Word: backing
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...Hambletonian itself, the ancient starting method was used. Ten times the ten horses went over the starting line, ten times were sent back. It was apparent that three drivers with bad scoring positions were trying to tire Gauntlet, the pole horse. On the eleventh score, the starter finally said...
...England, races under saddle and runs at a horse's natural gait, a gallop. The Standardbred, a U. S. product, races in harness and runs at a man-trained trot or pace.* For those U. S. citizens who remember the horse-&-buggy days, no sport takes them back so fast as a trotting race, no sport event is more endearing than the Hambletonian, richest and most famed of the 25,000 or more harness races held in the U. S. every summer...
...Carry me back to old Virginny...
...dapper young Negro minstrel-show man named James A. Bland penned these words, wrote a tune to go with them, and launched one of the most perennially popular of U. S. songs. Carry Me Back to Old Virginny was sung so long & loud that 63 years later the Virginia Conservation Commission wanted it made Virginia's official State anthem. Few singers of the song knew or cared who wrote it. If the question ever came up, someone usually said it was one of famed U. S. Songwriter Stephen Foster's (Swanee River, Oh! Susanna! etc.). Fame never caught...
Fortnight ago, on Emancipation Day, a large group of Negro celebrities gathered at this forlorn spot, listened to a flowery oration by Publisher Cooke, then paraded past the grave, dropping gladioli and singing "Carry me back. . . ." Among the singers: famed Negro Blues Composer William Christopher Handy, Composer J. Rosamond (brother of James Weldon) Johnson. Meanwhile spontaneous contributions for a James Bland Memorial began to pile up in Publisher Cooke's Philadelphia office. It looked as if James Bland's grave might soon have something better on it than poison...