Hayley Caronia

I've never heard it like that.

Okay.

In the mid 1800s, Piermont was broke and needed quick cash.

So he turned to the hugely profitable world of minstrel shows.

Okay.

Then it says the song first called The One Horse Open Sleigh debuted in blackface at Ordway Hall in Boston in September of 1857.

OK, while actors in burnt cork used the song to mock and caricature black people trying to participate in winter activities.

Okay.

The original lyrics theme of laughing all the way likely references a racist comedic routine known as the laughing darky.

Piermont's other minstrel works like Kitty Crow and the Colored Coquette repeatedly refer.

This is I'm reading this and it's very far away.

So this is why I'm like squinting.

I told them earlier.

I was like, oh, yeah, I can read this.

It's totally fine.

Refer to black people as the N-word and darkies.

And then it says then came the Civil War.

Piermont abandoned his family who were northern abolitionists and enlisted in the Confederate Army.

And then he wrote this racist song, I guess.

And it's now over the time it's been whitewashed.