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By JOHN GOOLRICK
And what has been so far the biggest story of the 1997 Virginia General Assembly meeting, one that has attracted the attention of the national media?
You guessed it. The state song and its retirement. 'Carry Me Back to Old Virginia,' appears headed for emeritus status.
It is probably all for the best for while the song's melody is hauntingly beautiful, all efforts to clean up its racially offensive lyrics over the years have failed.
As former Governor Douglas Wilder has pointed out, the song's words on their face appear to be preposterous. A freed slave is longing for the days of working day after day in fields of yellow corn for ole massa.' And Virginia is where his 'heart am longed to go.'
And yet the song's author, James A. Bland, who wrote it in 1878, did so after a former slave, Mrs. Scotta Johnson, came to his home in Washington one day and started talking about her love of Virginia. Bland, a black man who wrote songs and performed in minstrel shows, earned handsome royalties off the song. He later spent 20 years in Europe before
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