Dolly Parton was the patron saint of America.
As the world mourns her Tuesday, August 25, death, it is clear that there will never be another entertainer like her. Her fame predates the celebrity that we have become accustomed to in the modern pop-culture zeitgeist. The pristine sheen and allure that celebrities deploy as a ruse was not accepted in the house of Dollywood. In Dolly’s America and Church, all men, women, and especially children, were equal.
Black America noticed.
Her numerous philanthropic efforts reflected her belief in America and equality. She did not shy away from her hillbilly, “white trash” roots. She embraced them.
Celebrities often attempt to distance themselves from the unattractive, blemished parts of their family background and history. Not Dolly.
Her father’s inability to read inspired the creation of the Imagination Library, an early childhood book gifting program that has provided over 200 million books to children in the United States and across the world for 30 years. “Hair Love,” the children’s book about the relationship between a Black father and daughter as he attempts to craft her natural hair into a series of protective hairstyles, was the library’s pick for 2019. Her support for childhood literacy, especially working to ensure that Black children would have access to children’s literature that reflected their experiences, was not a gimmick or ploy to capitalize on the DEI fad of the mid-to-late 2010s.
And she’d been doing this kind of work all along, in addition to her award-winning music career.
During the height of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, Sandollar Productions, Parton’s production company, produced “Common Threads: Stories From the Quilt,” an Academy Award winning documentary about the AIDS Memorial Quilt. In her recording career, she participated in “Red Hot + Country,” the 1994 benefit album that raised awareness and money for HIV/AIDS research. In 2020, during the first months of the COVID pandemic, Parton donated $1 million to fund the Moderna vaccine and COVID-19 research.
Black communities were disproportionately impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic and the HIV/AIDS epidemic, and Parton pledged her support to the elimination of both of these scourges, because of her belief in equality. In a 2020 interview with Billboard, she stood in solidarity with Black Lives Matter and jokingly said, “Do we think our little white asses are the only ones that matter? No!”, in addition to apologizing for the use of the word ‘Dixie’, in the wake of the Charlottesville Riots, in 2017. Parton loved Black people, and it was felt.
There was never pandering or disingenuous action from Parton to cause Black fans of the country singer to doubt her.
When Whitney Houston covered “I Will Always Love You” for The Bodyguard, Parton used the royalties to invest in a historically Black neighborhood in Nashville, Tennessee. She referred to the strip mall that she purchased and invested in as “the house that Whitney built”, an ode to the other singer, who herself passed away in 2012. And, who can forget the beloved 1987 variety show clip of her singing “Shortnin’ Bread” with R&B legend Patti LaBelle in perfect harmony, with only acrylic nails as instruments.
Yes, Parton has her place in the overall American music pantheon, but unlike her country music counterparts, she did not seem to want to abide by the racial and gender politics of her industry.
For years, Parton campaigned for Beyoncé to cover her iconic hit “Jolene.” She told Trevor Noah in 2022 that she wanted her to do the song in a big way like Houston did. And, in 2024, Parton got her wish when Beyoncé covered the song on the “Cowboy Carter” album (Parton also appeared on the album on the interlude “Dolly P” and the song “Tyrant”). Beyoncé might be Tina Turner’s daughter, but she’s Dolly Parton’s niece.
Dolly Parton felt like family, not in the parasocial sense of late-stage capitalism, where one is inundated with every celebrity’s move across social media platforms. Parton was heard in our homes, her words were sung by our mothers, her movies were played in the living rooms on our television screens, and her presence was ethereal.
She was holy for the mundane and the secular. She welcomed us all, and now, the pressure is on us to continue making her dream of America real.
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