BGuthrie Photos: VA -- Richmond -- Virginia Museum of History and Culture (VMHC) -- Exhibit: Revolutions: Songs of Social Change

VA -- Richmond -- Virginia Museum of History and Culture (VMHC) -- Exhibit: Revolutions: Songs of Social Change:

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Description of Pictures: Revolutions: Songs of Social Change, 1860–65 and 1960–65
Jun 29 2013 – Jan 5 2014,
Revolutions offers a comparative look at two dramatic periods of civil strife and the music they inspired.

What does one of Bob Dylan’s best known songs have to do with slavery and the American Civil War? How did spiritual songs recorded by Union soldiers in the 1860s become popular protest songs 100 years later? Every song has a history, and Revolutions offers a comparative look at two dramatic periods of civil strife and the music they inspired.

Songs are more than a form of entertainment; they are cultural touchstones used to convey ideas, inspire patriotism, reward sacrifice, and encourage loyalty. Although separated by one hundred years, music defined both the Civil War and civil rights eras, and it continues to shape our own memory of those dramatic periods.

In both 1860 and 1960, Americans believed they were standing at the brink of great events. Young, charismatic presidents had just won hard-fought political contests promising reform that would reduce injustice and inequality in the United States. By 1865 and 1965, both presidents had been assassinated, leaving not only their promised reforms in jeopardy but also a nation coming to terms with the meaning of war.

Comparing songs from these two periods offers an opportunity to explore the ways in which their unique power transcends time. Listen to the music and think about why certain songs have endured and become an integral part of our national story.
The exhibition uses more than thirty objects to explore music that defined the Civil War and civil rights eras. It is broken into six sections: patriotic, sentimental, spirituals, freedom, dixie, and ballads. There are also two audio visual units that invite visitors to listen to performances and read lyrics of material featured in the show.
The Revolutions exhibition is made possible by a partnership with the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Commission of the Virginia General Assembly.

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Copyrights: All pictures were taken by amateur photographer Bruce Guthrie (me!) who retains copyright on them. Free for non-commercial use with attribution. See the [Creative Commons] definition of what this means. "Photos (c) Bruce Guthrie" is fine for attribution. (Commercial use folks including AI scrapers can of course contact me.) Feel free to use in publications and pages with attribution but you don't have permission to sell the photos themselves. A free copy of any printed publication using any photographs is requested. Descriptive text, if any, is from a mixture of sources, quite frequently from signs at the location or from official web sites; copyrights, if any, are retained by their original owners.

