Two McHenry County Juneteenth Events this Week

 

The official Juneteenth Federal Holiday marking Major General Gordon Granger's Proclamation on Galveston Island, Texas on June 19, 1865 will be observed this Friday.

Granger's General Order #3 read:

    The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the         United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of         property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them           becomes that between employer and hired labor. The freedmen are advised to remain quietly at their       present homes and work for wages. They are informed that they will not be allowed to collect at             military posts and that they will not be supported in idleness either there or elsewhere.

It was the first word that many of the formerly enslaved people jamming the port got about the Emancipation Proclamation.  The next year the Free men and women celebrated the day of Jubilee which soon became annual celebrations.  In the 20th Century  commemorations spread nationally as representative of all Jubilees.  

President Joe Biden signed the legislation creating the Juneteenth holiday in 2021.  In his second occupation of the White House Donald Trump has tried mightily to erase the commemorations as part of his anti-Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) purge.  Federal agencies will not support, publisize, or even report on the occasion.  It stubbornly remains a Federal Holiday.  

Observations like these two McHenry County Events are more than ever essential acts of Resistance.

        

Honoring Legacy, Empowering the Future presented by McHenry County Now.  Thursday, June 18 at 5:30 pm at the Cary Public Library.  Register here.

              

The McHenry County Juneteenth Festival will be held on Saturday, June 20, from 3 to 5:30 pm on Woodstock Square Woodstock.  

Festival founder Gloria Van Hoff reports that Attendees will also have the pleasure of enjoying Stev Walker and the Artistas Da Capoeira Woodstock, the soulful songs and music of Darlene Benton, soloist, and the The Ken Davis Project. We’ll also hear from Arlene Lynes, proprietor of Read Between the Lynes Bookshop. Sandi Johnson will be the keynote speaker.

Just Doing His Job a Working Stiff Brought Down a President

 

Watergate Security guard Frank Wills got 15 minutes of fame for discovering and reporting he break-in at Democratic National Committee offices.

Here’s to a working stiff just doing his job.  This one made/changed history.  In the early morning of June 17, 1972 Frank Wills, a $2 an hour rent-a-cop security guard at the Washington D.C. Watergate office building saw that something was amiss.  While making his rounds Wills noticed tape on a door between a basement stairwell and the parking garage. He removed the tape and went on his way. 

One of five men inside the building discovered that the tape, which was used to hold back the latch bolt so the door could be opened, was missing.  He replaced the tape. On his next round, around 1:55 AM, Wills saw that the tape had been replaced.  He immediately called D.C. Police who arrested five men wearing surgical gloves and in possession of electronic monitoring equipment in the offices of the Democratic National Committee (DNC). 

The five were James W. McCord, a former FBI and CIA agent and a security coordinator for the Republican National Committee (RNC) and the Committee for the Re-election of the President (CREEP); Bernard L. Barker a veteran of the CIA Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba and a Miami real estate broker; Frank A. Sturgis, a Miami associate of Barker with connections to the CIA and Cuban exile community; Eugenio R. Martinez, an employee of Baker’s real estate firm and an anti-Castro exile; and another Cuban, locksmith Virgilio R. Gonzales.  

Mug shots of the Watergate burglars.

The men were charged with attempted burglary and attempted interception of telephone and other communications.  The incident merited a brief mention on network news programs that evening and short articles buried deep in the pages of most newspapers outside of Washington. 

Despite the short notice of the press, the police investigation began unwinding a wider conspiracy quickly. A search of the suspects’ rooms turned up thousands of dollars in cash.  A background check quickly tied McCord to Attorney General John Mitchell, Chairman of President Richard Nixon’s re-election committee. 

Mitchell denied involvement and McCord was fired from his RNC and CREEP positions.  On August 1 a $25,000 check made out to CREEP was found to have been deposited in one of the burglars’ personal account.  Shortly after that another $89,000 in individual donations were found to have been moved through an account of a company controlled by Barker. 

CREEP Treasurer Hugh Sloan told authorities that he was directed by Committee Deputy Director Jeb Magruder and Finance Director Maurice Stans to turn the checks over to G. Gordon Liddy, a former FBI agent, prosecutor, and White House aide who had been selected by Mitchell to run the operational end of the Plumbers Unit—a secret White House operation to control leaks, conduct intelligence operations, surveillance of political enemies, and play “dirty tricks” on opponents. 

Nixon's Plumbers Unit spooks E. Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Libby head into court.

Liddy was soon tied to H. Howard Hunt, the former author of pot-boilers and thrillers who was a high level undercover agent and “super spook” for the CIA before retiring.  Hunt had deep connections with the Cuban exile community and recruited the Cubans to Liddy’s operations. 

