>.Yes, there's a Stephen Foster song called "Massa's in the Cold, Cold
>.Ground", and the lyrics of that one are truly unbelievable (the slave's
>.tender lament for his or her master). I agree completely with Bert
>.Hansen (except that "Massa's in..." will never be acceptable).

They taught it to us in the 4th grade. (late 1930's) I recall it seeming so odd that I asked whether slaves really did love their masters. She said they sometimes did. I couldn't understand that. It seems to me it might have been good for us to learn the song but get a better answer than that.

>.But I have no idea what's offensive in "Old Black Joe". There is no
>.hint that the singer found anything good about slavery.

Right. Dunno how old Foster was when he wrote it, but when you reach a certain age, you understand what he's singing about:

I seem to hear their voices calling...

..... me.

>.I once saw a version of the Uncle Remus story of the Tar Baby in which the "baby"
>.was made sticky with flour paste and glue and stuff like that instead of tar...

Ooof! You know, I wonder if the objection to "tar baby" isn't a confusion with the "tar brush".

>.I can see eliminating or updating the dialect....

NEVER! And don't re-write it, either. What you want to do is get the dialect right. Joel Chandler Harris was working very hard to record the dialect, and it's a real dialect, peculiar to a specific place (alas, I do not remember where). Once, in my life, I had the pleasure of hearing one of those stories read aloud by somebody who knew how --white but brought up in the right place. It's music.

>.As you might guess, I think the PC word is "spiritual". There may be white
>.gospel ("Wayfaring Stranger, e.g.) but there are no white spirituals.

We learned a lot of Negro Spirituals. When we were learning "Jacob's Ladder", however, they told us it was, for a change, a White Spiritual.