Is it time to rethink "My Old Kentucky Home?"

The official state song of Kentucky is often belted out at Kentucky sporting events without a second thought.

But after "My Old Kentucky Home" was sung after the rain-soaked 144th Kentucky Derby on Saturday and broadcast to the world by NBC, The Washington Post questioned the complicated and controversial history of Kentucky's state song in a Saturday story.

"My Old Kentucky Home" is about a slave who has been sold and must say goodbye to Kentucky. The original song makes mention that "the time has come when the darkies have to part; Then my old Kentucky home, good night."

But in 1986, the state General Assembly passed a law that replaced "darkies" with "people."

It's the altered lyrics that are now sung.

But by removing the reference to "darkies" many don't realize that it's a song about slavery, the Washington Post wrote.

Foster wrote “My Old Kentucky Home” in 1853 for Christy’s Minstrels, one of the nation’s most popular traveling blackface music and comedy troupes.

Ken Emerson, who wrote a biography of Foster, told NPR in a 2010 interview that "My Old Kentucky Home" was inspired by "Uncle Tom's Cabin."

"I find it very ironic that all these men and women in their lovely hats and fancy gowns are singing a song with adulterated lyrics," Emerson said in a 2014 interview with WNYC News. " and they think they are singing a song that is a celebration of the Antebellum South, with ladies in crinoline and dashing cavaliers."

It became the state song in 1928. But even before that it was used as a way to market Kentucky to white people.

At the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis, Kentucky built an elaborate state pavilion in the style of an Antebellum mansion, naming it the “New Kentucky Home.” Inside, a player piano endlessly churned out “My Old Kentucky Home,” said Emily Bingham, who has spent years researching the song for an upcoming book entitled titled "Sing One Song." Thousands of copies of the sheet music were given away to visitors at the fair.

Bingham's book will explore the song's complex history and endless controversies.

Frank X Walker, the Kentucky poet, told NPR in 2016 that Foster was not a Kentucky native, "so he imagined or he witnessed something that suggested that it was a great place to be a slave. My issue is that there was no good place to be a slave."

The controversy about the song has spread to its author.

Last month, Foster's hometown of Pittsburgh removed a statue of Foster. The statue depicts Foster listening to a black man play the banjo. The Pittsburgh Art Commission voted to take the statue down from a plaza there after critics said it glorified white appropriation of black culture.

Read the full Washington Post story here.

This story was originally published May 6, 2018 at 10:28 AM with the headline "Is it time to rethink "My Old Kentucky Home?"."