Colin Kaepernick and the Legacy of the Negro National Anthem
- 6 years ago
Colin Kaepernick and the Legacy of the Negro National Anthem
Well before then, however, black communities across the Jim Crow South were instead embracing the soaring, aspirational lyrics of “Lift Every Voice
and Sing” — otherwise known as the Negro National Anthem — which was sung in churches, at civic events and even in schools, where substituting the song for “The Star-Spangled Banner” was a quiet act of rebellion against the racist status quo.
The passage reads in part: “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.” Contemporary thinkers disagree on whether the word “slave” was used as a generic insult
that could be applied to people of any race or as a direct reference to African-Americans who joined the British side in the War of 1812.
They argued that Key should have described America as the “land of the free and home of the oppressed.”
The professional football player Colin Kaepernick appealed to
that same sense of injustice last year when he knelt during “The Star-Spangled Banner” to protest police violence against African-Americans.
Satirists pounced, lampooning the song with lyrics
that depicted a man who staggers home drunk and sleeps well past “the dawn’s early light” — that light through which Key had seen an American flag still flying above the fort that had repulsed the British invasion.
The lawyer and amateur poet Francis Scott Key embraced the pop cultural tastes of his day when he wrote “The Star-Spangled
Banner” to commemorate an American victory over the British at Baltimore during the War of 1812.
By the late 1960s, many of us who had grown up black in an era when African-Americans were locked into Northern ghettos
and murdered in the South for seeking the right to vote registered our grievances by refusing to stand for the anthem at sporting events.
Well before then, however, black communities across the Jim Crow South were instead embracing the soaring, aspirational lyrics of “Lift Every Voice
and Sing” — otherwise known as the Negro National Anthem — which was sung in churches, at civic events and even in schools, where substituting the song for “The Star-Spangled Banner” was a quiet act of rebellion against the racist status quo.
The passage reads in part: “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.” Contemporary thinkers disagree on whether the word “slave” was used as a generic insult
that could be applied to people of any race or as a direct reference to African-Americans who joined the British side in the War of 1812.
They argued that Key should have described America as the “land of the free and home of the oppressed.”
The professional football player Colin Kaepernick appealed to
that same sense of injustice last year when he knelt during “The Star-Spangled Banner” to protest police violence against African-Americans.
Satirists pounced, lampooning the song with lyrics
that depicted a man who staggers home drunk and sleeps well past “the dawn’s early light” — that light through which Key had seen an American flag still flying above the fort that had repulsed the British invasion.
The lawyer and amateur poet Francis Scott Key embraced the pop cultural tastes of his day when he wrote “The Star-Spangled
Banner” to commemorate an American victory over the British at Baltimore during the War of 1812.
By the late 1960s, many of us who had grown up black in an era when African-Americans were locked into Northern ghettos
and murdered in the South for seeking the right to vote registered our grievances by refusing to stand for the anthem at sporting events.