Dixie Disappearance
( Christine De Carvalho )
Listener-supported WNYC Studios.
Jad Abumrad:
This is Dolly Parton's America. I'm Jad Abumrad. We are at the eighth of nine journeys into the Dollyverse. This one, well, if our sort of through-line idea for the series is that Dolly is a kind of great unifier, this is where things get a little hard.
Nadine Hubbs:
Maybe here, if we're talking about America from a Dolly's-eye view, we get the full-on quivering mass of irreconcilable contradictions.
Jad Abumrad:
That's Professor Nadine Hubbs again, University of Michigan, Jolene scholar.
Nadine Hubbs:
Dolly is this singular figure in American culture who can pull off contradictions that nobody else could ever pull off. The question is, is this the place where finally Dolly met her match? Dolly's Waterloo.
Jad Abumrad:
Maybe Waterloo is putting it a little too dramatically, considering that this, that she's talking about, involves racing pigs. What Nadine is referring to is a place. A place of business. As you drive into Dollywood, which Shima and I did with another Dolly-ologist, Allie Tiki.
Jad Abumrad:
It's starting to get mountainous.
Jad Abumrad:
For a while, it's all Smoky Mountains, and then you pull into Pigeon Forge.
Jad Abumrad:
Wow. This is a little bit, like, starting to remind me of Vegas.
Shima Oliaee:
It's like the Vegas trip. I didn't expect that.
Allie Tiki:
Hillbilly Vegas.
Jad Abumrad:
That's Allie. When you roll into Pigeon Forge, you drive along this mile of nightclubs and dinner theaters. It's very sparkly, very neon.
Jad Abumrad:
You have a giant skyscraper and Godzilla hanging off of it.
Allie Tiki:
There's John Wayne over there and Elvis.
Shima Oliaee:
And Charlie Chaplin?
Allie Tiki:
Yeah, and you'll notice we'll be on Dolly Parton Parkway.
Jad Abumrad:
Dolly's name is emblazoned on business after business, and about half way down the strip, you arrive at a big red building that looks a little bit like a barn that is the most-visited dinner theater in America and has become the center of a bit of a quarrel.
Allie Tiki:
So there's the Stampede.
Speaker 6:
Dolly Parton's Dixie Stampede.
Jad Abumrad:
It's called the Dixie Stampede.
Dolly Parton:
Hey, y'all. Come see my Dixie Stampede, the world's most visited dinner attraction. Don't miss it.
Speaker 6:
Call or go online for reservations.
Jad Abumrad:
Actually, it's not called that anymore. That's sort of the crux of the drama.
Shima Oliaee:
Did you lock the car? You locked the car, right?
Jad Abumrad:
I'm not sure.
Shima Oliaee:
I think it's fine.
Jad Abumrad:
Shima and I visited on one of our trips to Dollywood. Now you're not allowed to record inside.
Shima Oliaee:
But people have.
Jad Abumrad:
Producer Shima Oliaee. Hey. There are literally hundreds of recordings on YouTube, so we're going to use a few of those just to give you a sense of how it goes.
Shima Oliaee:
Okay. Okay, so basically-
Speaker 7:
Ladies and gentleman, can I have your attention please.
Shima Oliaee:
You walk into the arena, it's huge. I wouldn't say it's a football field. I would say it's like an Olympic sized pool, but like with arena seats all around-
Jad Abumrad:
It's like going to the rodeo. Basically.
Shima Oliaee:
It's like going to the rodeo. It's like a ton of dirt in the center of this massive oval.
Jad Abumrad:
How many seats was it again?
Shima Oliaee:
It was 1000.
Speaker 7:
Welcome to Dolly Parton's Stampede.
Shima Oliaee:
And the whole conceit of this situation besides eating a tremendous amount of food, I mean a full chicken and a pork loin and some soup that has a lot of cream in it and a biscuit.
Jad Abumrad:
It was a lot of food.
Shima Oliaee:
Besides that-
Speaker 7:
Howdy folks, good evening ladies and gentleman.
Shima Oliaee:
You quickly find out you are in a competition, a friendly competition between neighbors.
Speaker 7:
All you fine folks sitting over here tonight are cheering for the North.
Shima Oliaee:
The whole arena is split in half. On one side you've got the North and on the other side-
Speaker 7:
The south.
Shima Oliaee:
The South. And the announcer who rides in on this horse, on his steed-
Speaker 7:
Did you hear what they just called you?
