San Francisco 49ers fans are burning Colin Kaepernick jerseys after he refused to stand for the national anthem as part of a protest of racial oppression. A YouTube video shows one fan burning Kapernick’s jersey while the The Star-Spangled Banner is playing.
There were plenty of protests of Kaepernick’s protest on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Kaepernick has aligned with Black Lives Matter ideology in his protest, but did not specifically mention the third verse of the Star-Spangled Banner that alludes to the defeat of slaves that escaped United States plantations to side with the British forces, and who were defeated along with the British forces in the War of 1812.
San Francisco 49ers fan burns Colin Kaepernick’s Jersey.
In America, life is complicated, and Francis Scott Key is well-known by well-schooled Americans as the writer of the Star-Spangled Banner. He’s not as well-known as a slave-owner with a complicated past showing a mixed record on racial politics. According to the biography What So Proudly We Hailed: Francis Scott Key, A Life, Francis Scott Key was a white lawyer that risked his life to protect a slave, and faced a lynch mob at the jail door that was attempting to access the slave suspected of attempted murder. He also donated his legal services to win cases for black slaves who were fighting for their freedom under a 1783 law that prohibited slaveholders from other states from transporting human chattel into Maryland. But like many whites of the era, Francis Scott Key is believed to have thought that blacks were intellectually and morally inferior to whites. As a lawyer, Key also represented slave owners trying to recapture their “possessions” after the War of 1812. Also, Francis Scott Key was the prosecutor in the trial of Reuben Crandall, MD, who was charged with publishing and circulating seditious and incendiary pro-Abolitionist papers in the District of Columbia. Francis Scott Key lost the trial; the jury found Crandall not-guilty.
Many Americans only know the first verse of “The Star-Spangled Banner” and many don’t even know there is a second verse, a third verse and a fourth verse. The first verse we all know is about hope in a perilous battle, and victory of Americans together with the discovery of the US flag still flying at dawn. But the third verse references the deeper political conflict of slavery and abolitionism — pointing out that “no refuge could save the hireling and slave.”
Will the first verse continue to uphold the harmony of the United States? Or will the third verse discord cause a rise in bad blood, dissension, disunity and infighting?
VERSE 1
O 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 rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there;
O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave,
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?
Verse 2
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 full glory reflected now shines in the stream:
‘Tis the star-spangled banner, O! long may it wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.
Verse 3
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.
Verse 4
O thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
Between their loved home and the war’s desolation.
Blest with vict’ry 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
See also …
The Baltimore Sun “‘Star-Spangled Banner’ writer had complex record on race”
WTTW Black Sailors and Soldiers in the War of 1812
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