What’s in an Anthem? Or a motto?
And Can We Ever Change Them?
A week has passed since another Super Bowl has come and gone. Although Super Bowl LVII was one of the closest games in its history, in the days following, few people around me were talking about the actual game.
Instead, there was heated debate about Rihanna’s half-time show, and even more controversy over Sheryl Lee Ralph singing “Lift Every Voice and Sing” (the Black national anthem, as it’s been known among African-Americans for about a hundred years) — a first in Super Bowl history.
The Super Bowl seems to be the last American event that brings everyone together. Even if you can’t stand the game, there is the National Anthem performance and the half-time show, plus the clever multi-million dollar commercials. And yet, even here, we find political, religious, cultural, and racial divides.
The complaint among many whites is that there is only one National Anthem, “The Star Spangled Banner,” which officially became the anthem in 1931, more than a century after it was written by Francis Scott Key in 1814. When it was being considered, it was up against stiff competition, “My Country ’Tis of Thee” and “America the Beautiful” (a better anthem, in my opinion).
As for “Lift Every Voice and Sing”, it started out as a poem, written by James Weldon Johnson in 1899. It wasn’t until a few years later that his brother, J. Rosamond Johnson, added music. When Johnson (James) later became a leader of the NAACP during the 1920s, his song became more popular among Blacks and unofficially became known as the Black National Anthem. (In 2021, Rep. James Clyburn introduced a bill to name it the National Hymn.)
Here are some of the words:
“Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,
Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us;
Facing the rising sun of our new day begun,
Let us march on till victory is won.”
That’s about as controversial as the song is, which can’t be said for all the verses of “The Star Spangled Banner.” Weldon’s song acknowledges our dark past but remains healing and hopeful for today and tomorrow. Who could object to such a song being sung in front of the world’s largest audience?
Why do we get so hung up on tradition? Traditions are nice — they inform our heritage and roots and establish our culture — but, on their own, an appeal to tradition as the sole reason for doing something is what philosophers would call a logical fallacy.
What we call tradition today has not always been so. For example, Francis Bellamy, a Baptist minister, wrote The Pledge of Allegiance in 1892. His version, intended to be recited in about fifteen seconds’ time, reads as follows:
“I pledge allegiance to my flag, and the republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”
Notice anything missing? Right! The two words, “under God,” were not added to the pledge until 1954 during the Eisenhower administration. The context is important because at that time, we were in the grip of the Cold War with the Soviet Union, and adding “under God” became a way to differentiate us from the godless, communist Soviet Union.
An emotional fervor got the best of lawmakers; such decisions should never be made when emotions are running high.
The same thing happened during the Civil War. The Union wanted to boost morale by pulling God to their side and began using “In God We Trust” as a motto. Soon after, it began appearing on coins.
However, it did not become the country’s official motto until 1956 — once again, we can thank President Dwight “Ike” Eisenhower. We did have a motto before that: E Pluribus Unum, which translates as “out of many, one.” Now, how unifying is that? Why did we need to replace it? Once “In God We Trust” became the official motto, it was printed on our paper currency as well as coins.
If you’re a true traditionalist, you’d want to recite the Pledge the way Bellamy wrote it. You’d want “E Pluribus Unum” on our currency. But few Americans (and far fewer right-wing Americans) would be willing to part with “under God” and “In God We Trust.” And yet, look how much trouble is stirred up when we introduce God into our politics.
Our founding fathers knew better.
Charles Darwin famously wrote, “The species that survives is the one that is able best to adapt and adjust to the changing environment in which it finds itself.”
We, as a country, in order to survive, must be able to adapt and adjust to our environment. We are not the same people we were in 1776, 1814, 1864, 1945, or 2001.
Maybe the National Anthem still serves us on some level. But is it a bad thing to learn another beautiful song that brings comfort to people? Does one take away from the other?
Lawrence O’Donnell recently interviewed Pulitzer Prize winner Isabel Wilkerson (author of Caste and other great books), and she gave a great analogy that speaks to this.
“If you think of our country as an old house, a house that is 246 years old and has been around for generations,” she explained, “and you know, when you have an old house, you know the work is never done . . . An old house constantly needs work. As current occupants of this house that is the United States of America, it’s not something you get emotional about where you go blaming and assigning shame. You roll up your sleeves and ask yourself what it’s going to take to get this house in shape and survive and thrive for many generations to come. That means looking at every system. We are not the ones who built that house with its decaying beams and frayed wiring and corroded pipes, but as current occupants, we must take a look at those systems and figure out what it takes to fix it.”
Her point is that when we look at an old house, or when we go to a doctor about a condition (another analogy she uses), we need to know the history of the house or our health, going back generations. We need to know the history of our country.
That we are so triggered over which song is being sung at a sporting event and by whom points to a much larger and largely unexplored issue — at a time when some are banning books and even conversation.
Our house is not in order. If we don’t roll up our sleeves and work together to inspect and fix the systems, our house will continue to decay. And if we allow that to happen, we’ll soon be fighting over things more important than anthems and mottos.
