“Camptown Races”

A number of commonly used songs — “Camptown Races,” “Jimmy Crack Corn,” and “Turkey in the Straw” — were once popular in the traveling minstrel shows of the 19th century.

It frequently plays “Camptown Races,” which makes me cringe every time.

Even our yard, a green and welcome refuge from work and news stress, cannot drown out the sounds of our failings: The tinny little jingle of the ice cream truck, silent through most of spring as the nearby park closed because of the virus, has recently started jingling again, and hearing it made me feel both nostalgic for childhood and a little more summer-normal — until I realized that one of its most frequent tunes is the old minstrel song “Camptown Races.”

And I enrolled in a Thursday evening adult beginner, group piano class, where I could make new friends while competitively learning to play “Camptown Races” every night during the recommended 30-minute practice sessions.

The military was led by prominent Elks members, and it taught Americans to embody stereotypical blackness and transmitted racist proslavery antebellum culture in the form of Stephen Foster songs such as “Oh! Susanna,” “Camptown Races” and “Old Folks at Home.”