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Up Beat Down South: "The Death of Emma Hartsell"

Up Beat Down South: "The Death of Emma Hartsell" Up Beat Down South "The Death of Emma Hartsell" "The Death of Emma Hartsell" B Y B RU C E E . BA K E R In the mid-1960s, J. E. Mainer became the first person to record "The Death of Emma Hartsell," and in 1967 he published a songbook that included "Song of Emma Hartsell," which he claimed to have written. J. E. Mainer with his Mountaineers, courtesy of the Southern Folklife Collection, Wilson Library, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. "In eighteen-hundred and ninety-eight," as the song tells us, "Sweet Emma met with an awful fate." Sweet Emma was Emma Hartsell, the twelve-year-old daughter of a farmer in Cabarrus County, North Carolina, and the awful fate she met was murder. Just as awful, though, was the fate met by Tom Johnson and Joe Kizer a few hours later, hanged from a dogwood tree by a mob just outside of the town of Concord. Johnson and Kizer were black, Hartsell was white, and " The Death of Emma Hartsell" is a ballad that reminded everyone who heard it, mostly white folks, of just what that meant in 1898 in North Carolina. Lots of North Carolinians http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Southern Cultures University of North Carolina Press

Up Beat Down South: "The Death of Emma Hartsell"

Baker, Bruce E.
Southern Cultures , Volume 9 (1) – Mar 31, 2003
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Publisher
University of North Carolina Press
Copyright
Copyright © 2003 Center for the Study of the American South.
ISSN
1534-1488
Publisher site
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Abstract

Up Beat Down South "The Death of Emma Hartsell" "The Death of Emma Hartsell" B Y B RU C E E . BA K E R In the mid-1960s, J. E. Mainer became the first person to record "The Death of Emma Hartsell," and in 1967 he published a songbook that included "Song of Emma Hartsell," which he claimed to have written. J. E. Mainer with his Mountaineers, courtesy of the Southern Folklife Collection, Wilson Library, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. "In eighteen-hundred and ninety-eight," as the song tells us, "Sweet Emma met with an awful fate." Sweet Emma was Emma Hartsell, the twelve-year-old daughter of a farmer in Cabarrus County, North Carolina, and the awful fate she met was murder. Just as awful, though, was the fate met by Tom Johnson and Joe Kizer a few hours later, hanged from a dogwood tree by a mob just outside of the town of Concord. Johnson and Kizer were black, Hartsell was white, and " The Death of Emma Hartsell" is a ballad that reminded everyone who heard it, mostly white folks, of just what that meant in 1898 in North Carolina. Lots of North Carolinians

Journal

Southern Cultures – University of North Carolina Press

Published: Mar 31, 2003

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