The fourth graders at Glen Burnie Park Elementary School had strong reactions the first time many of them heard the Maryland state song, a rousing Civil War era tune.
An Thai, a 10-year-old, said the song struck her as "too long and unpleasant."
Kewannie Edwards said he was confused. The song had harsh words for Abraham Lincoln, celebrated as one of the country's great presidents. "It called Abraham Lincoln a despot," said Edwards, 9. "It was mean."
So the students wrote to their local legislators, including Del. Pamela G. Beidle, who ultimately agreed with her young constituents and crafted legislation to get rid of the 70-year-old state song, "Maryland, My Maryland," and replace it with a shorter and tamer song.
On Wednesday afternoon, Glen Burnie Park's 57 fourth graders attended a House hearing on the bill before the Health and Government Operations Committee - a beginning step in the legislative process, Beidle explained to the students beforehand, along with instructions to "speak slowly and loudly." Four students testified on behalf of their classmates at the hearing, and they all sang the proposed kinder, gentler state song before a packed hearing room in the House Government Building in Annapolis.
"I think we need to get away from the old words, the words of division," Beidle said. "This is the 200th anniversary of the birthday of Lincoln. Should we be calling him a tyrant and a despot?"
Rahul Kohli, 10, told the committee that the current song was "clearly not positive" and "has too many old fashioned words."
For more than five decades, legislators have attempted periodically to rid the state of "Maryland, My Maryland," written in 1861 by James Ryder Randall and named the state song in 1939. Randall was 22 when he wrote the song after hearing that his former college roommate had been killed in a Baltimore riot between Confederate sympathizers and Union soldiers from Massachusetts. The state archivist has described Randall as "decidedly partisan and bitter, a strong advocate of slavery and secession."
Sen. Jennie Forehand, a Montgomery County Democrat, has also introduced a bill similar to Beidle's that would replace Randall's Confederate-era poem set to the tune of "O Tannenbaum," with a poem of the same name written in 1894 by John T. White, an Allegany County teacher. Both Senate and House bills await committee feedback.
