Star-Spangled Bigotry: The Hidden Racist History of the National Anthem

Most people don’t know there’s more than one verse to the national anthem, and it’s the third that’s a doozy.

 

 

 

Americans generally get a failing grade when it comes to knowing our “patriotic songs.” I know more people who can recite “America, F–k Yeah” from Team America than “America the Beautiful.” “Yankee Doodle”? No one older than a fifth-grader in chorus class remembers the full song. “God Bless America”? More people know the Rev. Jeremiah Wright remix than the actual full lyrics of the song. Most black folks don’t even know “the black national anthem.” (There’s a great story about Bill Clinton being at an NAACP meeting where he was the only one who knew it past the first line. Bill Clinton: Woke in the ’90s.)

In the case of our national anthem, “The Star-Spangled Banner,” perhaps not knowing the full lyrics is a good thing. It is one of the most racist, pro-slavery, anti-black songs in the American lexicon, and you would be wise to cut it from your Fourth of July playlist.
“The Star-Spangled Banner,” as most Americans know it, is only a couple of lines. In fact, if you look up the song on Google, only the most famous lyrics pop up on Page 1:

Oh say can you see,
By the dawn’s early light,
What so proudly we hailed,
At the twilight’s last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars,
Through the perilous fight,
O’er the ramparts we watched,
Were so gallantly streaming.
And thy rocket’s red glare,
Thy bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through thee night,
That our flag was still there.
Oh say does that star spangled banner yet wave,
O’er the land of the free, and the home of the brave.

The story, as most of us are told, is that Francis Scott Key was a prisoner on a British ship during the War of 1812 and wrote this poem while watching the American troops battle back the invading British in Baltimore. That—as is the case with 99 percent of history that is taught in public schools and regurgitated by the mainstream press—is less than half the story.
To understand the full “Star-Spangled Banner” story, you have to understand the author. Key was an aristocrat and city prosecutor in Washington, D.C. He was, like most enlightened men at the time, not against slavery; he just thought that since blacks were mentally inferior, masters should treat them with more Christian kindness. He supported sending free blacks (not slaves) back to Africa and, with a few exceptions, was about as pro-slavery, anti-black and anti-abolitionist as you could get at the time.
Of particular note was Key’s opposition to the idea of the Colonial Marines. The Marines were a battalion of runaway slaves who joined with the British Royal Army in exchange for their freedom. The Marines were not only a terrifying example of what slaves would do if given the chance, but also a repudiation of the white superiority that men like Key were so invested in.
All of these ideas and concepts came together around Aug. 24, 1815, at the Battle of Bladensburg, where Key, who was serving as a lieutenant at the time, ran into a battalion of Colonial Marines. His troops were taken to the woodshed by the very black folks he disdained, and he fled back to his home in Georgetown to lick his wounds. The British troops, emboldened by their victory in Bladensburg, then marched into Washington, D.C., burning the Library of Congress, the Capitol Building and the White House. You can imagine that Key was very much in his feelings seeing black soldiers trampling on the city he so desperately loved.
A few weeks later, in September of 1815, far from being a captive, Key was on a British boat begging for the release of one of his friends, a doctor named William Beanes. Key was on the boat waiting to see if the British would release his friend when he observed the bloody battle of Fort McHenry in Baltimore on Sept. 13, 1815. America lost the battle but managed to inflict heavy casualties on the British in the process. This inspired Key to write “The Star-Spangled Banner” right then and there, but no one remembers that he wrote a full third stanza decrying the former slaves who were now working for the British army:

And where is that band who so vauntingly swore,
That the havoc of war and the battle’s confusion
A home and a Country should leave us no more?
Their blood has wash’d out their foul footstep’s pollution.
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.

In other words, Key was saying that the blood of all the former slaves and “hirelings” on the battlefield will wash away the pollution of the British invaders. With Key still bitter that some black soldiers got the best of him a few weeks earlier, “The Star-Spangled Banner” is as much a patriotic song as it is a diss track to black people who had the audacity to fight for their freedom. Perhaps that’s why it took almost 100 years for the song to become the national anthem.

