OAN’s Avril Elfie
2:14 PM – Wednesday, April 10, 2024
Civil rights groups are calling for the collapsed Baltimore bridge to be renamed, citing the name’s “history.”
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On Monday, a group called the Anne Arundel County African American Leadership Council voted unanimously to pass a resolution asking Gov. Wes Moore (D-Md.) to rename the Francis Scott Key Bridge. did.
The group claims the bridge collapse “allows Marylanders and taxpayers to remove their names from a bridge that does not respect all Marylanders.”
They also reportedly claimed that “Key was a “slave owner” who wrote lyrics that degraded black people.
Congressional groups are now calling for the bridge to be named instead after Congressman Palen J. Mitchell, the first African American from Maryland to be elected to the U.S. House of Representatives.
“Obviously the opposition is not going to be happy, and we expect opposition,” caucus convener Karl Snowden said. official gazette. “But we know we are on the right side of history and will ultimately prevail.”
Key, who composed the national anthem “The Star-Spangled Banner” as a prisoner of war aboard a British ship in Baltimore Harbor during the War of 1812, reportedly grew up on a Maryland plantation and owned at least six slaves. . He housed them and fed them. Key then freed the slaves in 1830 and helped many black people in Maryland gain freedom years before the Emancipation Proclamation.
However, according to baltimore bannerhe also stood up for those who owned slaves and sought to get their “property” back.
Key later became one of the founding members of the American Colonization Society, an organization that encouraged African Americans to immigrate to the continent.
According to Mr. Key’s critics, who claim he said this, black Americans are “a unique and inferior race, and all experience has shown that this is the greatest evil that afflicts the community.” “I’m there.”but Stars and Stripes Music Foundation states that this quote has been “incorrectly assessed as a key 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 explained 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.”
The group has submitted a resolution regarding the new name to the governor’s office and plans to discuss the issue at a future meeting.
Asked about the proposal, Moore said he was more concerned about memorializing the bodies of construction workers killed in the bridge collapse than just reopening the waterway.
“I think there is time for discussions along those lines, but now is not the time,” Moore said.
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