Originally a poem by James Weldon Johnson, it was written to be recited by 500 school children in Jacksonville, Florida on Februin celebration of Lincoln’s Birthday. Lift Every Voice and Sing has been proposed. It’s as easy to topple a musical monument as it is to haul down a statue, but what do you put on that empty pedestal in its place? But is this the best we can do for a national anthem? Performed by a band, the music can take on a nobility it lacks when stylized by pop singers at modern sporting events. Its members seem to have had little trouble negotiating the famously wide range of the tune - especially when lubricated by the fruit of Bacchus’s vine, as the refrain goes. It appropriates a British glee composed by the son of a cathedral organist for the Anacreontic Society, an exclusive London Men’s Club.
AMERICAN NATIONAL ANTHEM LYRICS RACIST FREE
While the land of the free is the home of the brave.Īnd what about the music? Many national anthems and hymns are set to borrowed tunes, and the official anthem of the United States is no exception. We will keep her bright blazon forever unstained!Īnd the Star-Spangled Banner in triumph shall wave The flag of her stars and the page of her story!īy the millions unchained, who our birthright have gained, If a foe from within strike a blow at her glory,ĭown, down with the traitor that dares to defile When our land is illumined with Liberty’s smile,
AMERICAN NATIONAL ANTHEM LYRICS RACIST UPDATE
Abolitionists mocked its refrain, suggesting that it should read “Land of the Free and Home of the Oppressed.” Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., though himself an anti-abolitionist, was moved to pen a fifth stanza at the beginning of the Civil War in 1861 to update its sentiments: The third makes ambiguous references to “the hireling and slave.” The fourth brings the Deity into play to bestow special favors.Įven Key’s contemporaries had issues with his text. The other three stanzas - the ones few people know and nobody sings - are problematic. Those lines about “rockets’ red glare” and “bombs bursting in air” probably came to many people’s minds over the most recent Independence Day weekend as private fireworks detonated far into the night - more than making up for the cancellation of public celebrations. Raised “by dawn’s early light,” the flag, now owned by the Smithsonian Institution, offered proof of an American victory over the British during the War of 1812.įittingly for the occasion that inspired it, Key’s poem begins with military imagery. The “Star-Spangled Banner” refers to the mammoth flag (originally measuring 30 by 42 feet) with fifteen stars and stripes symbolizing the states that formed the Union at the time. The problem with his poem is that for 21st-century America, its sentiments seem less and less conducive to uniting a divided nation. While he went on public record to oppose human trafficking, he also represented the owners of runaway slaves. The problem with Francis Scott Key, a Baltimore lawyer and district attorney, is that he had owned slaves since 1800. Navy in 1889 and became our National Anthem by resolution of Congress in 1931. Joined to a tune by British composer John Stafford Smith, the song was officially adopted by the U.S. Key was author of the poem Defence of Fort M’Henry, inspired by the British bombardment in Baltimore Harbor in September 1814, that became the text of The Star-Spangled Banner. Among them, in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park and elsewhere, statues memorializing Francis Scott Key were pulled down.
During the recent demonstrations responding to the death of George Floyd while in police custody in Minneapolis, a number of monuments were toppled that represented the racist history of the United States.
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