Francis Scott Key is one of the greatest American men who ever lived. He was a founding member of the American Colonization Society, which sought to remove freed black people from the USA and assist them in returning to Africa. Had this organization succeeded in its mission to repatriate free blacks to Africa, what do you think Baltimore—a near 70 percent black city in 2024—would look like today? What would America be like had Key and the members of the ACS been successful in their stated mission?

Doesn’t matter, sadly. It’s all wishful thinking. In 2024 Baltimore, a ship full of Indians just knocked the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, and now, black leaders in Maryland believe the rebuilt bridge should cease being named in honor because he “demeaned black people.”

Key Bridge name should change, civil rights groups say, by John-John Williams IV, Baltimore Banner, April 8, 2024

The Caucus of African American Leaders has unanimously voted to ask that when the Francis Scott Key Bridge is rebuilt, it no longer bear the name of the national anthem’s author.

The consortium of Civil Rights groups includes the NAACP, the National Coalition of 100 Black Women and others. It voted to recommend changing the name of the Key Bridge because it honors a man who enslaved African Americans and wrote lyrics that scholars have found “demeaned Black people.”

The 47-year-old Key Bridge was toppled by a massive cargo ship in the early-morning hours of March 26. Federal and state leaders have vowed to rebuild the Patapsco River crossing.

The caucus is now calling on Gov. Wes Moore and the Maryland General Assembly to rename the bridge after the late U.S. Rep. Parren J. Mitchell, the first African American from Maryland elected to the U.S. House of Representatives.

The caucus is also asking that the Senator Frederick Malkus Memorial Bridge, a beam bridge over the Choptank River in Dorchester County, be renamed for the late Gloria Richardson, a Civil Rights pioneer and leader in Maryland. The late Gov. Harry R. Hughes opposed naming the bridge for Malkus, who was resistant to desegregation in the 1960s and 1970s, according to the group.

In addition, the group has also called on Moore to create a memorial to those who died when the Key Bridge collapsed.

Francis Scott Key remains a polarizing figure. Best known for writing the text of the American national anthem “The Star-Spangled Banner,” his legacy has also been clouded by accusations of racism.

As a lawyer, Key helped Black Marylanders sue for their freedom prior to emancipation, but he later abhorred the thought of free Black citizens in America so much that he fought to send them to Liberia.

In later years, Key regretted that he had helped Black Marylanders sue for their freedom, saying it had “produced for them nothing but evil,” and claimed he could not “remember more than two instances, out of this large number, in which it did not appear that the freedom I so earnestly sought for them was their ruin.” He called Black Americans “a distinct and inferior race of people, which all experience proves to be the greatest evil that afflicts a community.”

The caucus plans to formally give Moore its request this week, but will further discuss the issue during its quarterly meeting with the governor. That will occur some time after the legislative session is over, according to Carl O. Snowden, convener of the Caucus of African American Leaders.

“There will be some opposition to this, which we can anticipate. That goes without saying,” he said.

Moore did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

No longer can we honor Dead White Males in America, even when those white males long gone wrote our National Anthem. The Great Replacement wasn’t just about displacing white people from our major cities, but renaming every road, street, school, building, and bridge once celebrating Dead White Males, for a black individual.

That’s America in 2024.

Francis Scott Key tried to free America from the burden of a racial group we are told represents our greatest asset, when he knew they were truly our greatest liability. Had the American Colonization Society been successful, what do you think America would be like today?

Well, for one thing, free of the burden of babysitting a racial group existing as a collective detriment to the advancement of our civilization.

[Comment at Unz.com]