Shima Oliaee:
He encourages each side to jeer at the other.
Speaker 7:
That sounds like fighting words to me now, doesn't it to you?
Shima Oliaee:
He asks you to kind of jeer at them and then he goes to the South side and he tells the South side.
Speaker 7:
I think you know who they are, those northerners to you southerners ain't nothing but a bunch of foul-smelling gold digging, pig slobbing, bird drop couldn't punch their way out of a wet paper bag. Ain't that right South?
Shima Oliaee:
And then all of a sudden,
Speaker 7:
And here come the riders.
Shima Oliaee:
Twelve riders on horseback storm into the arena, half of them wearing red and half of them wearing blue.
Jad Abumrad:
Red is South, blue is North.
Shima Oliaee:
They start zipping around the ring, they look gorgeous, they're waving, everyone starts cheering. The riders are jumping up on top of their horse, standing, riding them, jumping off, flipping down into the sand, and then jumping back onto the horse. It was really impressive. And then-
Speaker 7:
Are you ready South?
Shima Oliaee:
The teams start to compete.
Speaker 7:
Fire.
Shima Oliaee:
They do a bunch of riding competitions.
Speaker 7:
And they cowboy joust is underway.
Shima Oliaee:
A cowboy joust, kids from each side, they chase chickens. At one point-
Speaker 7:
Ready, set, go.
Shima Oliaee:
The pigs come out, little piglets with capes race across the arena. Ours were quite mighty, and then you realize you're eating pork.
Jad Abumrad:
And then let me just talk to the weirdness of it all like you are. You are watching this. You are pounding lemonade. They're serving you lemonade in these giant gallon-size cups shaped like boots and you're drinking gallons of lemonade, the sugar is hitting your bloodstream and you're flying. But in the back of your mind, you're having these thoughts like civil war is a friendly rival. Was the civil war friendly?
Shima Oliaee:
Wasn't it really about slavery?
Patricia Davis:
Well, yes, but of course bringing up slavery would be a downer. It's not going to bring in the money.
Jad Abumrad:
This is Patricia Davis cultural studies professor at Northeastern University. She grew up in the South, writes a lot about Southern identity. She calls places like the Dixie Stampede, the tourist imaginary.
Patricia Davis:
You know, in terms of a civil war, the tourist imaginary would be the antebellum South the huge plantation houses, the flowery bells, the noble gentlemen and everybody's happy. There is no slavery. There is no discussion of exactly what exploitation led to that grandeur, it's just the grandeur that's displayed.
Jad Abumrad:
Up until a few years ago, the stampede hit all of those points. You had, at least at one location, a giant plantation backdrop, Southern Belles dancing and big skirts. Riders for the South would come out in uniforms that were Confederate gray, riders for the North would be in Union blue. And there were even signs over the bathrooms that said, Northerners only, southerners only. The show we saw, those notes were a little more muted, but troubling thoughts would enter the mind. But anytime they did, boom, explosion.
Helen Morales:
It's brilliant theater.
Shima Oliaee:
This is classics professor Helen Morales. She wrote about the finale of the Dixie stampede in her book, Pilgrimage to Dollywood.
Helen Morales:
There was a collective gasp at the beauty of the spectacle. Before the audience could reflect upon the results of their civil conflict-
Speaker 7:
We are the United States of America.
Dolly Parton:
I am red, white and blue-
Helen Morales:
The grand finale erupted in a crescendo of patriotism. Horses cantered in formation with their riders wearing lighted costumes, red, white and blue and waving the American flag.
Speaker 7:
Are you proud to be an American?
Helen Morales:
Are you proud to be an American? Boomed the MC, a supersized image of a resplendent red, white and blue Dolly Parton that fills the entire screen at the end of the stadium responded, no North, no South, no East, no West.
Dolly Parton:
America, America God sheds his-
Helen Morales:
But one United States of America, freedom and justice for all. Dolly is here. Dolly is America.
Speaker 7:
Proud to be an American.
Helen Morales:
The crowd erupts, screaming, clapping and stamping. It was such an overwhelming experience that as soon as I wanted, as soon as my critical self kicked in and I thought, hang on, that's an appalling way to write history. There'd be a flame thrower or something to distract. It's hard to stay in one place. Ironic, serious, critical. It's difficult for me to be critical of Dolly Parton, I feel like I'm betraying myself.
