A Tulsa soccer team will no longer play “The Star-Spangled Banner” before games because it is insufficiently inclusive “of every race, ethnicity, religion and sexual orientation.”
According to local TV stations in Oklahoma, Tulsa Athletic will instead open games with Woody Guthrie’s “This Land is Your Land.”
Co-owner Sonny Dalesandro said in a statement that the team, which plays in the fourth-tier National Premier Soccer League, is dropping the national anthem in order to create a more inclusive community.
“From our beginning, we have developed a culture of inclusion and acceptance at Tulsa Athletic,” he said. “We believe ’This Land Is Your Land’ not only captures a powerful patriotic sentiment, but that it does so in a far more inclusive way. The song speaks to this country being built and shared by every person of every race, ethnicity, religion and sexual orientation. It represents a future Tulsa Athletic is committed to striving for.”
According to photos of the press conference posted by Oklahoma City Fox affiliate KOKH, the team held a press conference announcing the move before a wall painted with a guitar labeled “this machine kills fascists.”
In another photo, a rainbow-shirt-clad Mr. Dalesandro displays a card containing the following lyrics from “The Star-Spangled Banner”: “No refuge could save the hireling and slave / From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave.”
The lyrics are from the rarely-sung third verse. The referents of “hireling and slave” are disputed — some historians say it meant sailors impressed into service, others say it was a common metaphor for anyone serving a tyrant like the British king, and others believe it meant the African chattel slaves held legally in the U.S. but freed by the British and serving with them. Other black and slave units were serving with the U.S. military at the Battle of Baltimore.
• Victor Morton can be reached at vmorton@washingtontimes.com.
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