Remove ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ as national anthem, California NAACP urges

The California chapter of the NAACP has called “The Star-Spangled Banner” a “racist” and “anti-black” song, and says it will call on Congress to remove it as the national anthem, The Sacramento Bee reported.

At issue is a portion of the third verse of “The Star-Spangled Banner” — which is rarely sung beyond its first verse at major sporting events — that reads: “No refuge could save the hireling and slave from the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave.”

“It’s racist; it doesn’t represent our community, it’s anti-black,” Alice Huffman, the organization’s president, told KOVR-TV in Sacramento. “This song is wrong; it shouldn’t have been there, we didn’t have it ’til 1931, so it won’t kill us if it goes away.”

Read more at the San Diego Union-Tribune

When California lawmakers return to the Capitol in January, the state chapter of the NAACP will be seeking their support for a campaign to remove “The Star-Spangled Banner” as the national anthem.

The organization last week began circulating among legislative offices two resolutions that passed at its state conference in October: one urging Congress to rescind “one of the most racist, pro-slavery, anti-black songs in the American lexicon” as the national anthem, and another in support of former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who launched a protest movement against police brutality among professional athletes by kneeling when “The Star-Spangled Banner” was played before games.

Read more at the Sacramento Bee

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