Speaker 1: It's time for the way Black History Fact. So today's
Speaker 1: way Black History Fact is sponsored by Underground Beach Club.
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Speaker 1: gonna share a bit with you from The Guardian. It's
Speaker 1: the holiday season. Is jingle bells racist? Let's find out
Speaker 1: kind of? Hammel aimed, sorry to shed light on a
Speaker 1: long hidden history detailing racist origins of popular Christmas carol. Instead,
Speaker 1: the university lecturer ended up the target of a right
Speaker 1: wing trolling attack after her academic research on jingle bells
Speaker 1: was twisted into an example of liberal overreach. Hatefield emails
Speaker 1: flooded her inbox. Hammel, of Boston University told The Guardian quote,
Speaker 1: I was told that I was trying to ruin Christmas
Speaker 1: for children who weren't allowed to sing the song anymore,
Speaker 1: and that I was ruining the jingle bell festival in
Speaker 1: our town. Notice they attached children to it to make
Speaker 1: it a little bit more. I get it. Hamil had
Speaker 1: probed the origins of the popular carol, hoping to settle
Speaker 1: a friendly rivalry between Medford, Massachusetts and Savannah, Georgia over
Speaker 1: where Jingle Bells was written. About two years ago, she
Speaker 1: stumbled across a rather different story. The song, initially known
Speaker 1: as one Horse Open Sleigh, was first performed in blackface
Speaker 1: in a minstrel show in Boston in September eighteen fifty seven.
Speaker 1: She discovered for those that don't know, oh, actually, that's
Speaker 1: right here. Hamill published the findings in a peer reviewed
Speaker 1: paper in September, noting that during the past one hundred
Speaker 1: and sixty years, the song had become an example of
Speaker 1: music whose quote, blackface and racist origins have been subtly
Speaker 1: and systematically removed from its history. The song was written
Speaker 1: by James Pierpoint, who badly needed work After failing at
Speaker 1: several other professional ventures. Pierpoint capitalized on menstrual music and
Speaker 1: entered upon a safeground for Saturday Rising Black participation in
Speaker 1: northern winter activities. Last year, she detailed her findings to
Speaker 1: local media, yielding a front page story in the Boston
Speaker 1: Globe and no backlash. This year, however, was a different story.
Speaker 1: Quote newest Christmas controversy has social justice warriors claiming this
Speaker 1: classic holiday carol is racist unquote, a Fox News host
Speaker 1: told viewers earlier this month, Breitbart warned that Hamil was
Speaker 1: urging people to shun the jahn t tone. Hamil said
Speaker 1: much reporting of her research was incorrect and laden with
Speaker 1: all sorts of absolutely absurd accusations. Quote. It was obviously
Speaker 1: an easy way to bait and politicize Christmas, she said,
Speaker 1: which seems to be what extreme political outlets want to do.
Speaker 1: She had never said the jingle Bells was now racist,
Speaker 1: nor had she sought to discourage people from singing the tune,
Speaker 1: she pointed out. Still, the backlash was fierce. Her name
Speaker 1: soon became a hashtag on Twitter, backing up tweets as
Speaker 1: users learned of her findings. Hundreds of hate laced emails
Speaker 1: filled her inbox. Others tried to reach her by phone
Speaker 1: or through social media. She replied to a few of
Speaker 1: the emails, at times receiving an apology quote despite the
Speaker 1: fact that a lot of the hate mail was really horrible.
Speaker 1: People just want to communicate and they're stuck in this
Speaker 1: echo chamber, she said. She goes on to say, so,
Speaker 1: I think people just want to be heard, and nobody
Speaker 1: seems to be listening anymore. Ironically, the controversy has sent
Speaker 1: interest in her research on jingle bell soaring, placing it
Speaker 1: currently among the most read articles on Cambridge University Press Quote.
Speaker 1: If anything, this irresponsible reporting has drawn more attention to
Speaker 1: an academic article that would usually just sit in a
Speaker 1: journal that very few would read. So the fact that
Speaker 1: it was academic in peer reviews means that it's valid.
Speaker 1: And for those that don't know, menstrual shows are very
Speaker 1: racist forms of entertainment in the early nineteen rounders of
Speaker 1: late eighteen hundreds, So there's your way, Black history fact