As I reported last month, after the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore collapsed after being hit by a ship, the Associated Press decided it was a good opportunity to look at the history of Key. Deepti Hajela wrote:
While the first verse of the anthem is the most well-known, there are a total of four stanzas; in the third, there’s a reference made to a slave. Key, whose family owned people and who owned enslaved people himself, supported the idea of sending free Black people to Africa but opposed the abolition of slavery in the U.S., according to the National Park Service’s Fort McHenry National Monument and Historic Shrine.
His personal history has made him a controversial figure in some quarters; in June 2020, a statue of him in San Francisco was taken down.
I believe it was Shaun King, the black Muslim, who first exposed the shocking third stanza including the word "slave" — if I remember correctly, he tweeted that it was the most important column that he'd ever written as the justice reporter for the New York Daily News.
Plenty of people explained to King that the "Hireling and slave" line wasn't about African slaves at all — it referred to impressed British soldiers.
A lot of people posted at the time that they were for sure going to rename the bridge. And it looks like its happening:
St. George Floyd Memorial Bridge incoming pic.twitter.com/PMhRsCj1zg
— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) April 10, 2024
Whoever destroyed the racist bridge is a hero.
My God, I called this…https://t.co/5dLaEi3MN4
— Willy Cuz (@WillyCuz) April 10, 2024
Nah it'll be Freddie Gray, he was from Baltimore.
— Dan Peters (@TheDanPeters) April 10, 2024
Yeah, there was some historic rioting in Baltimore over that.
Fetanyl Freeway
— Omar (@tarblooders10) April 10, 2024
I'm surprised they waited this long. The Breyonna Taylor/George Floyd Memorial Bridge will be the new name.
— Kentucky Whig Party (@KYWhig) April 10, 2024
George Floyd always in our hearts
— I TWEETS ALL 💯 (@I_tweets_all) April 10, 2024
Nobody would be shocked by that.
— Town Square (@XTownSquareX) April 10, 2024
It’s coming somewhere to a crime ridden inner city near you within the next decade.
Knew that was gonna happen… 🙄
— SometimeClown52-AM (@SometimeClown52) April 10, 2024
I predicted this a week before it fell.
— Austin Dent 🚬 (@Johnbon92221) April 10, 2024
Said the same the day it happened.
— Christopher (@chirt19741) April 10, 2024
No shit this was coming
— ToMmYpOpS (@DaisyPops1978) April 10, 2024
They should name it the Joe R. Biden Bridge because of the many times Biden took the train across the bridge.
We’ve got people in America screaming “death to America” and these people want to focus on this nonsense.
— Rob Coates 🇺🇸 (@LuckyHippie926) April 10, 2024
We’re not a serious country
One of the things that bugs me so much about the "very fine people" hoax — often repeated by Biden — is that the transcript shows that Donald Trump explicitly denounced neo-Nazis. He meant there were fine people on the side of the debate for keeping the statue of Robert E. Lee intact, and there were fine people who wanted it taken down. We know which side won that argument, as Confederate monuments have been toppled, melted down, or covered with tarps since. Trump asked if George Washington or Thomas Jefferson was going to be next.
I hadn't considered that Francis Scott Key was going to be targeted for erasure.
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