The first black bag job of the Plumbers was the botched break-in of Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist in search of dirt on the man who leaked the Pentagon Papers.

On September 15th a Federal Grand Jury indicted Liddy, Hunt, and the five burglars.

On December 8, 1972 Hunt’s wife Dorothy was among those killed in the crash of a United Air Lines jetliner near Chicago’s Midway Airport.  $10,000 in cash was found in her purse.  

All were convicted on January 30, 1973 and sentenced to prison. 

Meanwhile, investigations by Congress and by the press slowly connected the event to a wider conspiracy that led ultimately to Richard Nixon’s doorstep.   That Byzantine tale is too complex to summarize here, but you know how it ended—lots of suits in prison and a disgraced President waving farewell to power from the door of a helicopter. 

The ultimate fruit of Frank Wills's diligence.

As for Wills, he had his 15 minutes fame.  He soon resigned from the security company unhappy that his service was not rewarded with a raise or vacation time.  Unable to find steady work, he returned to his hometown in South Carolina to care for his ailing mother.  They lived in poverty.  In 1983 he was convicted of shoplifting a pair of sneakers and sentenced to a year in prison. 

He died penniless of a brain tumor in 2000 at the age of 52.  Bob Woodward, one of the investigative reporters who doggedly followed the story looked back at Wills and said, “He’s the only one in Watergate who did his job perfectly.”

 

Lights Glow for Good at Woodstock Ride/Walk/Run

 

This Friday, June 19, 7-10 pm on and around Woodstock Square support the Ride/Walk/Run to Leave a Light On and the community-based organizations serving those in need in McHenry County.

Join Material Things Artisan Market on Friday, June 19 from 7–10 PM on the Historic Woodstock Square for the 6th Annual Ride/Walk/Run to Leave a Light On.

Walk, ride, run, grab some ice cream, and enjoy a summer evening supporting eight local organizations that make a difference in our community. As the sun sets, colorful light strings will illuminate the Square in a beautiful display of support and hope.

Learn more and purchase a light string

http://realwoodstock.com/.../ride-walk-run-to-leave.../1104/

On Bloomsday Remembering James Joyce, Nora Barnacle and Dublin

 

The banks of the River Liffey much as it would have looked on June 16, 1904.

Today is Bloomsday, a literary festival celebrated around the world in honor of Irish novelist James Joyce and his masterwork Ulysses.  It celebrates June 16, 1904, and the life and thoughts of Leopold Bloom, a Dublin Jew, his wife Molly and a host of other characters both fictional and real from 8 am that morning to the wee hours of the next day. 

He set his novel on that day because it was the occasion of the first date between Joyce and his future mistress and wife, Nora Barnacle. 

Joyce was born in Dublin in 1882, the eldest of ten children.  He was educated at Jesuit schools before enrolling at University College on Stephen’s Green where he studied modern languages at a time when Irish nationalism was spurring a renaissance of national culture and literature. 

Upon graduation he went to Paris as a medical student but spent most of his time drinking in cafés and writing.  He was called home for the terminal illness of his mother in 1904 during which time he met Nora. 

                                    Young Jim Joyce and Nora Barnacle in 1904--the would-be writer and his red haired future mistress and wife.

That August the first of his short stories was published in the Irish Homestead magazine.  In October he left Ireland with Nora in tow for a job as an English teacher with a Berlitz school in Pola, Croatia.  He would only return to Ireland for four short visits after that, and the last of those was in 1912.  The couple lived as expatriates. 

For ten years they lived in the city of Trieste where they immersed themselves in the local culture, spoke the local Italian dialect at home, and added two children, Georgio and Lucia, to the family.  Joyce contributed articles in Italian to the local press and lectured on literature. 

Joyce’s separation from Ireland crystallized his memories of it and fixed them perfectly in a set time in a way that might not have been possible had he been living there amid the inevitable changes. 

In 1914 Joyce had a breakthrough year as a writer.  American poet Ezra Pound assisted getting his first novel, the semi-autobiographical A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, published as a serial in Harriet Weaver’s London magazine, Egoist and his collection of short stories, begun in 1904, was published as The Dubliners.  These two works, plus a short play, The Exiles, introduced him as an important writer. 

World War I erupted the same year and disrupted Joyce’s life. Italian speaking Trieste was a southern outpost of the Austo-Hungarian Empire.  Suddenly Joyce and his family were “enemy aliens” in hostile territory apt to be arrested.  They escaped to Zurich, Switzerland where they waited out the war and lived in squalor and poverty, supported by handouts from friends and literary admirers. 