Shima Oliaee:
Helen, if you recall from the first episode, is a huge Dolly fan.
Helen Morales:
I mean her song Light of a Clear Blue Morning has really helped me out of many a blue period.
Jad Abumrad:
She says while researching her book, this was the one place in the Dollyverse that didn't quite land right for her.
Shima Oliaee:
And she realized there's a real big divide between the Dolly she grew up with the woman sassing back to her boss and the movie Nine to Five.
Helen Morales:
You know, wit and verve, staunch supporter of LGBTQ.
Shima Oliaee:
And this other idea of Dolly that she encountered in the South and especially at the stampede.
Dolly Parton:
It's a more conservative version I think.
Jad Abumrad:
You know, as Nadine Hubbs said at the beginning, Dolly can pull off contradictions that no one else can pull off. But then, August 12th, 2017.
Speaker 8:
You're looking at live pictures out of Charlottesville, Virginia. This is where violent clashes have broken out between white nationalists and counter protests there.
Jad Abumrad:
As you may remember in Charlottesville, there had been a movement to take down two Confederate statues and people who didn't want that to happen-
Speaker 8:
Groups including the KU Klux Klan and Neo Nazi.
Jad Abumrad:
Gathered to defend the statue. Things turned violent almost immediately.
Speaker 9:
One person is dead and 19 injured after a speeding vehicle drove into a group of protesters marching peacefully through downtown Charlotte.
Jad Abumrad:
And suddenly this conversation, which had been bubbling for a while, burst out onto the national stage. Questions about who gets to write the history that we take as fact, who gets to be honored.
Speaker 10:
Demonstrators took the debate over Confederate monuments to the streets of Richmond, Virginia, today.
Speaker 11:
Baltimore's mayor ordered the city's four Confederate monuments removed.
Jad Abumrad:
And in the midst of all of this rethinking and taking down of monuments...Is this Aisha?
Aisha Harris:
Yes, this is Aisha.
Jad Abumrad:
A woman named Aisha Harris, a New York based writer who worked at Slate at the time. She was on Slack. This is in the days after Charlottesville and one of her colleagues messaged saying, Hey, have you heard about this thing that Dolly Parton does down in Pigeon Forge?
Aisha Harris:
Just kind of escalated from there. It was like, Holy crap, why did I not know this? I love Dolly Parton, what?
Jad Abumrad:
She decides to fly from New York to Pigeon Forge and do what is essentially sort of a theater review of the Dixie Stampede. The tone was really funny, but also quite critical. Why are there signs over the bathroom saying Northern and Southerners only, why is there zero mention of slavery? I was curious about the backlash, like did you, what was the result when you wrote the article?
Aisha Harris:
It's probably actually the most backlash I've had for peace since I wrote about Santa Claus. I don't know if you recall that?
Jad Abumrad:
Oh, that was you? Oh my God.
Aisha Harris:
Yeah, that was me.
Jad Abumrad:
What she's referring to there is an article that she wrote in December of 2013 that argued that maybe it's time we stop representing Santa Claus as an old white man. How about let's make sene a penguin because a penguin is a bird that has no race, but if you want to map race onto it, it's black and white. She says a lot of people didn't like that suggestion, but when it came to her article about the Stampede, they really didn't like it.
Aisha Harris:
You deserve to burn and die in hell or like there was one, I can't remember exactly what it said, but it's sort of implied something about my family and I was like, okay, this is getting a little weird. One of the things that people kept saying was, and this is like via tweets and emails, Dolly Parton has done more for other people than you could ever imagine you could do. She's donated money to this cause, this cause, blah blah blah, she's a philanthropist. And the thing about it is that I wrote the piece as a Dolly fan.
Jad Abumrad:
Did you grow up with their music?
Aisha Harris:
I didn't grow up with her music, but then you know, I watched Nine to Five for the first time, I read about her and she's such a smart business woman. I think that's something to celebrate and to kind of look up to.
Jad Abumrad:
Aisha she says that she just wanted to point out that even amazing people have blind spots.
Aisha Harris:
She was born not that long after Gone with the Wind came out, so I can understand why that sort of love of this fake Southern identity. I can see how that could creep its way into her work. But it's 2017 now and it baffles me that 30 years later this show still exists.
Pete Owens:
Well, I mean it's something that we're talking about for a number of years.
Shima Oliaee:
This is Pete Owens.
Pete Owens:
I'm the vice president of marketing and public relations for Dollywood.
