The Meaning of the Star Spangled Banner

Words take meanings. Songs take on lightning. Anthems speak for the dead. The Banner captures the flag at dawns light over Ft  Mchenry. It captures the fog and the darkness and Francis Scott Key on the rolling battleship. It captures the existence  of the land of the free and the home of the brave even after the shelling by the British. It captures the cold bloody footprints of Valley Forge and the crossing of the icy Potomac by Washington during the Revolution. Then it is the glare of the burning of Washington during the war of 1812 with the flag hidden and the government on the run.

It is the men who charged up San Juan Hill with Teddy Roosevelt and died before they took three steps. It is the men in the trenches of World War I rising up to fall inches from their trench and dying in a foreign land. It is the men who came home without legs and arms and the men who never came home in the Civil War. It is all the men and women black and white who died to abolish slavery.

And then it is the GI's hitting the beach at Normandy and dying in the surf. The men who had just come through a Great Depression and then died before they were twenty. It is the hundreds of thousands who perished in the morning light of D Day liberating Europe from the Nazis . It is the Vietnam vets who came back and kissed the tarmac after being prisoners of war for years. It is the graves at Arlington, the hollowed out eyes of Shiloh.

It is a willingness of the heart.
William Hazelgrove
Forging a President

Some Things You Might Not Know About the Star Spangled Banner

Since the Star Spangled Banner is in the news I did some research and here are some things that surprised me. Francis Scott Key was  a 35 year old lawyer and amateur poet on a prisoner exchange mission when he went aboard a British ship and was taken prisoner. It is from this vantage point he observed the shelling of Ft McHenry and in the darkness could not tell if the fort had fallen. In the dawns early light he saw the American flag and jotted down a poem on the back of an envelope. He was released and finished the poem in a Baltimore hotel and called it Defense of Ft. Henry. He then gave the song to his brother in law who set it to the melody of  The Anacrenotic Song.

The song was printed in The Baltimore Patriot and became popular. The first time it was actually sung was in a tavern. Woodrow Wilson in 1918 tasked the US Dept of Education with coming up with an official version. He would later order it played at military occasions. The song was known as notoriously hard to sing with its wide range. It was not sung at a ball game until 1918. Congress voted it down the same year as the official National Anthem.  Six different bills were introduced over the next ten years to designate the Banner as our national anthem. It was voted down every time. The original middle lyrics reference slaves fighting for the British against the Americans. A stanza was taken out during World War I because of its anti British tone. A stanza was added during the Civil War.

Five million people signed a petition in 1930 for the Star Spangled Banner to become the United States National Anthem. Several men had to sing it for the United States Judiciary Committee because Senators thought it was too high pitched for the average person to sing. After they finished they sent the bill to the House of Representatives .The Senate passed the bill in 1931 and Herbert Hoover signed it into law.


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?

Al Capone and the 1933 Worlds Fair

Could You Take a Knee?

Lets say you are on a company outing to a Cubs game. Everyone is there along with your boss and the company has bought the tickets and the beer and hot dogs and the peanuts. It is now time for the National Anthem. Everyone stands up and some people put their hands over their hearts. You are a middle class person with a house, kids, mortgage, dog, cat. You are solidly in the  middle of the middle and now everyone is standing and you decide you do not agree with some of the policies of the country or maybe you just don't go for the whole patriotic thing. So you take a knee. Your boss stares at you. His boss stares at you. You explain you disapprove of some things going on in America and so you took a knee. Your career is over.

You may not get fired that day. But essentially you better start looking for something else because from then on you are marked. Most middle class people can not take a knee. They have to feed their kids and pay their mortgage. They have to tow the line. Professional football players who make millions of dollars and get to be on television and live a life most people would kill for, they can take a knee. It is part of being at the top of the pyramid. Now you should be able to take a knee. No one is saying you should not be able to express how you feel. It is part of our basic rights as Americans.

But for most of us we can not take a knee. We do not have a million dollars in the bank. Only  the lucky few can do that. Is this fair? No. But we are used to that. So it is the NFL players right to take a knee. It is their right to bring up issues that need to be discussed. It is their right to make a million dollars from playing football. But I will say this; to whom much is given much is expected. Interpret that as you will.

Al Capone and the 1933 Worlds Fair