When lawyer and poet Francis Scott Key wrote the lyrics to “The Star-Spangled Banner” in 1814, he was trying to heal a divided nation and encourage all Americans to rise above party politics. It worked. Celebrating the stalwart heroism of the defenders of Fort McHenry who turned the tide of the War of 1812, Key’s song went viral. It was printed and reprinted across the nation, in both Democratic-Republican and Federalist party newspapers.
This reflected how “The Star-Spangled Banner” has always been more than a passive musical symbol. In 1814, its words inspired an incipient patriotism, helping to forge 18 states into one young nation. In 1861, its lyrics became a rallying cry, rousing Union volunteers to service in the Civil War. In 1965, the morning after “Bloody Sunday,” when segregationists attacked civil rights marchers in Selma, Ala., the anthem was sung at dawn by those who had been driven back violently from the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Key’s words steeled their resolve to realize the promise of equality.
And yet today, as the national anthem of the United States, its words can be a barrier to unity. While little known and rarely sung, the third verse of Key’s lyrics includes the following divisive phrase:
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave
Revisiting the “The Star-Spangled Banner” and its complex history around white supremacy is a necessary step if we are to truly address how this song has evolved and can function as a national anthem for all today.
Many Americans may not know that their nation’s anthem invokes slavery. Key was an enslaver and prosecuted abolitionists as District Attorney for Washington, D.C. And yet, he also volunteered his legal services to free those unjustly enslaved. Arguing more than 100 such cases (several all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court), Key’s efforts resulted in the freedom of at least 189 people. Key is a conflicted figure, but one who had much in common with the U.S. Constitution in this era. His very soul was compromised by a regime in which the owning of human beings was supported by law.
Even so, given the nation’s struggles with the question of slavery from its founding, it is hard to understand why Key would use the word “slave” in a song about unity. Abolitionists would have read the word “slave” as a provocation, specifically a mocking reference to the Colonial Marines, who were heroic Black men who had escaped slavery and joined the British in fighting against their former enslavers. In return, the Colonial Marines were promised freedom for themselves and their families after the war. The British honored this promise.
For a majority of White Americans at the time, however, Key’s lyrics seem not to have invoked the nation’s “peculiar institution” at all, but rather a patriotic sentiment going back to the American Revolution, specifically the refusal of Americans to be subjugated to the British king. When Key’s lyrics were written in 1814, Britain was not yet a parliamentary democracy. Instead, the British people were subjects beholden to the dictates of a monarch. When Key wrote, “no refuge could save the hireling and slave,” he mocked the attacking British enemy, whose troops were paid mercenaries (rather than the American volunteers fighting against them of their own free will) and also royal subjects who owed fealty to their king (and thus could not exercise such free will at all).
While surprising to us today, the use of “slave” to mean “royal subject” was so common in early American discourse that Key could use the word in a song celebrating the “land of the free” without any sense of irony. For Key and many of the White men who held political power in this era, Black Americans were not fully citizens and thus did not enter into the equation of liberty.
Abolitionists disagreed and even rewrote these lyrics. One 1844 version sung to the anthem melody and titled “Oh Say, Do You Hear?” parodies Key’s third verse with these words:
No refuge is found, on our unhallowed ground,
For the wretched in Slavery’s manacles bound;
While our star-spangled banner in vain boasts to wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!
In another remarkable moment, a Black woman refused to stand for the anthem in December 1860. Writing for an African American newspaper, this woman protested a celebratory performance of Key’s song at a Black Baptist church, proclaiming that “‘O’er the land of the free, and a home of the brave’ should never be pronounced by Anglo African lips, so long as a single child of God clanks a fetter upon the American soil.”
The song continued to spur debate in the 20th century, even as it officially became the nation’s anthem in 1931. Indeed, the congressional resolution enacting this change reads simply: “The composition consisting of the words and music known as The Star-Spangled Banner is the national anthem.” Neither words nor music are identified precisely, although the two all-but official editions — the “Service Version” used by the U.S. military and a second “Standardized Version” issued by the then U.S. Bureau of Education for use in schools — did eliminate the third verse with its reference to “slave.” I have yet to find any historical record explaining why, however.
Repeated attempts by Congress in the 1950s and 1960s to create an official version of the anthem (and officially eliminate verse three) all failed. In the context of the Red Scare and antiwar protests of that time, any discussion of a new version quickly became mired in accusations of nefarious manipulation — that some politician was trying to “change” the nation’s anthem. To this day, there remains no official version.
But, that is actually a good thing — at least in terms of the music.
The purpose of any nation’s anthem is to inspire devotion and citizenship, not to enforce endless repetition of a heartless fealty. Patriotism cannot be legislated. Love of country is a choice.
Similarly, expressing that love sincerely in music requires artistic freedom. The soaring majesty of Whitney Houston’s gospel-tinged rendition at Super Bowl XXV in 1991, for example, would not have been possible if there was only one, officially acceptable way to perform the song.
This freedom also includes the right to botch the high notes, to forget the words or use the anthem as a tool for protest. Some may cringe or get angry, but this freedom of expression makes sincere patriotism possible. Famous and infamous renditions by Igor Stravinsky (1941), José Feliciano (1968), Jimi Hendrix (1969), Marvin Gaye (1983) and even Roseanne Barr (1990) each sparked an uproar, but they revealed America’s anthem to be a living symbol, a cacophonous expression of passion that shows us what democracy is all about.
Before the nation celebrates its 250th birthday in 2026, perhaps it is time to revisit this history and officially remove Key’s third verse from the national anthem. It may be forgotten, but the history of white supremacy it represented is not. Reckoning with this difficult truth would invite all Americans to citizenship, welcoming everyone to join in community through song.