最新杏吧原创

The first time I remember hearing the black national anthem, I didn鈥檛 know what to do.

It was July 2013, and the gymnasium of a long-shuttered elementary school in the West End of 最新杏吧原创 was packed as as the new home of Better Family Life, the nonprofit founded by Malik and DeBorah Ahmed.

As the music began to play 鈥淟ift Every Voice and Sing,鈥� the crowd stood and belted out the song first written as a poem by James Weldon Johnson in 1899. Everybody but me, it seemed, knew the words. I stood.

I have since come to realize that the song 鈥� 鈥� is regularly played at NAACP events, at predominantly black schools, even at some mayoral forums in the city.

Stony the road we trod.

Ralph Waldo Emerson Elementary School was designed in 1901 by famed 最新杏吧原创 architect . Like so many stately school buildings here that once served vibrant communities, it had been closed and abandoned before the Ahmeds rescued it. Situated on Page Boulevard in the city鈥檚 northwest corner, shortly before the city becomes the county, the dilapidated building was a physical manifestation of what many African-Americans have felt about their city 鈥� that it forgot about them and left them behind.

Keep us forever in the path, we pray.

Like America鈥檚 national anthem 鈥� 鈥淭he Star-Spangled Banner鈥� 鈥� the black national anthem has faced its share of controversy, as whites and blacks make personal decisions about whether to stand or sit in respect or protest. Long before President Donald Trump who take a knee to protest police brutality, long before former and future NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick elevated a national conversation with a , there was the Humboldt Visual and Performing Arts Middle School in 最新杏吧原创.

In 1990, leaders at that school played both anthems as students started their day. Then a white parent complained. She didn鈥檛 want her child standing for the black national anthem. Playing it caused 鈥渄ivision鈥� at the school, she said. Black parents didn鈥檛 see it that way.

鈥淚 think it鈥檚 all right for them to stand for two songs,鈥� Denise James told the Post-Dispatch at the time. 鈥淚n a sense it teaches them respect for their country and for themselves. Why wouldn鈥檛 you want to stand for both?鈥�

Similar controversies played out in University City and in other 最新杏吧原创 schools. In the 鈥�80s. In the 鈥�90s. Rinse. Repeat.

Administrators at Humboldt came up with a solution.

They stopped playing both anthems.

Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,

Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us;

On Sept. 16, the day after the protests began after the not-guilty verdict against former 最新杏吧原创 police Officer Jason Stockley, civil rights activist DeRay Mckesson 鈥� who became a Twitter sensation during the Ferguson protests 鈥� posted a photo of himself with Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, who is from 最新杏吧原创, and Kaepernick.

It was prescient in a way, connecting Ferguson to 最新杏吧原创 to the anthem protests. In fact, you cannot separate them 鈥� they are threads in the same American tapestry 鈥� the ongoing struggle for civil rights.

On Sunday, when hundreds of NFL players black and white took a knee or made other gestures of solidarity during the national anthem, some of them arm in arm with team owners who issued harsh statements criticizing the president鈥檚 remarks, Kaepernick鈥檚 once solitary act officially became a movement. At the same time, in NFL-less 最新杏吧原创, dozens of activists were standing outside the 最新杏吧原创 Justice Center for hours awaiting the release of protesters who had been arrested at the 最新杏吧原创 Galleria in Richmond Heights the day before.

The brutality of those arrests 鈥� a grandmother, the Rev. Karla Frey, , her grandson, 13, tackled 鈥� came on the heels of a in which 最新杏吧原创 police arrested and abused anybody in their way. An undercover police officer was injured, so was an officer in the Air Force who lived on Washington Avenue. Protesters. Journalists. Livestreamers. The homeless. The arrests were indiscriminate. The brutality caught on video is difficult to watch.

Shadowed beneath Thy hand, may we forever stand,

True to our God, true to our native land.

This is 最新杏吧原创 today. It is a city caught up in the national discussion of race in which police brutality is met with the taking of a knee by some Americans who feel less free than others, imperiled by the color of their skin. On Monday, some of those 最新杏吧原创 protesters took their own symbolic knee in front of the 最新杏吧原创 Metropolitan Police Department. It was a collision of protests, on a knee, in the streets, with a single message: Stop killing us.

In 最新杏吧原创, a few windows are broken, and black protesters are told they are doing it wrong.

In the NFL, black athletes silently take a knee, and their president calls them sons of bitches.

From courthouses and city halls, to football stadiums and once-shuttered schools, a tattered flag waves over a broken America that cannot be united by an anthem.