Civil rights groups are calling for the name of the collapsed Baltimore Bridge to be changed when it is eventually rebuilt. They claim the late national anthem writer whose name is on the bridge was a racist slave owner.
The African American Leadership Council of Anne Arundel County unanimously passed a resolution Monday calling on Maryland Governor Wes Moore and the state government to rededicate the Francis Scott Key Bridge. The Capital Gazette reported.
The paper claims that the March 26 collapse of a bridge into the Patapsco River “allows Marylanders and taxpayers to remove names from bridges that do not respect all Marylanders.” .
The group claims that Key was a slave owner who wrote lyrics that were “degrading to black people.” According to the Baltimore Banner.
The caucus, which includes civil rights groups such as the local NAACP chapter and the Maryland Association of Black Clergy, decided instead to rename the bridge after the late Palen, the first black man from Maryland to be elected to the U.S. House of Representatives.・They argue that it should be named after Congressman J. Mitchell. .
“Obviously the opposition will not be happy and we expect opposition,” caucus convenor Karl Snowden told the Gazette.
“But we know we are on the right side of history and will ultimately prevail.”
Key, who wrote “The Star-Spangled Banner” while a prisoner of war aboard a British ship in Baltimore Harbor during the War of 1812, grew up on a Maryland plantation and owned at least six slaves. According to WTOP.
He ultimately freed some slaves and helped many black Marylanders gain freedom in the years before Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation.
But he was also an agent for slaveholders who wanted their “property” back, and once said, “In these many instances, the freedom I so earnestly sought for them was not theirs.” “I can only recall two instances where it didn’t seem like it was a disaster.” ” reports the Banner.
Key also became one of the founding members of the American Colonization Society, which promoted the migration of black Americans to Africa.
Moreover, critics claim that Key once said that black Americans were “a unique and inferior race, and that all experience has shown that it is the greatest evil that afflicts the community.”
However, the Stars and Stripes Music Foundation says the quote has been “erroneously credited as Key’s first-person expression of race in the United States.”
“This quote comes from page 40 of Jefferson Morley’s insightful 2012 book, The August Blizzard: The City of Washington, Francis Scott Key, and the Forgotten Race Riots of 1835. ,” the foundation said. I explained it in a blog post.
“Morley, in turn, cites the quote from the 1937 biography Francis Scott Key: The Life and Times by Edward S. Delaplane as his sole source. This is causing confusion.”
Snowden told the Gazette that lawmakers are currently submitting a resolution to the governor’s office to rename the bridge.
The Banner said he plans to discuss the matter with the governor at a future meeting.
But when asked about the proposal, Mr Moore said he was instead focused on retrieving the bodies of the remaining construction workers who died when the Singapore-flagged Dali vessel collided with the bridge last month and reopening the strait. Stated.
“I think there is time for discussions along those lines, but now is not the time,” Moore said.