Jad Abumrad:
Before we just start just to sort of like, cause we're on the radio, there's a lot of sound. It's good sound. I like the sound nice ambiance. Where are we?
Pete Owens:
We're sitting in the lower lobby of Dollywood's DreamMore Resort and Spa adjacent to the Dollywood theme park.
Shima Oliaee:
According to Pete, they had already been talking about making some changes even before Aisha's article came out.
Pete Owens:
So we started to talk about it a couple of years ago.
Jad Abumrad:
You had heard criticisms, I imagine.
Pete Owens:
Not as much as you would think, honestly. I mean, I think most people got the fact that it's a good nature competition between one side of the arena and the other side of the arena.
Jad Abumrad:
What kind of conversations where you having like leading up to the thing, what were some of those discussions about?
Pete Owens:
Well, I mean I think is, does that really describe what it is we're doing now? I mean you guys have seen the show. The discussions were, does that really describe us?
Pete Owens:
Moving forward, is this really who we are? Everywhere is becoming more diverse and we want to be, as Dolly is, as inclusive as we possibly can.
Shima Oliaee:
So Pete says, after the article landed, the team huddled together with Dolly-
Jad Abumrad:
And we'll hear from her in a second.
Shima Oliaee:
And they decided to make some changes. First they decided to remove all the plantation imagery and any overt references to the Civil War. So for instance, the uniforms changed colors, there was no longer gray and blue. The Northerners were given red and the Southerners were given blue.
Jad Abumrad:
They got rid of those signs on the bathroom. They sort of threw out a few of the traditional music numbers, wrote some new tunes.
Shima Oliaee:
And most importantly.
Pete Owens:
We made the decision to just remove Dixie from the name.
Speaker 12:
Parton announced the show is dropping the word Dixie from its name.
Speaker 13:
Dolly Parton's Dixie Stampede, got rid of the Dixie and is now Dolly Parton's Stampede.
Pete Owens:
Anything that had a logo on it or a reference on it to the name will change.
Speaker 14:
The Dixie stampede sign still stands here in Pigeon Forge, but take a look over this way. Something looks different.
Shima Oliaee:
In one news report you can see giant cranes removing the word Dixie off the front of the building.
Speaker 14:
Crews had been out here removing the letters on the building and anything else that has the word Dixie on it.
Aisha Harris:
I'm happy that like they did that.
Jad Abumrad:
That's Aisha Harris again, this time in the studio.
Aisha Harris:
You know, I. like to imagine that maybe she had a change of heart and if that's the case then I appreciate her even more.
Jad Abumrad:
But as you can imagine, not everybody felt that way.
Speaker 15:
We're bringing people flag signs. We will have people out here.
Jad Abumrad:
Coming up, we follow the story through a few more twists and turns and Dolly herself will weigh in. Dolly Parton's America will continue in a moment.
Jad Abumrad:
This is Dolly Parton's America, Jad-
Shima Oliaee:
Shima.
Jad Abumrad:
Picking back up with the story, Dolly and her team announced they're changing the name of the Stampede almost immediately.
Speaker 16:
You can't rewrite history just by taking the name off of it.
Speaker 17:
The decision to take the Dixie out of the attraction that had been called Dixie Stampede rubs a lot of people the wrong way.
Speaker 18:
Dixie is part of my heritage.
Speaker 19:
Protestors voice their concerns outside what is now called Dolly Parton's Stampede.
Jad Abumrad:
Basically what happened is, if you look at a lot of the different counter protests that were happening in response to statutes being removed across the country, you see a lot of the same faces, the same groups. They're sort of on a circuit going from place to place and when the name change was announced, some of those same protesters-
Speaker 20:
Nah bro, y'all have bowed down to PC bull crap.
Jad Abumrad:
They diverted their travel plans, came to Pigeon Forge-
Speaker 21:
we came too far to be knocked back down into this.
Jad Abumrad:
Did their thing.
Speaker 22:
Many of the people there say the term Dixie refers to the South and its fight in the Civil War.
Jad Abumrad:
And all of a sudden-
Speaker 23:
You are attempting to rewrite history.
Speaker 24:
No we are not trying to rewrite history.
Speaker 23:
Dolly's now de-Dixied Stampede was all wrapped up in that larger drama. Now this was a very much a national conversation with a lot of different groups on the outside weighing in. We were sort of curious to know just what do people in the area think about this?
