California's NAACP is pushing for state lawmakers to support a campaign to remove "The Star Spangled Banner" as the country's national anthem.
The group says the song, which has been a point of controversy in the NFL, is "one of the most racist, pro-slavery, anti-black songs in the American lexicon," The Sacramento Bee reported Tuesday.
"This song is wrong," state president, Alice Huffman told a CBS affiliate in Sacramento.
"It shouldn't have been there, we didn't have it 'til 1931, so it won't kill us if it goes away."
"The Star-Spangled Banner" became the nation's anthem when President Herbert Hoover signed a congressional act making it the song of the United States.
Huffman told the CBS affiliate the NFL protests led her to look at the lyrics of the anthem — finding a little-noticed third stanza includes the phrase: "no refuge could save the hireling and slave from the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave."
Huffman said some interpretations conclude it celebrates the deaths of black American slaves fighting for freedom.
"It's racist; it doesn't represent our community; it's anti-black," she said.
The group's other resolution is an effort to get the NFL to fit former player Colin Kaepernick onto a team, the Bee reported.
Kaepernick, a former San Francisco 49ers quarterback, was the first NFL player to kneel during the national anthem, which is typically played before games.
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