OPINION
Choose Poetry Of James Weldon Johnson Over Racism Of Francis Scott Key,
Lift Every Voice and Sing
“Lift every voice and sing,
’Til earth and heaven ring,
Ring with the harmonies of Liberty;
Let our rejoicing rise
High as the skies,
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.
Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,
Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us;
Facing the rising sun of our new day begun,
Let us march on ’til victory is won.
Stony the road we trod,
Bitter the chastening rod,
Felt in the days when hope unborn had died;
Yet with a steady beat,
Have not our weary feet
Come to the place for which our fathers sighed?
We have come over a way that with tears has been watered,
We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered,
Out from the gloomy past,
’Til now we stand at last
Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast.
God of our weary years,
God of our silent tears,
Thou who has brought us thus far on the way;
Thou who has by Thy might
Led us into the light,
Keep us forever in the path, we pray.
Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee,
our hearts drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee;
Shadowed beneath Thy hand,
May we forever stand,
True to our God,
True to our native land.”
So let me understand this; it would be divisive to name “Lift Every Voice and Sing” as the national hymn but it’s not divisive that the the national anthem, “Star Spangled Banner,” was written by an avowed racist, white supremacist and champion of slavery.
The typical clown express said Sheryl Lee Ralph’s moving and beautiful rendition of “Lift Every Voice and Sing” at the Superbowl as part of Black History Month, was divisive. The critics include such champions of human right as Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., losing Arizona GOP gubernatorial candidate, Kari Lake; and Republican James Bradly, who was swamped in the race for U.S. Senate from California and who claims, without evidence, that he was a victim of voter fraud.
I gag just saying the names of such racists in the same breath as true heroes like Sheryl Lee Ralph and James Weldon Johnson, the NAACP leader who penned the lyrics to “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” which is often referred to as the Black national anthem. Johnson’s brother, J. Rosamond Johnson, created the music.
Ralph, 66, an actress and singer, won an Emmy Award as the tough but loving kindergarten teacher, Barbara Howard, on the ABC hit show, “Abbott Elementary.” She was the first person to perform the song live inside a stadium for Super Bowl Sunday. Alicia Keys sang a prerecorded version that aired before Superbowl 2021, and the gospel duo Mary Mary and the Youth Orchestra Los Angeles performed outside of SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles last year. The NFL began including the song in its games in the wake of Black Lives Matter protests that exploded in 2020 after the killing of George Floyd, an unarmed African American, by white members of the Minnesota Police Department.
The song was first performed in public 123 years ago, on Feb. 12, 1900, by a choir of 500 schoolchildren at the segregated Stanton School in Jacksonville, Fla. Johnson, then principal of the Stanton School, wrote the hymn in 1899 in honor of renowned educator Booker T. Washington who was visiting Stanton School. The performance commemorated what would have been former president Abraham Lincoln’s 91st birthday.
The hymn was adopted by the NAACP as its official song in 1919. Through the turbulent years of the civil rights movement, the song became a symbol of Black freedom and was performed during meetings in 1955 when the Montgomery Bus Boycott was being planned.
Johnson was the first executive secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), serving in the position from 1920 to 1930. During this time, the NAACP was mounting frequent legal challenges to the Southern states’ disenfranchisement of African Americans, which had been established at the turn of the century by such legal devices as poll taxes, literacy tests, and white primaries.
Weeks after the Jan. 6, Capitol uprising, Rep. James Clyburn, D-S.C., proposed that “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” be accepted as the national hymn, alongside the “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
“To make it a national hymn, I think, would be an act of bringing the country together. It would say to people, ‘You aren’t singing a separate national anthem, you are singing the country’s national hymn,’” said Clyburn, the highest-ranking Black American in Congress.
Clyburn’s bill was defeated in Congress.
“The Star-Spangled Banner” was written in 1814 by attorney and amateur poet, Francis Scott Key. It was not named the national anthem until 117 years later, in 1931, when President Herbert Hoover gave it the designation.
The War of 1812 was raging and Key was being held aboard a British ship anchored in Baltimore’s harbor, where he helped to negotiate the release of an American prisoner. Key watched as the British naval ships bombarded the Americans for 25 hours and was inspired when the Americans withstood the onslaught and raised a large American flag over Fort McHenry on Sept. 14, 1814.
Key, 35, wrote the melody based on a popular English drinking song called “To Anacreon in Heaven.” A local printer issued the song, originally called “Defence of Fort M’Henry,” and it spread to various cities along the East Coast. By November 1814, Key’s composition had appeared in print for the first time under the name “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
During the war, the British promised refuge to any enslaved African American who escaped and joined the British Colonial Marines. As many as 4,000 enslaved people, mostly from Virginia and Maryland, escaped and joined the British. Key’s opposition to the freedom for the enslaved, prompted him to write the little known, second half of the third verse:
“No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave,
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.”