Shima Oliaee:
But before we could even have that thought or ask that question, we got a call.
Speaker 25:
I believe in the United States of America as a government of the people, by the people, for the people who's just powers are derived from the consent of the government.
Jad Abumrad:
We got a call from a woman-
Evelyn Miller:
I'm Evelyn Miller.
Jad Abumrad:
Who told us that she was related to Dolly.
Evelyn Miller:
She's my fourth cousin.
Jad Abumrad:
Can you, can you kind of step through this?
Shima Oliaee:
Evelyn happens to be a Regent at the Andrew Vogel chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution.
Evelyn Miller:
I've been in the DAR probably 12 years, but I stepped out for a while because-
Shima Oliaee:
So the DAR as she calls it, is a group whose members have to trace back their lineage to someone who either supported or fought in the American Revolutionary War. Back in 1775, six, seven. After one of their monthly meetings, Evelyn met with Jad and me and she immediately whipped out her phone.
Evelyn Miller:
Okay, now here we go down.
Shima Oliaee:
And opened this genealogy app.
Jad Abumrad:
Oh wait, here we go.
Evelyn Miller:
Okay. See it says your fourth cousin.
Jad Abumrad:
It says Dolly Parton is possibly your fourth cousin. Okay.
Evelyn Miller:
Okay. Now Katherine Powell, who married the -
Jad Abumrad:
So Catherine Powell.
Evelyn Miller:
Which makes us not removed at all. Catherine Powell is Dolly's fourth-great grandmother, and-
Jad Abumrad:
She tried to walk me through the sequence of connections, but it felt like trigonometry.
Evelyn Miller:
They had Betsy Elizabeth.
Shima Oliaee:
And by the way-
Jad Abumrad:
Could you, could you repeat that?
Shima Oliaee:
Evelyn was not the only one there claiming a Dolly link. We met another guy named Art.
Art:
Now two of these daughters married two of the - in Gatlinburg and they had lots of children.
Shima Oliaee:
Who also claimed that he was Dolly's fourth cousin.
Speaker 26:
My granddaughter is friends with Dolly's great niece and they have sleepovers.
Jad Abumrad:
It seems like everybody in this region has a connection to Dolly or says they do.
Speaker 26:
Well, yes, so it would seem.
Jad Abumrad:
In any case we had chicken and brownies. We watched the presentation about the history of Scotland and since these are people who obsess about history and lineage, after lunch, we sort of turned the conversation to the subject of the Stampede.
Evelyn Miller:
I think that she should have changed the name.
Shima Oliaee:
None of you think she should have changed the name?
Speaker 26:
And my family was from the union side.
Shima Oliaee:
And you were from the union side?
Speaker 26:
So lovely. They weren't Confederates. East Tennessee was mostly union.
Jad Abumrad:
One of the interesting wrinkles about having this debate in East Tennessee is that this part of Tennessee was initially pro union during the civil war. They were annexed by the Confederacy unwillingly, so there's a very independent, don't tell me whose team I'm on, I'm on my own team, don't confuse me with the rest of the South or anyone else kind of vibe that you get when you talk to people here. And It's partly for that reason that most of the people at the table with us, the 10 or so people we were talking to-
Speaker 27:
That flag you're talking about, Dixie stampede's flag, the statues and everything else.
Jad Abumrad:
They found the whole idea that you would erase a word to make someone else, somewhere else feel better, kind of irritating.
Speaker 27:
They were okay for 150 years and now all of a sudden they're no good? That doesn't make any sense to me at all. I think it's people.
Speaker 28:
Are you willing to fight in a civil war for it? The right to-
Speaker 27:
Protect my country? Yes, my ancestors did it. I guess I have to do it too if it came to that.
Jad Abumrad:
But not everybody felt that way.
Evelyn Miller:
What's coming to my mind in this discussion is when you know better, you're supposed to do better. Times were different back then. Times are changing. Dolly felt that she needed to change the name.
Speaker 27:
But you know all these things were okay for 150 years and how far are you going to go? That's pew and the church in Alexandria, that was Washington's Pew.
Speaker 29:
A historic Virginia Church will remove a Memorial plaque honoring America's first president.
Speaker 28:
They took his name off, Washington and Jefferson are on Mount Rushmore. They owned slaves. Should we take them down?
Art:
Are we going change history, are we going to tear out those statues down? If we tear the statutes down, then we need to burn all the history books.
