And of course "Carry Me Back To Old Virginny"--written by a black man, James A. Bland.

Was he wrong to pander to the "happy slave" myth---, since that attitude was the difference between success and failure as a composer?

The version I have of that song says in the introduction that he had been "denied a place as a minstrel because of his color".    How's that for irony?

And he took to "writing songs which were eagerly accepted"   by the same managers who had turned him down as a minstrel .

It is perilously easy to oversimplify this topic.