“I support people having a gun in public full stop, not just in your home. We don’t have the right to bear arms because of burglars; we have the right to bear arms to resist the supreme power of a corrupt and abusive government. It’s not about duck hunting; it’s about the ability of the individual. It’s the same reason we have freedom of speech. It’s well known that the greatest defense against an intruder is the sound of a gun hammer being pulled back. All these gun shootings that have gone down in America since 1950, only one or maybe two have happened in non-gun-free zones. Take mass shootings. They’ve only happened in places that don’t allow guns. These people are sick in the head and are going to kill innocent people. They are looking to slaughter defenceless human beings. They do not want confrontation. In all of our schools it is illegal to have guns on campus, so again and again these guys go and shoot up these f***ing schools because they know there are no guns there. They are monsters killing six-year-olds.” (source)

“The truth is, there is no Islamic army or terrorist group called Al-Qaeda, and any informed intelligence officer knows this. But, there is a propaganda campaign to make the public believe in the presence of an intensified entity representing the ‘devil’ only in order to drive TV watchers to accept a unified international leadership for a war against terrorism. The country behind this propaganda is the United States.” – Former British Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook

Edward Snowden is a hero. I like what he did. My idea of treason is that you sell secrets to the enemy. He gave information to the American people. Snowden didn’t take information for money or dogmas. Governments claim to write endless laws to protect us, a law for this, a law for that, but are they working? I don’t think so. The consequences are that there is a staggering loss of freedom for the individual. I look at the drug wars and they are absolutely f***ing ridiculous. There is a black market and the prisons are overcrowded and it’s not preventing drug use. There’s a corruption that goes all the way to the top.

will guide us through bad and good times

Praise to the Most High, Jah Rastafarai

O Most High Heavenly Jah, please bless those who are still blind

Those on the verge of knowing you and those who want to know you more  Thank you for your Word which comes in many different forms to us earthly people

I thank you Jah for my everyday life

Blessed be my family, enemies and friends

May all the souls of the good departed Rest In Peace

 Jah Bless

Our Father who is in the highest mountain of Zion

The bread that we need everyday bring it to us today

For you are the father of peace love and harmony

Bring unity among Jah people

Prevent any evil men from controlling Our destiny

Praise in the name of Jah Ras Tafari

When one is frustrated, when their hopes are dashed, when they are greatly disappointed.

That is a great trial on our rational mind. 

Whenever you feel disappointment, that is the time you must reach for The Creator to give you balance, because at that moment of insanity you may hurt yourself, and others as well.

Can we end the thumb pandemic? 

Truth is, no one can get your information from your License Plate unless you're an upstanding member of our community. (DMV, Cop, Lawyer, etc) 

It's called the Drivers Privacy Protection Act and it was signed on September 13th, 1994 by President Bill Clinton. 

If you're still worried someone can get your information.. 

Think about this: 

Your license plate is on display EVERYWHERE you drive.

Yes, every time you drive your vehicle on a public street someone sees it, and guess what? 

You're still alive, you still have your vehicle. 

 No one will get your address, social security number, phone number, senior yearbook photo, or any other information from it. 

So let's save the thumbs.  

Please feel free to share this post on all buy/sell and car pages.

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Let's imagine... if you glimpsed the future, you were frightened by what you saw, what would you do with that information?

You would go to... the politicians, captains of industry?

And how would you convince them? Data? Facts? Good luck!

The only facts they won't challenge are the ones that keep the wheels greased and the dollars rolling in.

But what if... what if there was a way of skipping the middle man and putting the critical news directly into everyone's head?

The probability of wide-spread annihilation kept going up.

The only way to stop it was to show it. To scare people straight.

Because, what reasonable human being wouldn't be galvanized by the potential destruction of everything they've ever known or loved?

To save civilization, I would show its collapse.

But, how do you think this vision was received?

How do you think people responded to the prospect of imminent doom?

They gobbled it up like a chocolate eclair! They didn't fear their demise, they re-packaged it.

It could be enjoyed as video-games, as TV shows, books, movies, the entire world wholeheartedly embraced the apocalypse

You know, I remember when I was a kid growing up, people would say, ' if you learn a skill, work hard, and keep your nose clean, eventually you're gonna get your reward'; you know, you think like that today, they call you a 'chump', a 'loser'...

cut orange wire

               “Where must we go, we who wander this wasteland, in search of our better selves.”

I see it as a (back then) youngster's reaction to the prejudices of the big city people who were at the cutting edge in fashion, culture, music (almost to the point where even rotten punks, in London, were looking better than them) towards four miserably looking boys wandering for the purpose of a record deal - "I'm more than you see, more than you let me be"; they were still holding hope they would have broken into that world - "You don't see me, but you will" / "I'm leaving the invisible world" - by means of music as expression of a vivid soul as opposed to the surface that everyone was looking at. I see "I won't be my father's son" as "I won't be Paul anymore, I will be Bono". Eventually, that contrast is broken with "There is no them", which can sound as a plain "Who fuckin' cares" or, in a wiser, adult point of view, as if that contrast is ultimately solved as the music is able to reach the most "different" dude.