Jad Abumrad:
But the critics I think would agree with you that the reason they wanted her to change it is that the actual story being told in it was itself changing history and or not acknowledging history.
Art:
We have to acknowledge history. We have to acknowledge where we've been.
Jad Abumrad:
Here, the conversation started to feel a bit familiar and sort of like one of those Mobius strips, those weird shapes that kind of, you go in and out and in and out and around and you're never quite sure which side of the shape you're on. One person would say, we shouldn't erase history-
Shima Oliaee:
And then someone else would jump in and say, that's not what's happening here. These statues and monuments and memorials are all put up long after the civil war was over. Mostly during the Jim Crow era. If anything, these things themselves are an attempt to rewrite history.
Jad Abumrad:
Which seems to have worked, by the way, if you look at surveys that have been done on this-
Speaker 30:
When people were asked what do they think the main cause of the Civil War is? 48% said mainly about state's rights. Only 38% said mainly about slavery.
Jad Abumrad:
I mean it's just a fact. The Civil War was fought to end slavery. Clearly we have a deep problem in this country. If a majority of Americans don't think that. And you could argue that these monuments and even things like the Dixie stampede, which staged the Civil War as kind of like a pillow fight,
Patricia Davis:
There's a danger to it and you're teaching kids a particular sanitized version of history.
Shima Oliaee:
That was scholar Patricia Davis again, by the way.
Patricia Davis:
And if you grew up with the Dolly Parton version of it, it would be very difficult to understand the divides that we have now.
Jad Abumrad:
Okay. So question number eight. In our first interview we talked really briefly about the situation with the Stampede. So now that we're sort of looking back on it, can you explain your thinking behind changing the name and like what do you feel like you learned from that experience?
Dolly Parton:
Well, there's several reasons that we changed the name or a few reasons. Maybe I should say a couple of reasons. One being that out of ignorance, people do things you don't know. A lot of my things that I do wrong, just out of pure ignorance really, because you grow up a certain way and you don't know. The Dixie, we always thought way down in the land of Dixie, it's like a Dixieland or Dixieland music, Dixie. You know, I just thought of Dixie as a part of the, part of America. And it was offensive cause like I say out of ignorance, you don't know that you're hurting people, never thought about it being, about slavery or any of that. But when it was brought to our attention, and some woman wrote about it and I thought, well Lord have mercy, I would never want to hurt anybody for any reason. And being a business woman, we didn't really have that many people say anything about it.
Dolly Parton:
But I thought, Lord, if I've offended one person as a business woman, I don't want to do that. So we completely cleared all that out and started over that. But we, I just wanted to fix it cause I don't want to ever hurt or offend anyone. And so I did it as a good faith effort to show that it was never meant to cause anyone any pain.
Jad Abumrad:
Sitting there, I thought back to our conversation with Aisha Harris who had been wondering-
Shima Oliaee:
Honestly I'm just curious as to like does she really, did she understand where I was coming from?
Jad Abumrad:
So it sounds like you hear, you heard the criticism.
Dolly Parton:
I hear any criticism. I hear it cause if it's hurt somebody, I'm certainly not about that. But then the name change we are planning to be, we do have other Dixie, we have other stampedes now they're just calling it Dolly's Stampede or just the Stampede. But we're actually going to be all over, possibly all over the world with that. So it just made more sense cause we have those beautiful horses just to have the word Stampede and it wasn't like a location. So it really, in my mind it was a business choice as well.
Jad Abumrad:
She said that one of the main reasons for the change, and this I didn't see coming, was that they want to expand.
Pete Owens:
We were looking at expansion in a couple of other areas. One on the West coast, one in Southwest.
Jad Abumrad:
I talked briefly with Pete about this too. He says, one of the things that happened is they started to see research that showed that nationally, internationally, the awareness of Dixie, Dixie's brand awareness if you will, is shrinking rapidly.
Pete Owens:
So in order to be able to continue to expand our business, that's why the decision was made.
Jad Abumrad:
Okay, so going back to Dolly, sitting with her, talking about this, that moment was really interesting for me. Like because when she said I don't want to hurt people, I thought, yes, I get it. Everything I have known of her in the last two years of interviewing her tells me that that is true. This is not somebody who ever wants to hurt somebody. All the molecules of her being seem to be aligned in that direction. And I think that's why people are called to her.
