By LUCIUS GANTT

People are quick to say something every times a black man stands up and protests.

These days, people with money, people with benefits and people with power that embrace the status quo will say it is all right to protest but everyone should protest in the way “We” want you to protest!

I understand that.

My feeling is, if you’re going to belittle, criticize or demean the protester you should try to walk a mile in the protestor’s shoes!

A quarterback in the National Football League (NFL) has been vilified, so to speak, for not standing during the playing of the United States National Anthem.

Also, an American gymnast, was recently criticized for not placing her hand over her heart during the playing of the Anthem during the Olympic games.

Those actions didn’t bother me one bit. Why? Because there are people that do a variety of things at any event when and where the National Anthem is played. Some sit. Some refuse to remove their hats. And some talk on their phones and do various other things.

Should non-blacks stand, honor and show respect when the Black National Anthem, “Lift Every Voice and Sing” is played? Should people around the world stand when the anthems of African countries, European countries or other nations are played?

Perhaps.

My problem today is all of the issues that arise from “them changes!”

All of the fake, so-called patriots and National Anthem lovers don’t know a damn thing about the lyrics that Francis Scott Key wrote in the year 1814 or what the song was initially about.

The Star-Spangled Banner, originally known as Defense of Fort M’Henry, was written during the War of 1812 where Key witnessed attacks on the City of Baltimore and wrote the words based on his experienced that night.

What is called the National Anthem today is nothing like what Key wrote back then and, in many people’s minds, the song is nothing that merited the love and appreciation by black people in America that lived back in those days.

I don’t want to publish the whole original song in The Gantt Report. Look it up for yourself.

But I will show you an excerpt that says in part:

“No refuge could save the hireling and slave From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave, And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave”

You see, the devil can make you think you’re praising and honoring one thing when you’re really paying tribute to something totally different!

This is nothing new, if you read The Gantt Report you would know the devil can change anything he wants to change. He has changed “the time,” the “calendar,” the money, the law, the schools, the health care system and everything else he wants to change!

I usually stand when America’s and other nation’s national anthems are playing but I will never criticize the people that do not.

Personally, when I see people that hate and criticize people that protest things they know nothing about I think about the late drummer Buddy Miles’ song, my mind is going through Them Changes!

(Buy Gantt’s latest book, “Beast Too: Dead Man Writing” on Amazon.com and from bookstores everywhere. Contact Lucius at www.allworldconsultants.net.)