STATEWIDE — The NAACP chapter of California is calling on state lawmakers to support a campaign to remove “The Star Spangled Banner” as the country’s national anthem.

The group says the song is “one of the most racist, pro-slavery, anti-black songs in the American lexicon,” The Sacramento Bee reported Tuesday.

The controversy is over the passage:

Their blood has wash'd out their foul footstep's pollution.

No refuge could save the hireling and slave

From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave

"Some interpretations of the lyrics conclude that they celebrate the deaths of black American slaves who joined British troops during the War of 1812 to gain their freedom," the Bee article says. 

According to the Bee's report, the NAACP’s California chapter sent out two resolutions, which had been passed at the organization's state conference last month.

One of the resolutions was to support the removal of the anthem and the other is efforts getting player Colin Kaepernick back onto an NFL team.

Kaepernick, a former San Francisco 49ers quarterback, was the first NFL player to kneel during the national anthem. 

“We owe a lot of it to Kaepernick,” California NAACP President Alice Huffman told The Sacramento Bee. "I think all this controversy about the knee will go away once the song is removed.”

Huffman said she wrote the resolutions after President Trump said NFL owners should fire players who protest during the anthem.

The U.S. Congress should adopt a new national anthem that’s not “another song that disenfranchises part of the American population,” Huffman said.

At this time, the state's NAACP chapter is still looking for legislative sponsors for the resolutions. 

The organization can be heard discussing the resolutions at its California–Hawaii State Conference back in October. Watch video from the conference on Facebook.