Abbott Elementary star Sheryl Lee Ralph has responded to the controversy from her performing the Black National Anthem “Lift Every Voice and Sing” at the Super Bowl LVII last month.
On March 8, the Emmy award winner sat down on the latest episode of Stephen Colbert Presents Tooning Out The New and responded to the criticisms after her iconic performance.
After Lee Ralph sang the Black National Anthem at the sporting event, white news reporters came out of the woodwork to share their thoughts about the song. On the Megyn Kelly Radio Show on February 13, the former Fox News reporter told her viewers, “There is no reason to have a Black national anthem sung before the Super Bowl. But there’s one national anthem. It unites us all. It’s about love of country. There’s no point in dividing us by race going into something that is already unifying us as a country,” Kelly said.
Notably, just before that, Representative Lauren Boebert posted a tweet saying, “America only has ONE NATIONAL ANTHEM. Why is the NFL trying to divide us by playing multiple!? Do football, not wokeness.”
America only has ONE NATIONAL ANTHEM.
Why is the NFL trying to divide us by playing multiple!?
Do football, not wokeness.
— Lauren Boebert (@laurenboebert) February 12, 2023
On Tooning Out The News, the host replayed some of the comments for Lee Ralph so that she could reply to the controversy. She slammed the haters by laughing in their face.
“oh, that woman is amazing. I mean, I wish that she was as smart and as beautiful as she is. Can you imagine?” She continued to impart some knowledge on those who are uninformed about the history of “Lift Every Voice and Sing.”
“That song, ‘Lift Every Voice and Sing’ is 123 years old. And it was written to commemorate the birthday of our 16th President, Abraham Lincoln. I mean, The fact that people want to feel divided by such sentiment and such lyrics, it tells you that there are some people in the country, in the world, that I guess there’s nothing that will ever truly make them happy until America is no longer the home of the free and the brave.”
