It used to be illegal to not stand for the national anthem
The controversial history of reverence for ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’
When it comes to Colin Kaepernick’s continuing protest, everyone’s on the same page about one thing: choosing not to stand for the national anthem is a recognizable sign of protest. It only makes sense as a statement because standing is customary. And like all rituals of patriotism, standing for the anthem is not timeless or innate. It has a history — and not a very long one, relatively speaking.
A hundred years ago, the United States didn’t yet have an official national anthem. And since the nation was on the verge of combat entry into World War I, it seemed like a good time to get one. “The Star-Spangled Banner,” written in 1814 by Francis Scott Key and popular throughout the 19th century, was the top contender. Though the military had already adopted it, it wasn’t exactly sacred — set to the tune of an old drinking song, it was played in taverns as well as in military processions.
In order to become a national anthem, however, it needed to be rescued from rowdier contexts. In 1916, the City of Baltimore — which had a special attachment to the song, since it was composed there and commemorated a battle won there — passed a law protecting the song from “musical desecration.” A local paper defended the legislation, declaring that the song “forms a part of the national religion which cannot occupy too high a place in our patriotic worship.” The law prohibited “indiscriminate renditions” such as medleys and ragtime performances — the song should be played in full, and without embellishments. The law also stipulated that musicians should stand for the song, though it said nothing of the audience.
What’s surprising — at least from the contemporary vantage point — is that Baltimoreans bristled at the law. They misinterpreted it as mandating that all audience members should stand, and wrote angry letters to the paper objecting to the idea that they would be “legally compelled to pop up every time anyone happens to play ‘The Star-Spangled Banner.’” The song was played often in a variety of contexts, and they found it outrageous that they should be required to rise every time they heard it. The law “smacks of German militarism,” said one letter-writer, “and we strongly object to it in this land of individual liberty and freedom.”
“Can it be true,” asked one complainant, “that in this twentieth century a handful of men can come together and dictate to more than half a million people when they shall stand, sit, lie down, or perform any other act under penalty of a heavy fine for failure to comply?” It wasn’t true, but it’s telling that a century ago the mere suggestion came off as overly authoritarian, even un-American.
In 1931, President Herbert Hoover finally signed a law declaring the song America’s official national anthem. The legislation made no mention of audience behavior, but it sparked a national debate about what might be considered appropriate going forward. In 1932, The New York Times asked a group of conductors and bandmasters to answer the question, “What procedure should the American radio audience follow when the microphone sends the national anthem to vibrate as electromagnetic waves?”
Their opinion was split. “I do not think that the patriotism of the participants in a bridge game should be questioned if they do not arise when the national anthem comes to them over the radio,” said one.
“At the bridge table, at the dining table, out fishing — I don’t care if you’re in the tub, you ought to stand and face the direction from which the anthem is coming,” said another.
The confusion about proper conduct persisted through the interwar period. Many proudly stood for the anthem to demonstrate their patriotism, but there weren’t consequences for failing to do so. That changed at the dawn of World War II. Some cities actually passed new versions of Baltimore’s earlier legislation — but this time, audience members really were required to stand.
In 1942, for instance, two theological students were caught red-handed in the act of sitting through the anthem at a movie theater in Chicago. They had just seen a film that showed ammunitions being manufactured and “other phases of the nation’s war effort,” and it “did not put them in the right mood” to rise to their feet. They were taken to court, where the judge told them, “Few people in this poor district are as educated as you two. Yet they all know what to do when the flag is flown or the ‘Star-Spangled Banner’ is played.”
A consensus on appropriate behavior had apparently been reached. The students were each slapped with a $200 fine.
Since the war ended, the main place Americans hear the song is at the start of sporting sporting events, where the audience stands in unison, nearly without exception.
Writing in 1973, sportswriter Dave Anderson described the full integration of the ritual into sports events over the postwar decades. “It never occurred to most people to think about it,” he wrote. “When the music started, they stood up. When the music stopped, they sat down… In sports, the anthem has evolved into more of a signal than anything else. Hey, the game’s about to start.”
Anderson himself was concerned about the trend, arguing that the habitual nature of the gesture diluted its symbolic power. But the practice of rising for the anthem before every game has endured in sports culture, despite misgivings from both diehard patriots and critics of the government. Today, Colin Kaepernick’s protest is powerful precisely because the ritual of standing has become so obligatory and reflexive at the beginning of American sporting events.
Players from multiple other NFL teams, as well as athletes in other sports, are publicly supporting Kaepernick and joining him in his refusal to stand for the anthem. Patriotic sports fans, meanwhile, are decrying the trend as offensively anti-American. That makes sense in today’s cultural climate, in which standing for ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ is automatic. But it’s a far cry from a century ago, when people considered mandatory standing an infringement on their freedoms as Americans.
