Browse Items (43 total)

Sung from the perspective of a flood victim in Nashville, this song discusses floods, a common occurrence in Southern life and a common theme found in blues music. The song's release coincided with the notorious Great Mississippi Flood of 1927.

Minstrel songs were part of 19th-century pop music. "The Old Folks at Home" was originally sung from the perspective of an enslaved person longing for his life on the plantation. The song remains Florida's state song but its lyrics have undergone…

Written in direct response to the 1963 Birmingham, Alabama Church bombing which killed 4 African American girls, this song can be used to instruct students on the shifting attitudes surrounding the conversation on race relations and the Civil Rights…

This song can be used to introduce students to Civil Rights songs, many of which spoke to the movement's optimism. However, this song was unique in comparison to other songs such as "We Shall Overcome" for not being as optimistic. Like many other…

"The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" was written by a Canadian - with assistance from his Arkansas-born bandmate, Levon Helm - who spent an extended period of time in the U.S. South. The song depicts the story of a poor white Southerner and former…

This song could be used to introduce students to the gradual shift away from the pastoral way of rural southern life that once dominated the region and the New Deal. The south had traditionally been more agrarian than the north and the songwriter Bob…

This song can be used to discuss "Old South" or the "Antebellum South" nostalgia, which became a part of U.S. Southern culture. The song presents the story of an ex-slave who is longing to return back to their day on a plantation. The ideas expressed…

This song can be used to discuss "Old South" or the "Antebellum South" nostalgia, which became a part of U.S. Southern culture. The song presents the story of an ex-slave who is longing to return back to their day on a plantation. The ideas expressed…

While the topics of race and the civil rights movement were both key aspects of the region's history and what many perceived as part of the South's identity, the 1970s saw the rise of idea of the South as a home for "traditional values" and one that…

Spirituals are a Christian genre intimately tied to the southern's history with slavery. According to legend, Harriet Tubman used this song to instruct slaves on how to avoid detection when escaping slave owners and/or bounty hunters. Though the year…