Maryland legislators said it’s time to reconsider the state’s regional anthem after more than 80 years.
Lawmakers have pushed for more than 40 years to repeal “Maryland, My Maryland,” a Civil War-era call to arms that rallies residents of the Free State against “the Northern scum.” The first effort was made in 1974 to no avail, but House Speaker Adrienne Jones says now is the time to take action.
“Confederate-sympathizing language is not representative of who we are as a state any longer,” Jones told the Associated Press. “This session, we will pass legislation to repeal the state song so we can better reflect our current values of unity, diversity, and inclusion.”
State Sen. Cheryl Kagan of Montgomery County said she’s “cautiously optimistic” that legislation could be passed in 2021.
Many alternatives have been put forward over the years, but following the death of George Floyd over the summer and the wave of demonstrations focused on racial inequality and police use of force that followed, calls to repeal Maryland’s song were renewed. Rep. Jamie Raskin even helped write a new regional anthem that highlighted the histories of black Marylanders, such as Frederick Douglass and Elijah Cummings, according to the Washington Post.
The words to “Maryland, My Maryland” were written in 1861 by Baltimore-based journalist and poet James Ryder Randall — eventually earning him the title “Poet Laureate of the Lost Cause.” The poem was eventually set to the tune of “O Tannenbaum” and became Maryland’s state song in 1939, according to Maryland’s online manual.
In addition to the line mentioning “Northern scum,” the song warns Maryland, which sits just below the Mason-Dixon, an informal delineation between free Northern states and slaveholding Southern states, that “the despot’s heel is on thy shore,” calling on Maryland to “burst the tyrant’s chains” and take heed that “Virginia should not call in vain.”
Maryland, despite being a slave-owning state, never seceded from the Union. The same week Maryland’s future state song was written, Gov. Thomas Hicks convened the state’s General Assembly in pro-Union Frederick to vote on secession, rather than holding the vote in the capital. The assembly voted to remain a part of the Union, and the majority of Marylanders who fought in the Civil War enlisted in the U.S. Army.