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Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
1. VHSSON_130922_005.JPG: Revolutions: Songs of Social Change, 1860-65 and 1960-65 Songs are more than a form of entertainment; they are cultural touchstones used to convey ideas, inspire patriotism, reward sacrifice and encourage loyalty. Although separated by one hundred years, music defined both the Civil War and civil rights era, and it continues to shape our own memory of those dramatic periods. In both 1860 and 1960, Americans believed they were standing at the brink of great events. Young, charismatic presidents had just won hard-fought political contests promising reform that would reduce injustice and inequality in the United States. By 1865 and 1965, both presidents had been assassinated, leaving not only their promised reforms in jeopardy but also a nation coming to terms with the meaning of war. Comparing songs from these two periods offers an opportunity to explore the ways in which their unique power transcends time. Listen to the music and think about why certain songs have endured and become an integral part of our national story. This exhibition is cosponsored by the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Commission of the Virginia General Assembly.
2. VHSSON_130922_011.JPG: Emily Alsop Power, Nannie Alsop Braxton, and Elizabeth Alson Wynne, c 1862 Hoping to recall "some of our old songs" when the war was over, sixteen-year-old Elizabeth Alsop recorded The Southern Waggon in her journal. These three sisters may have joined together in singing "our cause is just and holy, our men are brave and true, to whip the Lincoln cut throats is all we have to do." As a young woman in Fredericksburg, Virginia, Elizabeth and her family endured the uncertainties of war and Union occupation.
3. VHSSON_130922_019.JPG: Patriotic: When nations go to war, songs are among the many tools used to express a spirit of devotion to one's country. The American Civil War (1861-65) and the Vietnam War (1955-73) inspired the singing of patriotic songs in schools, at home, and at meetings. Their words infused people with a sense of belonging, even when circumstances proved otherwise, and they were touchstones around which people rallied. Many of these songs are iconic and continue to instill feelings of pride and hope, which remain a constant part of the American experience.
4. VHSSON_130922_023.JPG: Hello Vietnam, 1965 Johnnie Wright Although the war in Vietnam had become unpopular by 1965, country singer Johnnie Wright encouraged support for the conflict with songs as Dear John Letter and Soldier's Last Letter. The title track of this album spent three weeks at the top of the country billboard chart.
5. VHSSON_130922_031.JPG: Maryland! My Maryland, 1861 A Baltimorean in Louisiana Miller & Beecham, Baltimore, Md. Although a slaveholding state, Maryland remained loyal to the Union throughout the Civil War. This song, written by a Confederate sympathizer, hoped to rally Marylanders to the Confederate cause. Thousands of southern soldiers sang it as they crossed the Potomac River during the invasion of Maryland in September 1862, but the hoped for recruits never came. The song is still recognized as Maryland's state song.
6. VHSSON_130922_040.JPG: Bonnie Blue Flag, 1863 Harry Macarthy Miller & Beecham, Baltimore, Maryland Referring to the unofficial first flag of the Confederacy, twenty-seven-year-old Harry Macarthy wrote new lyrics that would inspire pride in the newly formed Confederate States of America. The song debuted in the spring of 1861, and six editions and three additional arrangements were published by 1864.
7. VHSSON_130922_055.JPG: Battle Hymn of the Republic c 1861-1910 Julia Ward Howe When abolitionist Julia Ward Howe toured Union army camps near Washington, DC, one day in 1861 she heard soldiers singing the popular song John Brown's Body. The next morning she began writing new lyrics. In February 1862, they appeared on the front page of the Atlantic Monthly and quickly became an anthem for the causes of Union and freedom. During and after the war, the song was immensely popular, and Howe wrote and signed numerous souvenir copies like the one seen here.
8. VHSSON_130922_067.JPG: All Quiet along the Potomac Tonight, 1863 JH Hewitt (music) and Lamar Fontaine (lyrics) Julian A Selby, Columbia, SC In the fall of 1861, the opposing armies along the Virginia and Maryland border were relatively inactive. Dispatches from the Union army to the war department reported "all if quiet tonight," and the phrase was often reprinted by newspapers. Authorship of what became one of the war's most popular songs was hotly debated. This copy, printed in South Carolina, attributes to lyrics to Confederate soldier Lamar Fontaine, but it was, in fact, written by thirty-two-year-old New York poet Ethelinda L. Beers.
9. VHSSON_130922_076.JPG: Sentimental: Sentimental songs tug at our heartstrings, especially during times of upheaval. War and rumors of war meant that loved ones were cherished even more. Photographs provide a visual token that could be carried with soldiers and kept on dressers, but songs stayed in their hearts.
10. VHSSON_130922_085.JPG: Group Portrait of the Richmond Grays, 1859 As one of Virginia's crack militia companies before the Civil War, the Richmond Grays traveled to New York, held a drill competition against the 7th New York State Militia, and escorted the body of President James Monroe to Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond. The unit also attended the execution of abolitionist John Brown in December 1859 -- where this photograph was mostly likely taken. On April 16, 1861, the Richmond Grays enlisted in Confederate service and became Company A of the 1st Virginia Infantry.
11. VHSSON_130922_094.JPG: It's My Way, 1964 Buffy Saint-Marie After witnessing wounded soldiers return from the war in Vietnam in 1964, even though the US government was denying involvement, twenty-four-year-old Buffy Saint-Marie wrote Universal Soldier. She commented that "it's about individual responsibility for war and how the old feudal thinking kills us all." Although the song was not initially popular, other musicians -- including Donovan -- took note and reworked the song.
