Dolly Parton has renamed one of the rides at her Dollywood theme park in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement.
The 74-year-old country music legend co-owns the amusement park in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, and has said that following the movement toward racial justice, she decided to alter the name of the ‘Dixie Stampede’ ride, as the word "Dixie" has links to slavery.
Dolly was inspired to make the change after musicians The Chicks dropped the word from their former band name, Dixie Chicks.
She said: "There’s such a thing as innocent ignorance, and so many of us are guilty of that. When they said ‘Dixie’ was an offensive word, I thought, ‘Well, I don’t want to offend anybody. This is a business. We’ll just call it The Stampede’.
"As soon as you realise that [something] is a problem, you should fix it. Don’t be a dumba**. That’s where my heart is. I would never dream of hurting anybody on purpose."
The ‘9 to 5’ hitmaker is a supporter of the Black Lives Matter movement, and said she understands the feeling of wanting to be "felt and seen" by society.
She added: "I understand people having to make themselves known and felt and seen. And of course, Black lives matter. Do we think our little white a**** are the only ones that matter? No!"
And Dolly also discussed her decision to branch out into non-musical projects such as opening her theme park, which she set up in 1986.
Speaking to Billboard magazine, she said: "I often wonder why more artists don’t do more things like that to have something to fall back on if things don’t work out the way they’d hoped – or just to have something more. I feel like even if I wasn’t popular anymore, I could always sing at Dollywood."