how is the star spangled banner song racist

Question #4 in Tappan’s letter asks Key about the beliefs of Southern “Christian Colonizationists” concerning emancipation. A closer reading of the original letter, however, shows that Key did not represent his own words with the quoted phrase.

This biography is the source of confusion as to the quote’s speaker.ĭiscussing a July 1838 letter from Key to the Reverend Benjamin Tappan of Maine, Delaplaine reprints the quote as given and credits it to Key without sufficiently detailed explanation. Morley, in turn, cites as his sole source a quote in the 1937 biography Francis Scott Key: Life and Times by Edward S. The quote is taken from page 40 of Jefferson Morley’s generally insightful 2012 book Snow-Storm in August: Washington City, Francis Scott Key, and the Forgotten Race Riot of 1835 (1). Incorrectly credited to Key as a first-person expression of his attitudes about race in the United States, the quote asserts that free Blacks are “a distinct and inferior race of people, which all experience proves to be the greatest evil that afflicts a community.” Nevertheless, it is vital to articulate his position precisely in our effort to understand both America’s own troubling legacy of racism and music’s role in resisting and perpetuating this injustice.Ī racist quote attributed to Francis Scott Key, the author of the lyrics to “The Star- Spangled Banner,” has been circulating in news articles and blog posts. That his attitudes perpetuated white supremacy and have been proven wrong by history is beyond question. As a slaveholder and a Southern attorney who often volunteered his services in representing enslaved people and free Blacks but who also fought passionately against abolitionists, Key has a troubling relationship with slavery. Francis Scott Key is a complicated historical figure.

How is the star spangled banner song racist