Jad Abumrad:
But there's also that other aspect of Dolly, which is a laser focused pragmatic business person and both of those things were there so powerfully in that one moment and I was like, wow, I'm not used to seeing these two things in the same person in this way. I don't think personally that you can have a game about the Civil War without talking about all of it. All the ugly parts too, because we're still fighting it on so many levels. But I trust that if people say they are hurt, she will listen and she will maybe change it again. I don't know.
Shima Oliaee:
You know, speaking of which, you know what's funny is a couple of days ago I called up Pete again, I didn't record this call because it was just a fact check and I just asked, have you guys discussed or just thought about just removing North and South. Just taking out the thorns of this thing, keep the competition, the horses, the beautiful people and the pigs. We love the pigs, but just take out North and South, protect themselves, protect the future. It would help everything. And he said, no, but then I asked him, are the just to check, are the costumes still red and blue? And he said, actually they've changed. I said, they changed again? And he said, yeah, they're red and green. I was like, red and green. Why are they red in green? And he said Shima, Christmas North pole versus South pole.
Jad Abumrad:
That's what they're doing now.
Shima Oliaee:
Yep.
Speaker 31:
Mother, mother, everybody's starving. Mother, mother let's eat.
Speaker 32:
Hold your horses, got a million courses and I'm fixing a treat.
Speaker 31:
Jeremiah, go and help your mother, Jane and Jonah, you too. Hezekiah, go and get your brother then find Jamie and Sue. Mother, mother, everybody's happy. Got a reason to smile.
Speaker 32:
Cause you know that I'm about to serve a Christmas dinner country style. Christmas dinner country style.
Jad Abumrad:
Is it? Is it true that you are right now having a Christmas party but you stepped out of your own Christmas party to sit in a car and take our call?
Jeremy Faison:
Yeah, it's fun. Listen, I love, I love what you are doing and to me it would be amazing if we could, if we could get the bus to Dolly Parton up there. So-
Jad Abumrad:
Just to radically shift the mood one more time, literally minutes, okay, maybe not minutes, but less than a day before our deadline, we became aware of a situation developing in my home state of Tennessee involving a Republican state representative.
Jeremy Faison:
So my name is Jeremy Faison. I'm the Tennessee state representative for the 11th house district that's Cocke, Greene and Jefferson County.
Jad Abumrad:
The reason we called representative Faison, dragged him out of his own party that he was having at his house in the Smokies is because of a Dolly related statement he made a couple of days ago that went a little viral. To set it up in Tennessee, each year the governor must, by law, sign a proclamation honoring six notable figures. Three of them happened to be Confederate generals, Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis and a guy named Nathan Bedford Forrest.
Jeremy Faison:
Nathan Bedford Forrest is a former Confederate general. He was also heavily involved with the KKK.
Jad Abumrad:
He is widely believed to be the first grand wizard of the KKK and not only does he have his own proclamation day every year, but his bronze bust is one of eight busts placed in the hallowed alcoves of the Tennessee state legislature.
Jeremy Faison:
He was never put in our Capitol until 1978. We put him there after Jim Crow, and in 1980 the grand wizard of the KKK came to our Capitol and had a press conference in front of the bust of Nathan Bedford Forrest. Over my years in Nashville, I've seen every year, my fellow friends and legislators that are African American, it brings an enormous amount of grief to them.
Jad Abumrad:
It's been a controversy for a while, but for years he says he was the guy who would say-
Jeremy Faison:
Gus, how about let's just preserve history, some of our history is, ugly. He met Jesus before he died and got right and I was very, I defended him.
Jad Abumrad:
And then he says one day, about two years ago-
Jeremy Faison:
One of my friends from Memphis is a legislator, he came up to me and said, have you ever actually read any of the writings and newspaper clippings from that time? And as be honest, I never had, and he brought them to my office and as I read them, it tore me up.
Jad Abumrad:
And what did you read?
Jeremy Faison:
Well, the first thing I read was the Fort Pillow Massacre.
Jad Abumrad:
And what is that?
Jeremy Faison:
Well, that's where a group of union soldiers, who the majority were African American men, surrendered in peace and they basically put them in a log cabin and set it on fire.
Jad Abumrad:
Oh my God.
