Kate Smith Family Calls Out 'Cowards'

New York Post front page screenshot

Kate Smith’s niece is standing up for her beloved aunt and her rendition of “God Bless America.” according to The NY Post.

“The people on the Yankees who did this are cowards,” said a furious Suzy Andron, 72, of the team’s decision to stop playing Smith’s 1938 recording of the patriotic favorite.

The Bombers’ ban came amid allegations that two of Smith’s songs had racist lyrics, including a 1939 tune called “That’s Why the Darkies Were Born.”

The heartbroken niece is demanding a meeting with Yankees executives and wants fans to decide if her beloved aunt’s rousing performance of “God Bless America” — which became a seventh-inning stretch staple at Yankee Stadium following the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks — should continue.

The niece said she’s received an avalanche of support from fans since the controversy surfaced, and it’s emboldened the family to publicly crusade to clear Kate Smith’s name.

“Aunt Kathryn didn’t have a racist bone in her body. She loved everybody,” Andron insisted.

“We’re just shocked and aghast,” she told The Post from her home in Raleigh, N.C. “I’d like to know who made this decision — this cowardly decision. The Yankees have not called. This was out of the blue.”

The Androns read of the snub in the newspaper, including a Yankee statement that said they had become “aware of a recording that had been previously unknown to us and decided to immediately and carefully review this new information. The Yankees take social, racial and cultural insensitivities very seriously. And while no final conclusions have been made, we are erring on the side of sensitivity.”

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“Anybody who had done any research for more than five minutes would have seen the speeches she gave and honors she received for all her work to erase the bigotry, intolerance and racism that existed during her 50 years in show business,” Andron’s husband Bob, 74, said.

They cited her experience with Josephine Baker, who in 1927 became the first African-American to star in a major motion picture. Baker refused to perform before segregated American audiences, and when she returned to the US from France in 1951, found bookings scarce. Smith invited Baker to make her first TV appearance on her popular show, “The Kate Smith Evening Hour.” Following the untimely death of the legendary Nat King Cole, she joined Dionne Warwick and Sammy Davis Jr. on Oct. 3, 1965 for a benefit at Carnegie Hall for the Nat King Cole Cancer Foundation, billed as the First Annual Festival of Stars.

Suzy Andron said she wants the original accusers who branded her aunt a racist to come out of the shadows. “We don’t understand why these people — the cowards — would pick on somebody who has been dead for 33 years,” she said.

“We are not commenting further than our original statement,” Yankees spokesman Jason Zillo said in an email.