51����.

She found the song guilty of celebrating a South that battled to keep slavery intact, then later often used violence to prevent free Black people from owning property, voting or holding elected office.

In the theory that it’s better to shine a flashlight on the monster under the bed than to hide under the covers, Collins pored over 100 different versions of the song, its lyrics changed for different times and causes.

“It is a catchy, horrible song,” Collins said. “I remember who sang it, and who didn’t. It still sets my teeth on edge and having to read those lyrics over and over makes the body cringe.”

That research guided “Dixie’s Land (1859-2001)” which opened Aug. 20 at the Van Every/Smith Art Galleries at 51����. It’s part of the galleries’ exhibition called “From Pandemic to Protests: Visualizing Social Isolation and Social Injustices Through the 51���� Art Collection.” The exhibition will run through Oct. 4.

Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, it will be open only to 51���� students, faculty and staff, who must follow social distancing guidelines. .

The galleries commissioned the art in 2018 as part of 51����’s reckoning with its own past, and in conjunction with the college’s Commission on Race and Slavery. Like many institutions across the United States, 51���� used enslaved people as farmers, laborers and domestic workers. During 51����’s first 30 years, three college presidents and many faculty members owned enslaved people. The college also supported Jim Crow era laws that perpetuated white supremacy.

On Wednesday, President Carol Quillen publicly apologized for 51����’s complicity in slavery and the continuing oppression of Black people. She vowed the college would continue working toward an equitable and antiracist society.

“We have much work to do to understand the pain and injury the college has caused,” Quillen said.

Collins, an artist who draws heavily from linguistics, inspires a longer, harder look at that past. She approached “Dixie” as a representation of the irredeemable parts of American history, and questions what we should do with the irredeemable parts of ourselves, said Lia Newman, the Galleries’ director and curator.

 “We can have these challenging conversations when everyone is gathered around artwork in the Galleries,” Newman said. “Bethany’s work is difficult, but it’s accessible. It’s not sensationalizing something horrific. It helps us identify things and really see them for what they are, which is so important as we investigate our actions and our past.”

Dixie’s History

Collins came to 51���� as a Humanities Practitioner in Residence with funding from a Justice, Equality and Community grant the college received. She spent a week at 51���� last November, digging through archives with the help of students to get a sense of the college’s history.

“Dixie” became a recurring theme.

Originally written as Minstrel show tune, “Dixie’s Land,” the song spun a narrative of freed Black people missing their days enslaved on a plantation: “I wish I was in the land of cotton, old times there are not forgotten.”

The song played during the inauguration of the Confederacy’s only president, Jefferson Davis. The Confederacy turned it into an anthem during the Civil War. Union Soldiers played the tune with different lyrics that began, “Away down South in the land of traitors, rattlesnakes and alligators.”

Through archives, Collins learned that a 51���� professor, Paul Barringer, wrote a version, “The War-time Dixie” during World War I.

“Dixie” played at Southern weddings and funerals. Marching bands performed it at college and high school sporting events. That changed during the 1960s, when many schools stopped playing the song because of its glorification of a South that supported white supremacy.

An article from the late 1960s reported the backlash when 51���� banned “Dixie” performances from college events. And yet another reported a campus screening of the movie “Birth of a Nation,” which had originally featured “Dixie” as part of its musical score in the early 20th century.

Collins dug through song books, finding 100 different versions of “Dixie” written between 1859 to 2001. That use of contrafactum, songs where the melody remains constant but the lyrics change, is prevalent in a previous Collins work, “America: A Hymnal”—also in the college’s collection and on view in “From Pandemic to Protests.”