The [Black] Soldier Boys of Uncle Sam: "We're Coming"

Authors

William J. Nickerson

Files

Alternative Title

Loudly our country's calling

Description

World War I- era notated music for voice and piano dedicated to Black American soldiers. Front cover features a Black soldier standing at attention.

Publication Date

1918

Publisher

Louis Grunewald Co.

Time Period

1910-1919

Subjects

African American soldiers ; Popular music--United States--1911-1920 ; World War, 1914-1918 -- Songs and music

Keywords

Black soldiers ; sheet music ; World War I ; Wier, Sayde

Geographic Location

New Orleans (La.)

Comments

This song includes one or more elements of “blackface.” With theatrical roots in the West as far back as the 15th century, blackface entertainment “[displays] Blackness for the enjoyment and edification" of non-Black audiences, through racially insensitive means (Strausbaugh, Black Like You, 2006). Common features of blackface songs were racist titles and lyrics. Songs borrowed from and reorganized African American vernacular to depict racial difference through lyrics “authentic” to African American dialect (Mahar, “Black English in Earyl Blackface Minstrelsy,” 1985). These lyrics combined with titles that used common epithets like “coon” and “darky,” to correspond with wider social understandings of African Americans as “ignorant and indolent, but also devoid of honesty or personal honor, given to drunkenness and gambling, utterly without ambition, sensuous, libidinous, even lascivious” (Dormon, “Shaping the Popular Image of Post-Reconstruction American Blacks,” 1988).

Object Type

text

Format (original)

1 score ([1]. 2-3, [1] p.) : ill ; 34 cm.

Format (digital)

PDF

Digital ID

MFM_MSS_313_1918_Nickerson Sheet Music

First Line of Song

Loudly our country's calling

Source

Mississippi State University Libraries, Archives and Special Collections Division, Manuscripts Unit, Wier (Robert and Sadye) Papers, Sheet Music

Repository

Manuscripts

Rights

Copyright protected by Mississippi State University Libraries. Use of materials from this collection beyond the exceptions provided for in the Fair Use and Educational Use clauses of the U.S. Copyright Law may violate federal law. Permission to publish or

Contact Information

For more information about the contents of this collection, e-mail sp_coll@library.msstate.edu.

Recommended Citation

(Wier) Robert and Sadye papers, Division of Archives & Special Collections, Mississippi State University