The US National Anthem

I wrote a blog post quite a while back on the Anthem and how it was selected. We chose poorly, actually choosing the worst of them all. This was a political decision, given that one of the choices was written by somebody *gasp* Jewish. The one selected also tacitly/implicitly endorsed slavery which was important during the post-Wilson 1920s with Southern writers and the Daughters of the Confederacy rewriting American history.

So?

Well, I’m all about learning. I got to listen to a song titled ‘Lift Every Voice’ that is usually referred to as the ‘Black National Anthem’, often as a way to dismiss the song or make the song seem political. So I went a-lookin’. I had no idea the song was written in the early 1900s. Hearing it, listening to the lyrics, it absolutely should have been considered for the anthem. While it may be meant for black Americans, it’s message is universal, whether black, white, born here, or immigrant.

If you haven’t heard it, it’s well worth four minutes of your life:

Here are the lyrics: Lift every voice and sing / Till earth and heaven ring / Ring with the harmonies of Liberty ;let our rejoicing rise / High as the list’ning skies / Let it resound loud as the rolling seas / A song full of 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 till victory is won / Stony the road we trod, bitter the chast’ning rod / Felt in the day that hope unborn had died / Yet with a steady beat ,have not our weary feet, come to the place on 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, till now we stand at last / Where the white gleam of our star is cast.

It’s not quite La Marseilles, O Canada, or Der Deutschlandlied, but it’s up there. (Those are the three greatest national anthems, followed by the Russian-Soviet one)

And then you have the current anthem, written by Francis Scott Key who supported slavery and was brother-in-law to Roger Taney, SCOTUS Chief Justice responsible for the Dred Scott decision: 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 the rocket’s red glare, the bombs bursting in air. Gave proof through the 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! On the shore, dimly seen through the mists of the deep, Where the foe’s haughty host in dread silence reposes, What is that which the breeze, o’er the towering steep, As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses? Now it catches the gleam of the morning’s first beam, In fully glory reflected now shines in the stream: ‘Tis the star-spangled banner! Oh, long may it wave O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

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 washed out their foul footsteps’ 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.

Oh, thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand Between their loved home and the war’s desolation! Blest with victory and peace, may the heav’n-rescued land Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation! Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just, And this be our motto: “In God is our trust”: And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave. We love it so much, I think you do too.

Isn’t it obvious which is musically better? “Lift Every Voice” has no chance of being adopted as a national anthem now. The fact it is labeled as ‘Black National Anthem’ means people hate it just for that subtitle. It’s a pity. It would’ve been a much better alternative (like the other anthems in the linked blog post) to the Star Spangled Banner.