ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, February 13, 1997 TAG: 9702130063
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: RICHMOND
SOURCE: STAFF AND WIRE REPORT
The General Assembly moved a step closer Wednesday to retiring a state song that critics say glorifies slavery, but legislators decided they wanted nothing to do with efforts to find a replacement.
The House General Laws Committee unanimously endorsed a bill to make ``Carry Me Back to Ol' Virginia'' the state song emeritus, despite a late campaign by a conservative group supporting the song.
The committee then killed a proposal that a panel of legislators and residents come up with a new state song.
``This legislature is not the appropriate arbiter of what should be the state song,'' said Del. Jay DeBoer, D-Petersburg. ``The state song is one that has to come from the people.''
The full House will consider the bill to retire "Carry Me Back" next, and Gov. George Allen is expected to sign it if it reaches his desk. But because of a minor change added by the committee Wednesday, the Senate will have to approve the plan one more time.
And with the prospect of finding a replacement now dead for the year, efforts to retire the song could face another hurdle.
"This won't make it any easier," said Portsmouth Sen. Louise Lucas, co-sponsor of the bill. "It was hard getting enough people to retire the song even when they knew another one would be selected."
Lucas played for the committee a 1940s Mills Brothers version of the 1875 tune, written by black minstrel James A. Bland. The lyrics include references to "old darky" and "massa."
Supporters of ``Carry Me Back'' denounced the bill as political correctness run amok.
``There's an orchestrated attack on the heritage of the people of Virginia and the South,'' said Tony Lundy of Danville, who identified himself as Virginia spokesman for the Coalition for American Heritage.
When pressed by reporters, he could not say who was behind such an attack or provide information about members of his organization. He said the coalition is based in Alexandria, but there is no telephone listing there for the organization. The State Corporation Commission had no record of a group by that name incorporating in Virginia.
Lundy, Virginia's sole Pat Buchanan delegate to the 1996 Republican National Convention, appeared before the committee wearing a necktie picturing Confederate soldiers holding their battle flag aloft. He defended ``Carry Me Back'' as ``a song of Christian love.''
In the song, a freed slave sings of his affection for Virginia and his desire to be reunited in heaven with his masters, ``massa and missis.'' Lundy said the message is that love transcends race and social status.
``I think it's a good example for our children,'' he said.
Lundy's organization ran a quarter-page ad in Monday's Richmond Times-Dispatch that said: ``We did not elect our legislature to knuckle under to politically correct liberals who rewrite history and tear down our heritage.''
The group also has been running ads on some Richmond radio stations, Lundy said. He said about $14,000 was earmarked for advertising, but he was unsure how much had been spent. A quarter-page ad in the Times-Dispatch costs about $1,800.
Critics of ``Carry Me Back'' have long said the lyrics are offensive, particularly to blacks, but efforts to repeal the song or sanitize its lyrics have failed several times in the assembly. The first effort to repeal the song was made by then-state Sen. Douglas Wilder in 1970. Wilder, the grandson of slaves, later became the nation's first black elected governor.
``The place for these lyrics is in history. Let's send them there,'' said Del. William Robinson, D-Norfolk and another longtime opponent of the song.
LENGTH: Medium: 72 lines KEYWORDS: GENERAL ASSEMBLY 1997by CNB