Replacing the Francis Scott Key Bridge will take years, billions of dollars and probably come with an entirely new name.
While much of the span remains submerged in the Patapsco River in Baltimore, there are already murmurs about naming the future bridge after someone other than Key, who wrote America’s national anthem and was a slave owner.
“President Joe Biden has pledged that the bridge will be rebuilt. Absolutely. Do that. But when it’s rebuilt, let’s rename it, too,” journalist Wayne Washington wrote in The Root, a Black news media site.
The bridge was named after Key in part because of its location.
According to the Maryland Preservation, historians believe the bridge stood within 100 yards of where Key was detained on the British flagship HMS Tonnant during the War of 1812, and where he wrote the poem that later became the “Star-Spangled Banner.”
But Key’s reputation has taken a hit in recent years along with other historical figures who owned slaves. Key also represented slaveholders in court and was a proponent of racist views.
As a lawyer, he also represented slaves seeking freedom and he asserted “all men are free.” But he held eight enslaved people when he died.
The National Park Service describes Key as having had “a conflicted relationship with slavery.”
There have been efforts for several years to strip Key’s name off buildings and to rid his likeness, particularly in the wake of the protest sparked by George Floyd’s death. Floyd, a Black man, was killed by a police officer while in custody.
Dozens of public buildings across the country have been renamed to rid them of connections to people who owned slaves or promoted segregation and racism. Congress also ordered the Pentagon to rename nine military installations as well as hundreds of streets and buildings associated with Confederate figures.
Many believe the collapse of the bridge will leave Key’s name buried along with it.
Rep. Mike Collins, Georgia Republican, asked his followers on social media to predict a name for the new bridge.
“Baltimore obviously won’t rename the new bridge after Francis Scott Key again,” he said.
A new bridge, some believe, should be named after other historical figures in Maryland such as Black abolitionists Frederick Douglass or Harriet Tubman, or perhaps Thurgood Marshall, the first Black Supreme Court justice.
“We should not, in 2020-whenever-the-bridge-is-rebuilt, be naming things in honor of former slaveholders,” Mr. Washington wrote in The Root.
Key was a Maryland native and died in Baltimore, where a statue on N. Eutaw Street was erected in 1911.
The monument was splattered in red paint by activists in 2017 and tagged with the words “racist anthem” on its base.
Key’s poem that inspired the national anthem included four stanzas and some believe part of the third — “No refuge could save the hireling and slave/From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave” — was aimed at mocking slaves who were enticed by the British to join their side in exchange for refuge and land after the war ended.
Key has enough baggage to have landed on the target list for possible name changes to public schools in Montgomery County, Maryland.
County school officials have held public meetings to consider renaming six schools named after men who owned slaves, among them Francis Scott Key Middle School in Silver Spring.
Students and residents also launched a petition to change the name to a Black historical figure, such as Tubman, who helped free slaves through the Underground Railroad, and to ditch Key.
“It’s important to learn about the wrongs he’s done and why he shouldn’t be honored through the name of a middle school,” an 8th-grade student wrote on the petition.
• Susan Ferrechio can be reached at sferrechio@washingtontimes.com.
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