Oh Susanna

By Joyce Davis

Twitter is a great and wonderful place. I posted how a song as a child flashed in my head; “Oh Susanna. They made us learn it and there were lessons of symbolism which I did not retain that information in my memory, but this song pops up in my head all the time. It made me think of CRT and how they now don’t want kids to learn about CRT; yet they made sure we learned this folk song from the 1800’s. After posting it someone replied they also were taught the song and they found the original second verse.

It reads:

I jumped aboard the telegraph and traveled down the river,
Electric fluid magnified, and killed 500 ni**er
The bullgine bust the horse ran off, I’d really thought I’d die
I shut my eyes to hold my breath….Susanna, don’t you cry

I had no idea that the racist portion of that song existed. I now wonder did the teachers know the full song as they made us learn it? Did the teacher look at me and have a private chuckle? What was the purpose of us learning that song and why is CRT a problem?

I know why, because they don’t want the message popping up into their kids’ heads that it is wrong to treat people badly. To this day that song is in my head. They could train kids to be good humans instead of learning racist songs. CRT would do that and that’s not what they want. Why do you think that is? This song represents a fantasy place that they wish existed again. As in make America great again. They desire a time where it was okay to talk about killing Black people with no consequences or let’s be real killing Black people with no consequences.

I hope this younger generation fights for a better America. I hope they see that they can have so much more than we did.

Thanks to Twitter I know a little more about the world around me.