After the war, the British refused to return the formerly enslaved Colonial Marines to the U.S. and instead provided them land to relocate in the Caribbean island nation of Trinidad and Tobago. Descendants known as “Merikins,” still live on the islands.
The anthem gained popularity over time, particularly among post-Reconstruction White Southerners and the military. Historian Jefferson Morley later wrote that “The elevation of the banner from popular song to official national anthem was a neo-Confederate political victory, and it was celebrated as such. When supporters threw a victory parade in Baltimore in June 1931, the march was led by a color guard hoisting the Confederate flag.”
Key came from a wealthy plantation family that relied on enslaved people. He spoke of Black people as “a distinct and inferior race” and supported emancipating the enslaved only if they were immediately shipped to Africa.
“Negroes,” Key wrote, constituted “a distinct and inferior race of people, which all experience prove to be the greatest evil that afflicts a community.”
Key was district attorney for Washington, D.C., under President Andrew Jackson. As district attorney, Key strictly enforced slave laws and prosecuted abolitionists. In 1835, Key sought the death penalty for Arthur Bowen, a 19-year-old enslaved man accused of attempting to murder his enslaver. Bowen was wrongly convicted, but Key still wanted to see him hang. Jackson eventually pardoned Bowen.
Key also suggested that President Jackson appoint Key’s brother-in-law, Rogert B. Taney, as chief justice of the Supreme Court. Taney was appointed and went on to write the infamous, Dred Scott decision that decreed Black people “had no rights which the White man was bound to respect.”
As far as the clown circus, Boebert, a far right lawmaker, said the hymn was an attempt to “divide” the country and was another symbol of “wokeness” by liberals.
“America only has ONE NATIONAL ANTHEM,” Boebert wrote. “Why is the NFL trying to divide us by playing multiple!? Do football, not wokeness.”
Racist rhetoric and disparaging racial minorities are part of Boebert’s crusade. She has compared the Black Lives Matter movement to the deadly, Jan.6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol by trump supporters. She claimed without evidence, that Black Lives Matter protesters were paid to raid white neighborhoods.
A rabid opponent of gun controls, Boebert also has had connections to the far-right militia groups centrally involved in the Jan. 6 insurrection. She has embraced far-right militias and has had white nationalists provide security at her campaign events.
Under trump, Boebert introduced legislation to return non-Mexicam asylum seekers to dangerous areas in Mexico while their claims were considered in the U.S.
Boebert has promoted the so-called, white replacement theory, that claims that Democrats support immigration because it gives them an electoral advantage, and that immigrant voters will replace white, non-immigrant voters.
Many Republicans, including Boebert, also want to ban teaching the concept that systemic racism continues to effect African Americans.
Like Boebert, her fellow far right winger, Greene, also complained about “wokeness” at the Super Bowl. Greene and right wing Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, both rejected the 2022 proposal to make “Lift Every Voice and Sing” the national hymn.
Greene was clearly disturbed with the Superbowl rendition of “Lift Every Voice and Sing” but she was enamored with country singer Chris Stapleton’s patriotic performance of the Star Spangled Banner.
“Chris Stapleton just sang the most beautiful national anthem at the Super Bowl,” Greene tweeted. “But we could have gone without the rest of the wokeness.”
Greene, a conspiracy theorist, anti-vaxxer and supporter of trump, has been out front in the effort to ban teaching critical race theory, which outlines how racism is at least in part systemic.
She also has taken aim at “Antiracist Baby” an award-winning book by Ibram X. Kendi that “introduces the youngest readers and the grown-ups in their lives to the concept and power of antiracism. Providing the language necessary to begin critical conversations at the earliest age, Antiracist Baby is the perfect gift for readers of all ages dedicated to forming a just society.”
That’s not what Greene thinks.
“Babies are not racist. Babies are not born racist. The Critical Race Theory is racist,” Greene wrote.
Kari Lake also was at the Superbowl. Lake is the Republican who keeps losing as she keep claiming she really won the race for Arizona governor. Lake refused to stand when “Lift Every Voice and Sing” was sung.
Lake’s campaign team tweeted about “our girl.”
“Our girl is against the idea of a ‘black National Anthem’ for the same reason she’s against a ‘white National Anthem,’” her campaign team wrote. “She subscribes to the idea of “one Nation, under God.”
Former Republican Senate candidate James Bradley tweeted: “Having a black national anthem is just another way that Democrats keep us divided.”