12. VHSSON_130922_102.JPG: When This Cruel War is Over, 1864 Charles C. Sawyer Geo. Dunn & Company, Richmond, Va. Both Confederate and Union soldiers sang versions of When this Cruel War is Over after it was first published in 1863. The popular song was initially titled Weeping, Sad and Lonely and dedicated to sorrowing hearts at home.
13. VHSSON_130922_114.JPG: The Cruel War/Stewball, 1962 Peter, Paul, and Mary The Cruel War rose to #35 on the Billboard pop charts in late 1963 at a time when more than 10,000 US soldiers stationed in South Vietnam were still officially serving as advisors. The song describes a young wife who accompanies here husband to war disguised as a man.
14. VHSSON_130922_129.JPG: SNCC Political Button, c 1960s Like antislavery activists a century before, the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (pronounced "snick") emerged in 1960 as a place for young people to become involved in the civil rights movement. Following the February 1, 1960, sit-ins in Greensboro, North Carolina, college students met with African American activist Ella Baker. By 1961, a small group of student activists made a commitment to work fulltime toward achieving the goals of the civil rights movement.
15. VHSSON_130922_137.JPG: Joan Baez: In 1963, twenty-two-year-old Joan Baez stood at the helm of the folk revival. Derived from the gospel song I'll Overcome Someday, We Shall Overcome became an anthem associated with 1960s civil rights movement as it was sung in churches, at rallies and festivals, at folk concerts, and at peaceful demonstrations. As 170,000 black Americans and 30,000 white Americans descended upon Washington in 1963, Baez led them in singing We Shall Overcome.
16. VHSSON_130922_143.JPG: Babylon is Fallen, 1863 Henry C. Work Root & Cady, Chicago, Ill. Biblical references abounded as slavery crumbled during the Civil War. Some evoked the exodus of the Jews out of Egypt; others feared that their world was coming to an end. The ancient city of Babylon, in present-day Iraq, is a biblical symbol of evil. Similar attitudes existed a hundred years later as the system of Jim Crow was being dismantled through the efforts of activists during the civil rights movement.
17. VHSSON_130922_150.JPG: Odetta Sings Ballads and Blues, 1956 Odetta Holmes Although Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., claimed that Odetta Holmes was the "Queen of American Folk Music," she considered herself "one of the privates in a very big army." She influenced many artists, including Bob Dylan and Joan Baez. Her first recording of Oh Freedom was part of a spiritual trilogy that also included Come and Go with Me and I'm on My Way. Her songs have been called "the soundtrack of the civil rights movement."
18. VHSSON_130922_159.JPG: Virginia Slave Children Rescued by Colored Troops, 1864 Carte de visite To raise support for the cause of freedom, abolitionists used before and after images of enslaved people like the two children pictured here. In this image, the photographer captured an air of sadness and loss in his subjects that suggests uncertainty about the future despite the promise of freedom and better material conditions.
19. VHSSON_130922_170.JPG: Freedom: Born of the folk song and traditional church music, freedom songs, conveyed an unfettered commitment to the civil rights movement of both the 1860s and 1960s. Freedom songs helped sustain morale among activists and conveyed dogged determination as they continued their campaign for justice under life-threatening conditions.
20. VHSSON_130922_174.JPG: Spiritual: Enslaved African Americans not only sang songs to synchronize the pace of their work but also to express sadness, pain, joy, grief, and hope. These songs were a vital part of life in black communities. As Union soldiers moved throughout the South, they heard songs that spoke of the experience of slavery in ways northern soldiers had not heard before. Slavery was abolished in 1865, and as African Americans traveled freely throughout the country and the world, they carried their music with them. Spirituals grew in popularity during the civil rights movement of the 1960s as the songs of slavery once again took on significant meaning for those who sought freedom from oppression.
21. VHSSON_130922_182.JPG: Army Life in a Black Regiment, 1870 Thomas Wentworth Higginson Thomas Wentworth Higginson was a militant abolitionist who, in 1859, funded John Brown's efforts to start a slave insurrection in Virginia. When the Civil War began, Higginson joined the Union army and eventually served as colonel of the 1st South Carolina Infantry -- the first federally authorized African American regiment. In Army Life in a Black Regiment, he preserved Negro spirituals by copying the words and music he heard sung around the regiment's campfires. Among these was Many Thousands Gone, which one hundred years later inspired singer-songwriter Bob Dylan.
22. VHSSON_130922_198.JPG: Pete Seeger at the Village Gate with Memphis Slim and Willie Dixon, 1960 Pete Seeger In 1960 and 1961, Folkways Records released two volumes of live recordings of Pete Seeger from the Village Gate nightclub in Greenwich Village, New York, with guest appearances by influential blues musicians Memphis Slim and Willie Dixon. Among the songs on this album is Jacob's Ladder, a Civil War-era spiritual.
23. VHSSON_130922_208.JPG: Pete Seeger Banjo Head, c 1960 Folk singer Pete Seeger was already a musical icon when he reemerged as a prominent singer of protest songs in the 1960s, and many of his songs were made popular by other artists featured in this exhibition. If I Had a Hammer became a hit for Peter, Paul, and Mary, and Turn, Turn, Turn! was popularized by The Byrds. Seeger was one of the folksingers most responsible for popularizing the banjo as well as the spiritual We Shall Overcome, which became the anthem of the 1960s civil rights movement. This decorated banjo skin was used by Pete Seeger on his long-neck banjo for nearly forty years.
