By MARSHA MERCER
To celebrate the new
Juneteenth federal holiday, Vanessa Williams sang “Lift Every Voice and Sing” at
the end of the “A Capitol Fourth” Independence Day concert in Washington.
“Lift Every Voice and Sing”
is known as the Black national anthem, so, naturally, critics blasted the singer-actress
as well as broadcaster PBS for going “woke.”
No matter that opera star
Renée Fleming opened the show with “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
“There’s only one National
Anthem that covers everyone. It doesn’t matter what color you are,” one man wrote
on Twitter, expressing a common theme.
Or does it? A national anthem
should bring people together in the shared love of country. Does “The
Star-Spangled Banner” still measure up?
The NAACP recognized “Lift
Every Voice” as its official song in 1919, and over the last century it has
become beloved as the Black national anthem.
Francis Scott Key wrote
“The Star-Spangled Banner” after watching the British attack Fort McHenry near
Baltimore in 1814 and seeing the American flag still flying in victory in
“dawn’s early light.” He put words to the tune of a then-popular English
drinking song.
But Key was also a slaveholder
and a lawyer who argued in court for the “right” to own slaves.
In our time of racial
reckoning and reconsideration, statues to Key have been toppled as many people
learn about Key and rarely sung verses of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” The
anthem’s third verse includes the line:
“No refuge could save the
hireling and slave/From the terror of flight or gloom of the grave.” The line
is open to interpretation, and Key never explained what he meant. Some
academics read it as overtly racist, while others see it as a reference to
European mercenaries and enslaved Africans the British used as mercenaries in
the War of 1812.
Americans alive today have
grown up singing “The Star-Spangled Banner” as the national anthem. But it
wasn’t always so. “Ripley’s Believe It or Not!” ran a cartoon in 1929 with the
caption, “Believe It or Not, America has no national anthem.”
That oversight was
rectified in 1931, when President Herbert Hoover signed a bill into law
designating “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
Even then the choice was
controversial – though not for race reasons. The New York Herald Tribune said
the anthem had “words that nobody can remember to a tune that nobody can sing.”
It was also criticized as
too militaristic and too anti-British.
For years, civil rights
advocates have called for changing the national anthem.
Doing so would take an act
of Congress and 60 votes in the Senate to override a filibuster or presidential
veto, so that’s unlikely.
Rep. James Clyburn,
Democrat of South Carolina, introduced in January a measure to make “Lift Every
Voice” the national hymn. Black writer and activist James Weldon Johnson wrote the
poem in 1899 to celebrate the anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s birthday.
Clyburn, the
highest-ranking Black in Congress, says making the song a hymn would bring
people together in “an act of healing.”
That may be a reach. Clyburn
has only about 40 cosponsors in the House, and there is no companion bill in
the Senate.
Progress takes time. In
May, Maryland finally repealed its offensive state song. “Maryland, My
Maryland” was written in 1861 during the heat of the Civil War and has
references to Lincoln as a “tyrant” and “despot” and suggests Union soldiers
are “Northern scum.”
The Virginia General
Assembly couldn’t quite bring itself to repeal Virginia’s state song, “Carry Me Back to Old Virginia,” with
its racist connotations. The legislature did demote it to “state song emeritus”
in 1997.
Virginia now has an
official traditional state song, “Our Great Virginia,” a revision of “Oh
Shenandoah,” and an official popular song, “Sweet Virginia Breeze,” which was
popular in 1980.
Americans increasingly
recognize our history is complicated and certain iconic people, place names and
even songs are hurtful to a large swath of the population.
It’s time we consider what
we want the national anthem to accomplish.
If it is to bring us
together, as I think it should, we should consider retiring “The Star-Spangled
Banner” as our national anthem.
My choice would be “America
the Beautiful.”
©2021 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.
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