JAYFORCE

Respect shout to Morgan State alum Duane Saunders Jr. who is putting us on to the National Anthem’s [conveniently] forgotten third verse (quoted in the next block) with this documentary “What So Proudly We Hail.” Might make you feel a new different way about #TakeAKnee

And where is that band who so vauntingly swore
That the havoc of war and the battle’s confusion,
A home and a country, should leave us no more?
Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps’ pollution.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave:
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave,
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave

The breakdown: Hireling and slave. That slave part… that’s Black people enslaved in the U.S. Many made a deal with the Brits, to join their side, gaining freedom if the Redcoats won… and the ‘real Americans’ (not us “three-fifths” humans, just living in America) got salty and wrong a song about it. Wanna hear it? It’s in the 3rd verse of the National Anthem. And that Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps’ pollution part… Yeah, our ancestors “betrayal” (imagine their gall, making a deal with their SLAVEMASTERS’ enemy) was a pollution that their spill blood had washed away. As in the song celebrated our ancestors’ deaths in battle (as opposed to beating, raping, and working us to death under the power of the lash and legislation). See, we (Black people) could not be saved from the terror of flight. The Americans’ valor, the flag waving in evidence of it, o’er the land of the FREE (not us) and the home of the BRAVE (nah, they thought us traiterous cowards)!

FOH!!

Real ‘Muricans are quick to tell us to love it or leave it… today. Why not let us ‘leave it’ back in the day when you enslaved us? We had to enlist and take up arms and FIGHT you, and this would not be the last time, to be FREE to LEAVE. And miss us with the “Why can’t we just drop it and move on?” argument. Drop it?!? Hell, like that 3rd Anthem verse, we have yet to ‘pick it up’ for real.

#TakeAKnee #NationalAnthemDoesNotStandForAll

Read the rest of this entry »