24. VHSSON_130922_221.JPG: Hampton Singers 1874 Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute, founded in 1858 by former Union general Samuel Chapman Armstrong, was created to train newly freed African Americans to teach and become leaders. In 1872 he formed a choral group, "The Hampton Singers," that conducted fundraising tours. The group sang in major cities throughout the northeast and performed in the Capitol rotunda and for President Ulysses S. Grant on the White House steps.
25. VHSSON_130922_228.JPG: Cabin and Plantation Songs, 1876 Thomas P. Fenner, Frederick G. Rathbun, and Bessie Cleveland Before the advent of sound recordings, traditional music was documented in manuscript or printed forms. Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute founder Samual Armstrong and his music director, Thomas Fenner, traveled across Virginia recording the songs of African Americans working in the fields and in the tobacco factories of Richmond. Included here are such well-known songs as Nobody Knows de Trouble I've Seen, Swing Low Sweet Chariot, Babylon's Fallin', Many Thousands Gone, and Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child.
26. VHSSON_130922_235.JPG: Early Banjo, c 1840-60 William E. Boucher William E. Boucher Jr. (pronounced Boo-shay) rose to prominence as a leading producer of banjos in Baltimore, Maryland, from the late 1840s to 1860. Although there are only around forty known Boucher banjos, they all share the elegant scroll peg head with beehive adornment, double S-curve at the fifth string side of neck, and a hook and wing nut tensioning system.
27. VHSSON_130922_243.JPG: President John F. Kennedy, Jacqueline Kennedy, Governor John Connally, and Nellie Connally, Dallas, Texas November 22, 1963 President John F. Kennedy was assassinated moments after this photograph was taken.
28. VHSSON_130922_253.JPG: Turn! Turn! Turn!, 1965 The Byrds He Was A Friend of Mine is a traditional folk song in which the singer laments the death of a friend. The earliest known version was recorded in 1939, and since then it has been recorded by singers from Bob Dylan to The Black Crowes. The Byrds altered the song's melody and lyrics to lament the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963.
29. VHSSON_130922_262.JPG: President Lincoln's Funeral March, 1865 E. Mack The dignified march to honor the fallen president left no doubt that this was a moment in America's history when the need for reflection was as great as the war itself. Attendees at President Abraham Lincoln's funeral recalled that it was a simple one, with no pomp in the surrounding. Nearly a century later, President John F. Kennedy's funeral was based on Lincoln's.
30. VHSSON_130922_270.JPG: Johnny Horton Makes History, 1960 Johnny Horton Johnny Horton began his career singing country and rockabilly tunes, but by 1959 he led a music craze that took fire in the form of "saga songs" or "story songs." On the eve of the centennial of the Civil War, Horton taught lessons about the war through songs like Johnny Reb, The Battle of Bull Run, and Young Abe Lincoln.
31. VHSSON_130922_277.JPG: Stonewall Jackson's Way, 1863 Dr. John Williamson Palmer W. Randolph Bookseller, Richmond, Va. Before his death in May 1863, Confederate general Thomas Jonathan Jackson was praised by his allies and feared by his enemies. Dr. John Williamson Palmer wrote Stonewall Jackson's Way in 1862 in Garrett County, Maryland, after hearing distant guns that marked the battle of Antietam (Sharpsburg). "I knew that Stonewall was in it, whatever it may be; it was his way -- 'Stonewall Jackson's Way.' " The song did much to spread the Jackson legend.
32. VHSSON_130922_289.JPG: Ballads: Ballads engage listeners by telling stories with universal themes. Their power lies not only in the thematic underpinnings but also in the ways in which they speak to us through the constructed narratives of ordinary people who have seemingly accomplished extraordinary feats, usually of a patriotic nature.
33. VHSSON_130922_293.JPG: Dixie: Dixie originated as part of the ministrel shows of the 1840s and 1850s. The show was a combination of comic skits, variety acts, dancing, and music performed by white men in blackface. These performances were popular in the northern United States and in Europe. The banjo, a musical instrument with African origins, emerged as a trademark of minstrel music. In Dixie's Land, the exaggerated version of black vernacular English tells the story of a freed slave longingly recalling the plantation days. It is the most popular song to come out of the genre of blackface minstrelsy. Dixie's Land also became an anthem of the Confederacy and was used at anti-segregation rallies in the 1960s.
34. VHSSON_130922_297.JPG: Dixie's Land, c 1859 Daniel Decatur Emmett Dixie's Land became so well known that by 1860 it was one of the nation's most popular songs. Attempting to appeal to southerners, Daniel Emmett infused his songs with proslavery rhetoric. In a sequel to Dixie, he wrote I'm going Home to Dixie. "In Dixie's land the field do bloom and colored men have welcome room."
35. VHSSON_130922_309.JPG: Anti-Desegregation Protest, Birmingham, Alabama, 1963 Demonstrators outside of West End High School in Birmingham, Alabama, sing Dixie as a student plays the tune on a trumpet during an anti-desegregation protest on September 10, 1963.
36. VHSSON_130922_321.JPG: Broadside, c 1850: Minstrlsy, though enjoyed by white audiences, was reviled by blacks. In this form of entertainment, white performers in blackface stereotyped and parodied African American music and behavior. Although there were some African American minstrels, they never achieved the success of white minstrels and were often forced to act in ways contrary to their personal beliefs it they wanted to be employed. Virginia Minstrels Broadside, 1844 Daniel Decatur Emmett created the first minstrel troupe, the Virginia Minstrels, in 1842. The troupe attempted "to be true to the negro" in its performance style. Not long thereafter, others, such as Christy's Minstrels and Stephen Foster, began performing minstrel shows. In 1859, Daniel Emmett created Dixie's Land as a dance number known as a "walk-around."
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