Another Super Bowl and another controversy, are you surprised? What would be Monday after the Super Bowl without some made up controversy that has to dominate the air waves. This time it is a political and racial divide that has created the controversy. That, and the fact people have no sense of a history or appreciation of history is what will always amaze me.

During the pregame ceremony they had a performer sing what many call the Black National Anthem. Being White I never paid attention to the fact that there was anything that was considered the Black National Anthem. Being who I am I decided to look it up. The so called Black National Anthem is actually a hymn that was first was poem written by James Weldon Johnson, chairman of the Florida Baptist Academy in Jacksonville, Florida around 1900. The poem was supposed to be written to commemorate Abraham Lincoln’s birthday. Instead it was written about the ongoing Civil Rights movement and the struggles of African Americans following the Reconstruction era. “Lift Every Voice and Sing” was first recited by a group of 500 students in 1900. His Brother J. Rosamond Johnson would later set the poem to music. It is a hymn that has been featured in 42 different Christian hymnals. In 1917, the NAACP began to promote the hymn as a “Negro National Anthem” which is now termed today as the “Black National Anthem”. It has been performed by various performers over the last century including the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. In 2021 the then House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn sponsored a bill proposing that “Lift Every Voice and Sing” be designated as the “National Hymn” of the United States. Our own National Anthem did not become just that, the National Anthem, until an act of Congress in 1931 - 14 years after the NAACP declared “Lift Every Voice and Sing” as the Negro National Anthem.  Blacks grasping onto that hymn as theirs was no disrespect to the United States because the US did not have an anthem at the time and it serves as no disrespect now.  

When I was in High School I sang in the St. Mary’s Lutheran Church choir and we wanted to sing “A Mighty Fortress”. We were told that it would not be appropriate to sing the song with just the choir because that song was written by Martin Luther and it was like the anthem of the Lutheran Church. It was a song that was to be sung by the whole congregation. The Lutherans have their own Anthem which is ok by me. When Olympics are televised we here the Olympic Anthem all the time, pretty much after every commercial break. The fact that the Olympics have an Anthem is not a big deal to me and I have not heard anyone complain about that. Anthems were originally a form of liturgical music, originated as part of a religious ceremony. So after reading everything am I surprised that the NAACP would grasp onto a hymn like Lift Every Voice and Sing? There was no disrespect because there was no National Anthem at the time they made that song their own.

Of course MAGA went nuts. Before a football game, which the majority of the participants are Black, they play a hymn that has been embraced by the Black community, how dare the NFL? After looking up the history of the so called “Black National Anthem” the fact that MAGA went nuts makes them look more racist than I originally thought. This hymn that the NAACP embraced before there was an official “National Anthem” has never been a threat to the “Unity” of our nation. If anything I think it was a great gesture of inclusion the NFL did which is what the real problem is. MAGA does not want inclusion. The funny thing is you can’t have Unity without inclusion. Republicans like Ron DeSantis have campaigned against inclusion which to me is campaigning against Unity. What is one of the opposites of inclusions? Could one of the opposites be segregation? Sometimes that is what I truly think that Republicans want to bring back is Segregation.

Representative Matt Gaetz from Florida declared that he was not going to watch the Super Bowl because they played the “Black National Anthem” before the game. They also played “America the Beautiful” and the “Star Spangled Banner” also with everything done in good taste. I would bet you dollars to donuts that Representative Gaetz watched the game but he wanted to cater to his base by posting a racist rant. Racism is a real thing in America and Unity has never been the goal of the White Supremists of this nation. When you have to pass separate legislation just to give Blacks the right to vote is not a “Unified” nation. When you have gerrymandering meant to suppress the Black vote you are not working to “Unify” the country. Making it harder for people to vote is not trying to “Unify” the nation.

Our nation’s “National Anthem” is based on a poem written by Francis Scott Key. It was a poem that he wrote after watching the bombardment by the British of Fort McHenry during the War of 1812. It was a poem that was written by a slave owner and even mentions slaves in it. Our National Anthem is only the first verse of the poem. It is not a poem that I would expect would be a favorite to Blacks for the very reason of the slavery issue. You can say that Blacks need to get over the slavery but how can they when they are treated as sub-standard citizens to this day? How can they when they have people like DeSantis telling them that they benefited from slavery? How does any race benefit when they are put into slavery and whipped into submission. They are still trying to get equality when by this stage of the game equality should be given automatically.

I don’t expect people to stand when the hymn “Lift Every Voice and Sing” is sung but to be honest with you it would be a nice gesture to make. I always stand and sing our National Anthem even if there is a soloist because I like to think it was written for all Americans but deep down inside I know that it wasn’t. The only way it can be is if we embrace the fact that “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”. The words are similar to the words of John Locke in his second treatise on government and other authors as early as the 13^th century. Jefferson borrowed these words but if we are truly going to make them our own we must include everyone no matter the race, sex, color or creed.