Joyce was working on the manuscript for Ulysses in which tied the events of Homer’s Odysseus to Bloom’s story and he incorporated people he knew from Trieste and Zurich into characters in his story.  Nora, particularly her distinct speech pattern and red hair, was the model for Molly Bloom. 

                                        Joyce as an expatriate language teacher and writer.

After the war Pound induced the family to move to Paris, where they stayed for twenty years.  Joyce became part of the international community of expatriate writers and intellectuals that included his some-time drinking companion, Ernest Hemmingway. 

In 1921 the serial publication of Ulysses in the American magazine The Little Review was stopped when the government charged the publisher with circulating pornography through the mails.  An English edition was scuttled before it could be issued when Harriet Weaver could not even find a printer willing to typeset the now notorious book.  In 1922 the American expatriate owner of the Shakespeare & Co. bookshop in Paris, Sylvia Beach finally published the novel, which was hailed as a masterpiece and denounced as lewd, unintelligible trash.  In 1932 an edition of the book was published by Joyce’s friend and associate Paul Léon, a Russian Jewish émigré living in Paris, under the imprint of Odyssey Press. 

Joyce with the publisher of Ulysses, Sylvia Beach the American owner of Shakespeare & Company bookstore in Paris.

Despite a pirated 1929 edition, Ulysses remained banned in America until Bennett Cerf of Random House, a friend from Paris, arranged to have a French edition of the book seized by Customs authorities so he could challenge the earlier obscenity ruling.  In 1934 U.S. District Judge John M. Woolsey ruled that the novel was not pornography and thus not obscene. The decision was upheld on appeal the next year.   Random House published an authorized American edition the same year.

The case was the death knell of using postal regulations to censor literary works in the U.S.  Two years later British censorship restrictions fell and the Bodley Head edition was published. 

Each of these and subsequent editions have major differences in texts resulting from the lack of a single, unified original manuscript by Joyce, various textual editorial theories of the publishers and editors, and attempts to correct perceived “mistakes” in earlier editions. 

While all this publication drama swirled around him, Joyce worked on the manuscript of his most complex work, the enigmatic Finnegan’s Wake published in 1939. 

War once again disrupted his life as the Nazis closed in on Paris in 1940.  Joyce and family fled to the South of France before being given refuge once again in Zurich.  The faithful Paul Léon dared to return to Paris to rescue Joyce’s personal effects and manuscripts, which he put in hiding. 

Joyce, always frail and half blind, died in Zurich on January 31, 1941 at the age of 59. 

John Ryan, Anthony Cronin, Flann O’Brien aka Myles na Gopaleen, Patrick Kavanagh and Tom Joyce, on Sandymount Strand on Bloomsday 1954.

The first observation of Bloomsday was organized by the Irish writers Patrick Kavanagh and Flann O’Brien in 1954 on the 50th anniversary of the original date.  A tour of the various sites in the book was never completed when the participants partook too deeply at pubs in route.  Joyce would have approved.  Since then, Bloomsday events, usually involving extended readings from the book, have been spread around the globe.  Want to participate?  You can start from the beginning:

 

 STATELY, PLUMP BUCK MULLIGAN CAME FROM THE STAIRHEAD, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. A yellow dressing gown, ungirdled, was sustained gently-behind him by the mild morning air. He held the bowl aloft and intoned:

—Introibo  ad altare Dei

.
Halted, he peered down the dark winding stairs and called up coarsely:

—Come up, Kinch. Come up, you fearful jesuit.

Solemnly he came forward and mounted the round gunrest. He faced about and blessed gravely thrice the tower, the surrounding country and the awaking mountains. Then, catching sight of Stephen Dedalus, he bent towards him and made rapid crosses in the air, gurgling in his throat and shaking his head. Stephen Dedalus, displeased and sleepy, leaned his arms on the top of the staircase and looked coldly at the shaking gurgling face that blessed him, equine in its length, and at the light untonsured hair, grained and hued like pale oak.

            Buck Mulligan peeped an instant under the mirror and then covered the bowl smartly.   

Dublin celebrates her wayward son.  Joyce at city center.

The Dark Side--When Was Minnesota Not So Nice

 

Jubilant Whites celebrate the beating, torture, and lynching of three Black circus roustabouts in Duluth, Minnesota in 1920.  This image was printed on postcards and sold briskly for years after the lynching, as described by Minnesotan Bob Dylan in the openings verse of Desolation Row.

Note--This blog has sung the praises of heroic action and determined Resistance of Minnesotans this year.  But despite the popular progressive traditions, there has been a dark history as well.

Ida B. Wells and the Black press including W.E.B. Du Bois’ The Crisis and the Chicago Daily Defender  long exposed lynching as a brutal tool of oppression in the Jim Crow South.  Later Billie Holiday sang about the Strange Fruit she witnessed dangling from lamp posts and bridges on her tours of the South.  Lynchings were a terrible thing, civilized people agreed, but they were a Southern thing.

