Amid bridge tragedy, Washington Post calls out Francis Scott Key as a racist

Francis Scott Key is best known for writing the poem that became America’s National Anthem: "The Star-Spangled Banner."

Key wrote the lyrics after an 1814 British attack on Fort McHenry, which is right by the bridge that has just collapsed in Baltimore this week. The bridge also happens to be named after Francis Scott Key.

Americans all over the country woke up to the collapse of the bridge this week — but the Washington Post is already calling out Key for his “racist views” in what Pat Gray believes is an obvious attempt to erase American history.

“Nobody even knows the verse they're referencing here,” Gray says.

Rather, Key was just “a patriot” who “obviously wanted America to win this war and would have been pissed about anybody siding with the British at that time.”

The verse being criticized begins, “No refuge could save the hireling and the slave from the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave, and the Star Spangled Banner in triumph doth wave or the land of the free and the home of the brave.”

“He didn’t want anyone joining the British,” Gray explains.

To make the accusation even more absurd, Key was a lawyer who defended several slaves and even freed multiple of his own.

“But, they still had to make him into a bad guy,” Gray sighs.

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