South Carolina – Dixie – Song of the South

"Whenever Dixie is produced, the pen drops from the fingers of the plodding clerk, the spectacles from the nose and the paper from the hand of the merchant, the needle from the nimble digits of the maid and matron, and all go hobbling, bobbling in tune with the magical music. Won't someone set it to words of Union sentiment?" - c. 1861

"Emmett's original words and music still bring people to their feet as no other song in America does. [Americans] stand in deference to the tradition of The Star Spangled Banner, but they rise to Dixie itself." - c. 1920

"Fast or slow, it's a beautiful song ... about a special place that has so much promise ... if only we can learn to walk in each other's shoes." - 2000

Composer, History

• The Sunday morn Dixie was born - Why Daniel Decatur Emmett wrote Dixie - includes unpublished first stanza and a musically rich version of Dixie - scroll down
  
• Brief biography of Daniel Decatur Emmett - Encyclopaedia Britannica
  
• Dixie - the word and the song - Encyclopaedia Britannica
• Dixie's origin - Letter to the editor published in the Richmond Dispatch - March 19, 1893
  
• Did Daniel Emmett learn Dixie from a black family in Ohio?
  
• Origin of the word Dixie - three possible theories
  
• Dixie's popularity through the Civil War
  
• Dixie reconstructed - how the song was received after the war
  
• Dixie and The Battle Hymn of the Republic - an early 20th Century British view
  
• Dixie in the Land of Brotherly Love - August 2000

Music, Lyrics

• Music of the American Civil War - includes a spirited long-play version of Dixie - my favorite!
  
• Image of "Dixie's Land" sheet music - image taken from United States Library of Congress
  
• Unpublished first stanza - scroll down
  
• Away down South in the land of traitors - Northern versions of Dixie - scroll down
  
• 12 songs about Dixie in their titles - includes history of song and composer, lyrics and even listen to the songs
  

Critics

• Dixie opposed - history of protests beginning in the 1950s
  
• Why Dixie shouldn't be played - black musicologists explain why Dixie shouldn't be played at a Pittsburg high school concert - 1998
  
• Lawyers criticize Chief Justice Renquist for singing Dixie - 1999