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Is There Anything We Can’t Blame on Confederate Nostalgia

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Typical that a song as bad as the Star-Spangled Banner would have a neo-Confederate history.

The section that favored the “Banner” was the South. By the 1920s when the newly established NAACP was making an issue of the imposition of Jim Crow laws and the practice of lynching in the South, the campaign for the “Banner” was a way to defend the prerogatives of the South, to wrap the ideology of the Confederacy in the red, white, and blue bunting of American patriotism.

Of course, no one said as much during the hearings on Linthicum’s bill. No African-American witnesses were called, and only one dissenting witness was heard—the tireless Stetson. Otherwise, all present extolled the “Banner” as the perfect expression of American patriotism. There can be little doubt that most Americans agreed. Supporters submitted a petition calling for the designation of the “Banner” as the national anthem that was signed by 5 million people.

A year later, Linthicum’s bill came up for a vote, and the House and the Senate approved it by wide majorities. On March 3, 1931, President Herbert Hoover signed it into law. Thus, 117 years after it was written, “The Star-Spangled Banner” became our national anthem.

The unspoken racial agenda of the “Banner” supporters was displayed on June 14, 1931, when the National Society of the Daughters of 1812 and the state of Maryland, sponsored a ceremony at War Memorial Plaza in Baltimore to celebrate the new national anthem. The parade was led by a column of Boy Scouts carrying three flags: the Stars and Stripes, the red and gold flag of Maryland, and the Stars and Bars of the army of the Confederate States of America.

Veterans of the Grand Army of the Republic pulled out at the sight of the banner of their former enemies. “GAR Balks at Southern Flag in Parade,” reported The Baltimore Sun. Gen. John F. King, past national commander of the GAR, “ordered the Union men to disband and fall out line,” said the Baltimore Afro-American.

Chew on that while you celebrate the 150th Vicksburg Day today.

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