By Jonathan Holloway
Recognizing Juneteenth is a somber act of remembrance; a declaration that this country should continue the hard work of becoming the beacon of liberty and righteous independence that it claims to be. Juneteenth, the federally recognized holiday that honors the emancipation of enslaved people, is a reminder that freedom is incomplete if it is based on anything less than the truth. Taking a close look at the history of “The Star-Spangled Banner” helps illuminate the importance of a holiday like Juneteenth.
In September 1814, Francis Scott Key wrote a poem titled “The Defence of Fort M’Henry,” when he saw the United States flag defiantly flying the morning after British warships spent a night bombarding Baltimore’s Fort McHenry. Over a century later, that poem would officially become this country’s national anthem. It is a song that speaks to resilience and hails the freedom and bravery that are the bedrock of this country’s values. This much is familiar to those who claim to know a bit of our nation’s history, but like most national founding stories, we have arrived at the familiar through a commitment to forgetting.
Few people know, for example, that there are four stanzas in the original poem. The second, third, and fourth stanzas are more martial than the first, aggressively criticizing external threats to independence, and all end similarly, hailing the flag and its representation of the “land of the free and the home of the brave.” But freedom for who? Who in this country is brave?
The third and fourth stanzas of “The Defence of Fort M’Henry,” by Francis Scott Key. The poem would become the lyrics of "The Star-Spangled Banner."
In 1861, poet Oliver Wendell Holmes added an unofficial fifth stanza to Key’s original four. This verse, written in the dawning moments of the Civil War, spoke about an internal threat — southern secessionists — and looked forward to a day when there was no irony in the poem’s final lines:
When our land is illum’d with Liberty’s smile,
If a foe from within strike a blow at her glory,
Down, down, with the traitor that dares to defile
The flag of her stars and the page of her story!
By the millions unchain’d who our birthright have gained
We will keep her bright blazon forever unstained!
And the Star-Spangled Banner in triumph shall wave
While the land of the free is the home of the brave.
Holmes’s stanza is an invocation of possibility, a harkening to that moment when the United States truly would become the free land that it claims to be. What is implicit in this stanza, and what Juneteenth celebrants understand, is that much work remains in order to realize the anthem’s declaration.
In 2022, we remain hard at work on this task. The brave among us recognize that being honest about this nation’s history is hard, but being committed to telling a robust history that recognizes our triumphs and our shortcomings is a deeply patriotic act. After all, how can we appreciate our victories — how can we celebrate with integrity our excellence — without knowing about those occasions when we have fallen short?
Jonathan Holloway is Rutgers University’s president and a university professor.
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