If songs are to be rejected because of the context that gave rise to them that'd be an awful lot of good songs we'd lose.   

In fact if "the context that gave rise to them" means "a society in which there were a lot of unexamined prejudices and which was intolerant and unjust in many ways", I doubt if there's ever been a society that would pass the gest - including our own.

The circumstances of the times when a song was written are of course of interest, and can enable songs to give us an understanding of those times and those circumstances that perhaps nothing else can - but that's only half of the story, Songs can come to life again in very different circumstances, and help us to understand them also.   I'm thinking of the way that a song such as "Will you go to Flanders?" takes on a new depth and meaning when it is sung in the context of looking back at the Great War.

Basically Old Black Joe is a song about getting old, and that's something common to all of us.