Video: Do You Know the Star-Spangled Banner’s 3rd Verse?
This Fourth of July, here’s an American story most of us were never taught.
After we had brutally enslaved black people for almost 200 years, some escaped and joined the British army to fight America in the War of 1812—they were called the Colonial Marines. Why join the British? To get freedom. Remember, blacks had been enslaved in America since 1619 and freedom was nowhere in sight.
In August of 1814, the Colonial Marines were part of the British troops that attacked Americans outside of DC and drove them back into the city, setting the White House on fire. One of the Americans who witnessed it was Francis Scott Key.