Jeremy Faison:
It was pretty, it was pretty - it was, it was horrible. He helped in the formation of the KKK. I was grieved. I have a biracial son. And I was like, man, that's, that's pretty bad. And then I'm thinking, well, we have eight alcoves, that's the most prestigious spot in all of Tennessee to honor Tennessee. And I have a biracial son and I have a daughter. And I started thinking to myself, wait a minute, if we're going to preserve history, why aren't we preserving all of history?
Jeremy Faison:
Why is there seven white guys and only one African American? That's not representative of who we are in Tennessee. We're a very loving and diverse state. We're a bigger state than that. Let's at the minimum rotate these busts out of here and bring more busts in. And at one time I actually told a reporter, the majority of the people who built this, the state Capitol were slaves, could not one of our alcoves benefit them? And then I started thinking, but I'd really love to see a woman. And one of my first thoughts was somebody like Dolly Parton.
Dolly Parton:
I am a seeker, a poor sinning creature-
Jad Abumrad:
And why did you think of her?
Jeremy Faison:
In my opinion, Dolly Parton is a Tennessee treasure, but even more than that, Dolly Parton's a national treasure. I could start with all five of my kids have benefited for her from her, from her drive to end illiteracy and the Imagination Library. Oh my goodness. It's an amazing thing. And at Dollywood, all of my children have gone to her Imagination Library and watch those books, those story books come to life.
Jad Abumrad:
So representative Faison made this suggestion via text to a reporter at the Tennesseean. Said, Hey, I think we should replace the bust of the first grand wizard of the KKK with someone like Dolly Parton. The reporter then wrote the story and that article really just in the last day or so, has gotten picked up by tons of national media and now it seems at least plausible that when the historical committee that decides which busts should and shouldn't be in the alcoves of the state legislature when they meet in January, it seems at least plausible that they will consider this.
Jeremy Faison:
I'm hoping our historical commission at the Capitol will do the right thing.
Jad Abumrad:
Let me ask you, from your position, advocating for taking Nathan Bedford Forrest out of the legislature, is that an easy position for you to take or a lonely one?
Jeremy Faison:
Obviously I have some colleagues who are not at all in agreement with me. Some of my colleagues say, Hey, I wish you wouldn't have said that, and not at all trying to be offensive to anybody who loves our Confederate veterans. The truth is I am a son of a Confederate veteran. If you look in history, you'll find a man by the name of Paul Faison. Paul facing was actually at Appomattox with Robert E. Lee and I hold dear to the truth of everything that took place in our Civil War and I want that preserved, I want to make sure we never repeat that again. But I think we can preserve history and tell the truth about history, but also preserve history in such a way that everybody gets included and our state's the best in state in America. I mean, we've got some great things to be excited about and this just to me is one of the things that we don't have anything to be excited about with this. Let's put somebody in there like Dolly Parton that we could be excited about.
Dolly Parton:
Let its water wash my sins away.
Jad Abumrad:
Listen, I want to thank you for taking time out of your Christmas party to talk to us.
Jeremy Faison:
Hey, God bless you. Merry Christmas.
Jad Abumrad:
Likewise. Well, there you go. Dolly Parton's America was produced, written and edited by me and Shima Oliaee, and brought to you by OSM Audio and WNYC studios with production help from W. Harry Fortuna. Thanks to our bluegrass trio, Steph Jenkins, Stephanie Coleman, and Courtney Hartman. And also thanks to the folks at Sony Music and to Lynn Sacco, David Dotson, Lula Miller, Susie Lichtenberg, Soren Wheeler, Sam Shahi, Faith Held, and Joel Ebert.
Jad Abumrad:
Just a reminder, we have partnered with Apple music to bring you a companion playlist that's updated each week with music you hear in this episode, plus some of our favorites. You can find all of that at dollypartonsamerica.org. Stay tuned, December 31st we will deliver the final episode of Dolly Parton's America. Here's a preview.
Jad Abumrad:
One last question, just to bring it back to something-
Dolly Parton:
Yes of course, so good though.
Jad Abumrad:
I mean, if you had to, if you had to give the final concert, the concert, what would be the last song?
Dolly Parton:
Well the song I close my show with always and probably always will, is-
Jad Abumrad:
Do you have a vision for the next 10 years, for the next 20 years? Like a hundred years?
Dolly Parton:
Yes. When I'm gone, there's enough stuff to go on forever.
Jad Abumrad:
We'll close out the series talking with Dolly about her faith and her future. That's on the final episode of Dolly Parton's America in two weeks.
Copyright © 2020 OSM Audio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.
Transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of programming is the audio record.
