Perception now is far different than perception was "then". Bud mentioned that the original sheet music was typed in a dialect that at the time was fine but now would be considered a slanderous act. I went to grade school starting in 1956, and about 4th grade we started to do those quarterly recital type things so parents could take grainy black and white photos of their kids. I remember clearly being handed sheet music for that song with the lyrics written "I wish I was in de land ob cotton".

How do you think that would fly 60 years later in 2018? And here is where I start to have my doubts that the rioting generation will ever get it. You can't apply the "then" to the "now". It isn't the same world. Nobody will ever say that the disparity between races was ever right, but none of this nonsense going on today can undo what was back in the "then".

Of the southerners who responded, how many of you are southern born and raised? I know one reply was from someone who migrated from de land ob snowy and cold winters. Keith and Bud, you have been in the south your whole life, right? John, are you not from Virginia, which we up here always thought of as "south lite"? A 6 hour drive from Lake Erie hardly seems "south". Georgia, Florida... those seem "south".