What's Love Got to Do with It?": A Roundtable on the Cultural Legacy of Eric W. Lott's Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class on Its Thirtieth Anniversary

What's Love Got to Do with It?"A Roundtable on the Cultural Legacy of Eric W. Lott's Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class on Its Thirtieth Anniversary Rhae Lynn Barnes (bio), Daphne A. Brooks (bio), Elizabeth Maddock Dillon (bio), Scott Gac (bio), Matthew Frye Jacobson (bio), Josephine Lee (bio), and David R. Roediger (bio) In the heart of Woodstock, New York, amid the creative ferment of the 1960s, two collaborators—drummer and vocalist Levon Helm and singer Robbie Robertson of the acclaimed group The Band—embarked on a journey into the tumultuous annals of the American Civil War. Their quest for knowledge about the most cataclysmic event in American history led them to the local library, where they delved into the life and legacy of Confederate general Robert E. Lee for nearly eight months. From their deep dive, one of rock 'n' roll's most enduring antiwar anthems emerged using the limited history books they could access in 1968: "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down." The song is set in 1865 and paints a poignant portrait of a war-ravaged Tennessean. Its narrator is an impoverished white man grappling with the fall of the Confederacy. The narrator recalls the destruction of Southern rail lines, the specter of mass hunger, and the agonizing loss of his eighteen-year-old brother, a casualty of the conflict he says came at the hands of a "Yankee." Despite its widespread acclaim and many covers, "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" has long been controversial. Journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates aptly described it as "another story about the blues of Pharaoh," in the Atlantic. Rock scholar Jack Hamilton (mentored by Lott) argues in Slate that the overwhelming shadow of the Lost Cause narrative obscures its true meaning. Hamilton offers a more nuanced interpretation, placing the song within the context of class-based Vietnam War protest music that emerged in post-Tet [End Page 11] Offensive 1969 America, highlighting the line "and the bells were ringing the night they drove old Dixie down," suggesting celebration over the Confederacy's demise or, at the very least, the symbolic end of America's most violent chapter. Both interpretations can be valid simultaneously. The enduring appeal of "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" lies in its ability to capture the complexities of war, the family and human dramas, and its long aftermath, offering multiple perspectives on a profoundly divisive chapter in American history. The song's lyrics, imbued with both sorrow and a glimmer of hope, resonate with listeners across generations as a gateway into the complex history of American culture from the Civil War. It is also a personification of rock 'n' roll's deep relationship with mass enslavement in the South and black-face minstrelsy born of antebellum America in the urban North. Bob Dylan's lead guitarist for much of the 1960s, Robbie Robertson, spent his summers on the Six Nations Reservation, in Ontario, Canada, learning guitar from First Nation musicians. His mother was of Mohawk descent, and this exposure to Indigenous culture profoundly influenced his musical sensibility. Levon Helm, raised on an Arkansas cotton farm by music-loving parents, was deeply immersed in the rich musical traditions of the South. Bob Dylan, born Robert Allen Zimmerman to Jewish parents, grew up in Hibbing, Minnesota. Despite their diverse backgrounds, they all listened to the radio, which exposed all three musicians to American folkways, blues, country, and rock. They also all encountered blackface minstrelsy in their youth, from amateur shows at county fairs perpetuated by white men in blackface to professional traveling Black troupes like F. S. Wolcott's Original Rabbit's Foot Minstrels, leaving indelible marks on their cultural understanding of American music, popular culture, and racial constructs coming out of the Civil War and its public memory. Blackface minstrelsy, with its grotesque caricatures and stereotypical portrayals of Black Americans, exerted a significant influence on their musical development. The long shadow of minstrelsy crops up throughout The Band's catalog. By the 1960s, "Dixie" had become synonymous with the American South, but its roots lay in the blackface minstrel shows of the North. Daniel Decatur Emmett, a founding...