The Bourgeois Blues

It rails against racism, the Jim Crow laws, and the conditions of contemporary African Americans in the southern United States.

[2] Lomax, in some versions of the story described as an unnamed "white friend", offered to let the couple stay for the night in his apartment near the Supreme Court Building.

For instance, when Lead Belly, Lomax, and their wives wanted to go out to dinner together, they discovered that it was impossible for the mixed race group to find a restaurant that would serve them.

[2] In response to one of these incidents, a friend of Lead Belly's, variously identified as either Lomax or Mary Elizabeth Barnicle joked that Washington was a "bourgeois town."

Though Lead Belly did not know what the word "bourgeois" meant, he was fascinated by the sound of it, and after its meaning was explained to him he decided to incorporate it into a song about the trip.

[7] The third verse sarcastically cites "the home of the brave, the land of the Free", juxtaposed with the mistreatment he received at the hands of white people in Washington, DC.

The fourth verse speaks of the racism of the white population of the city, leading to the song's end, which suggests that African Americans boycott buying homes in the district.

[7] The song has been covered and reinterpreted by a variety of artists including Pete Seeger, Ry Cooder,[13] Taj Mahal, and Hans Theessink.

Robert Springer claims that the song is "peripheral" to the wider study of the blues, while Lawson points to it as a watershed in the way African Americans see themselves in the fabric of the United States.

Lead Belly was invited to perform at Camp Unity, the Communist Party USA's summer retreat,[22] and the FBI subsequently opened a file on him in the 1940s.

[23] Jeff Todd Titon and several other writers have suggested that Lead Belly had significant help with its authorship and claim it is not a genuine protest song.