The Untold Story behind the National Anthem: A Tale of Hope and Courage

The anthem will be followed by a flyover of F-16 jets from the 56th Tactical Training Wing at MacDill Air Force Base And will be performed by the Florida Orchestra under the direction of Maestro Yaha Ling and sung by Grammy Award winner Whitney Houston It's in most hymnals throughout our churches it's called the national anthem We go however to a ball game We stand in our church services and we sing the words of that song and they float over our minds and our lips and we don't even realize what we're singing Most of us have memorized it as a child but we've never really thought about what it means Let me tell you a story Francis Scott Key was a lawyer in Baltimore The colonies were engaged in vicious conflict with the mother country Britain Because of this conflict and the protractedness of it they had accumulated prisoners on both sides The American colonies had prisoners and the British had prisoners and the American government initiated a move They went to the British and they said let us negotiate for the release of these prisoners