, she worked with activist Hannah Drake and musician Ben Sollee, who with high schools students created an alternative to “My Old Kentucky Home.”