KATE SMITH, LIMITATIONS, FIRST STONES, AND NATIONAL IMPLICATIONS

RELIVING A HARMFUL PAST

Decisions by two venerable sports franchises cutting off their relationships with the work

of the late singer Kate Smith reminded us how much good a look in the mirror and back at history can do. Many humans engaged in past behaviors they’re not proud of and might not like being judged by today’s standards, as that incident demonstrated.

 

Recently, the Philadelphia Flyers of the National Hockey League and Major League

Baseball’s New York Yankees announced they’d no longer play Kate Smith’s recordings of God Bless America in connection with their games. The Flyers also removed a statue of Smith from the front of their arena.  Both team acted afer a fan discovered and advised them of racist songs  Smith recorded during

the 1930s. Since the September 11 attacks, the Yankees had played Smith’s God Bless America during the seventh inning stretch of games. The Flyers had a long time association with Smith, who died in 1986, and considered her a good luck charm during their championship run in 1974.  

 

The songs, Pickaninny Heaven and That’s Why Darkies Were Born, included lyrics like “someone had to pick cotton … That’s why darkies were born.” One said “Old Black Joe is their Santa Claus” when referring to African-American children. Another lyric mentioned “great big watermelons” and “mammy waiting.”

Limitations: how old is too old?

As lawyers, we understand the concept of limitations – the principle that the time for bringing complaints must end sometime. Nearly every criminal and civil statute includes a limitations period. After “X” number of years, one can’t be prosecuted or civilly pursued for certain offenses. 

Statutes of limitations recognize the

difficulty of pursuingstale claims. After some period of time, moving on better serves the interests of justice than pursuit of a claim, no matter how meritorious.  

The Smith case raises the question of cultural and political limitations. When is it just too late for penalizing someone or something for an old bad act?  Reports indicated Smith first recorded That’s Why Darkies Were Born in 1931 and Pickaninny Heaven in 1933. Certainly the world has changed since then and many asked if cutting Smith’s God Bless America from the programs at Flyers’s and Yankees’s games now served a useful purpose. 

Both teams, however, made a strong case for their actions. The Yankees emphasized how they “take social, racial, and cultural insensitivities very seriously.” The Flyers said the lyrics of the old songs include “sentiments that are incompatible with the values of our organization” and added that the team could not “stand idle while material from another era gets in the way of who we are today.” We understand these imperatives and recognize their powerful import.  

Our own skeletons

Smith’s family jumped to her defense, asserting that she wasn’t a racist and her past should not be held against her. Thinking about that, however, prompted some personal soul searching. What do we have in our past we aren’t proud of today?  What about our friends and neighbors? Our readers?

Two subjects immediately came to mind – gender and sexual orientation.  Without going into the details, each of us admit we have held attitudes, said things, and done things that disrespected women and gays and lesbians. We know we’d have some explaining to do if, for example, we ran for public office and these matters became public. People out there know about our bad acts, thoughts, and comments. In this age of social media, a few would come out of the woodwork.

Thinking about this topic raised the issue of

personal growth. Our bad acts, thoughts, and comments didn’t stem from bad motives; mostly they were about ignorance. We didn’t understand or appreciate people different from us and we labored under old, accepted conventions of thought.  We never considered the hurt we could cause. We grew out of these attitudes and, even if we aren’t perfect now, we have a much better sense of how our behavior affects others.

Having grown up in, and gone to school in, the second half of the 20th century, all of us observed and studied social movements -- the civil rights movement, the women’s movement, the gay rights movement. They all emphasized changing minds and hearts – persuading people they should see the world differently.  Sometimes they based their appeal on moral imperatives and sometimes it rested on enlightened self-interest. Changing attitudes toward a particular group might make your own life better.

No matter the motive to which people respond, social movements seek changes in attitudes. The other side of that coin, however, carries a warning. If people grow and change as a movement seeks, some understanding of and toleration for prior attitudes and behavior should come with the territory.

We’d guess almost everyone in America has done something, thought something, or said something they’d like having back because it was ethnically, racially, sexually, or otherwise insensitive. 

Does this mean that Kate Smith should be given a pass? Rob suggests perhaps so.  He answers this through the eyes of faith, saying, “The case of Kate Smith and the pro sports franchises reminds me of the wisdom in John 8:7: ‘Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.’”  

Henrys agrees the teams got it right, but declines going as far as Woodson.

Woodson examines the question though the eyes of history and politics. “Because of the very harmful nature of Kate Smith’s words and the widespread publication of them, I do not think there is a moral equivalency between what a private citizen says or does in private conversations as compared to public utterances of a public figure such as Kate Smith. 

“The Jewish experience in Germany provides a better answer. Ironically during the same time that Kate Smith was bellowing her lyrics about African Americans, singers in Germany were in 1934 bellowing similarly offensive rhetoric about the Jews. ‘Put the Jews up against the wall … throw the Jewish gang out of the German fatherland, send them to Palestine, once there – cut their throats so that they will never come back.’ Not only have the writers of such lyrics been banished in current day Germany, it is now a

crime to publically sing a song identified with Nazi Germany.  The First Amendment

prevents us from punishing anyone in America for singing songs such as the ones Kate Smith made popular; but the Flyers and Yankees acted appropriately in taking down the statue and not honoring her with the use of her voice at their sporting events.” 

Like the Jew, African Americans want never to forget history less it repeats itself,” Woodson says.