High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! James Alan Bland, also known as Jimmy Bland, was an African American musician and song writer. He was one of 8 children born in Flushing, New York to a free family. His father was one of the first U. S. Negro college graduates. Because white men in blackface dominated the field of U. S. minstrel shows, Bland did not get very far in his U. S. minstrel career before the abolition of slavery in the United States. Beginning with an eight-dollar banjo purchased by his father, he was performing professionally by age 14. Bland was educated in Washington, DC and graduated from Howard University in 1873. He wrote over 700 songs, including "In the Evening by the Moonlight," "O Dem Golden Slippers" and "Carry Me Back to Old Virginny", published in 1878, which, in a slightly modified form, was the official State Song of Virginia from 1940-1997