Some of my students are shocked when they learn that The Star-Spangled Banner, the US national anthem, has racist origins, so here’s a quick history:
The poem, “Defence of Fort M'Henry,” from which Star-Spangled Banner originates, was written by Francis Scott Key after witnessing Fort McHenry's bombardment in Baltimore by the British during the War of 1812 – a war declared by the U.S., in part, to snatch Canada.
Key “was a slave-owner and, as he would demonstrate in his later career, a thoroughgoing white supremacist.”* He dedicated his life to suppressing the abolitionist movement and co-founded the American Colonization Society to deport free Black Americans to Africa.
As an attorney, he attacked notable abolitionists. In his poem, he praised the killing of formerly enslaved people who freed themselves from bondage to join the British:
“No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave”
In this phrase, he “brags of terrorizing and killing ‘the hireling and slave,’ implying that the British soldiers were mercenaries and explicitly condemning the renegade ex-property who fought as enemies of the star-spangled banner.”*
