A pastor speaking at Muhammad Ali’s funeral on Friday claimed the national anthem “celebrates slavery.”
Rev. Kevin Cosby, pastor of St. Stephen Church in Louisville, Ky., used the U.S. Constitution to illustrate his claim that “every sacred document in our history conspired to convince the African in America that when God made the African, God was guilty of creative maleficence.”
“And even Francis Scott Key in his writing of The Star-Spangled Banner … He celebrates slavery by saying ‘No refuge could save the hireling and slave from the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave,” said Rev. Cosby at the Friday memorial service for the boxing great and civil rights activist.
Historian Robin Blackburn has argued “hireling and slave” in the often overlooked third stanza of the song refer to the British attackers in the War of 1812, which included many ex-slave volunteers who demanded to be placed into battle “where they might expect to meet their former masters.”
Rev. Cosby said Muhammad Ali was part of an effort to help African-Americans reclaim a sense of self-worth despite “years of nobodiness that was infused into people of color.” He said Ali achieved this in part by declaring “I’m black and I’m pretty.”