That’s why much of the nation was shocked to learn that on June 15, 1920 that three Black circus workers were dragged from a Duluth, Minnesota jail, beaten, and hung by a howling mob of as many as 1,500 citizens. 

The busy Lake Superior port and principal city of the Iron Range, with a tiny Black population of its own, seemed like the last place in the country to expect such an outrage.  It was a city of hard-working immigrants, most of them Finnish, Norwegian, Swedish, and German.  Many of them, especially the Finns, were Socialists, Wobblies, and now Communists with roots in the labor and union movements.  It was not that violence itself was unexpected, it was just that it was associated with the epic labor battles that had long raged across the Iron Range.

During the World War “decent citizens” were worked up into a frenzy of patriotism and came to view the immigrant radicals, most of them opposed to the war, as threats.  The refusal of workers to abide by patriotic calls for labor peace and keep up the flow of vital taconite ore to the freighters and down to the steel mills of Gary and Chicago stoked more outrage.

In September of 1919 a young Finish immigrant, Olli Kinkkonen, thought by a mob to be a Draft dodger, was beaten, tarred, and feathered, and lynched in a downtown park.  No one was ever charged or tried for that murder.  So violence and lynching were not unknown in Duluth.

1919 was also a year when race riots erupted in Chicago and in other Midwestern cities where waves of Blacks from the South poured into to take war time jobs.  Although Duluth, with only a handful of Blacks residents, escaped the rioting, it did not escape the national hysteria that followed.

So, the stage was set for the unexpected.

Lured by advertising like this for the John Robinson Circus, two young people were drawn to the grounds to watch the set up--and maybe for a romantic rendezvous.

The circus was in town.  On June 14 the John Robinson Circus, a mid-sized traveling show, rolled into town.  As always, the arrival of the circus stirred local excitement.  Two young people, Irene Tusken, 19, and James Sullivan, 18 were among the many who came down to the grounds where the show was being set up to watch the excitement.  The Circus encouraged that—it was good for ticket sales.  By design or otherwise Tusken and Sullivan, who arrived separately, got together on the grounds.  They drifted around to the relative isolation of an area behind the big top.  A gang of Black roustabouts was unloading the menagerie tent nearby.

What happened next is a matter of confusion and controversy.  There may—or may not—have been some kind of confrontation between Sullivan and some of the roustabouts.  Later that evening police received a call from Sullivan’s father claiming that his son had been attacked and robbed.  The boy was questioned and told police that five or six of the workers attacked and robbed him and then raped Tusken as he was held at gun point.  Tusken seemed frightened and confused, but generally went along with Sullivan’s story.

All 150 Black workers from the circus were rounded up and lined up against the railroad tracks.  Sullivan was brought there to identify the alleged assailants.  He identified six and said a few others might have been involved.  The six were taken to jail.

Overnight rumors flew around town, including reports that Tusken had been murdered.  In fact, the story of the rape fell apart almost immediately.  A doctor examining her the next morning found no physical evidence of assault—bruising, scratches, abrasions—or of semen.

The respectable press of Duluth reported the mob action but also fanned the flames by publishing exaggerated claims and rumors.

Local newspaper reports sensationalized the charges, rumors ran rampant.  Through the day of the 15th a crowd grew around the jail until it became a mob of more than 1,000.  An attack on the jail was expected.  Authorities ordered deputies, guards, and police on the scene not to resist an attack with firearms.

When the mob moved on to the jail, police fought back as best they could with fire hoses and truncheons.  But they were vastly outnumbered and after a vicious melee in which men on both sides were injured, they were overwhelmed.  In fact, the resistance had only inflamed the mob who managed to seize three men—Elias Clayton, Elmer Jackson, and Isaac McGhie.  They were beaten inside the jail and then hauled to the street where they were put on sham trial.

They were taken to the center of town, the corner of 1st Street and 2nd Avenue East where they were beaten again and hung from a lamp pole.  The mob posed for pictures with the bodies which were published in the press and later sold as souvenir post cards.

The three other men suspected in the rape were still in the jail.  A shifting mob kept up a presence outside, threatening a new attack.  But it was not until the next morning that National Guard troops arrived to secure the jail and its prisoners who were moved to the St. Louis County Jail under heavy guard.

As the rape case against the victims evaporated over the next few days, the mob action drew national headlines.  Most were condemning.  Some Southern papers, however, openly gloated that Yankees were now awakening to the threat to White womanhood and were taking vigorous “corrective action.”

But next door in Superior, Wisconsin the local police chief pledged that, “We are going to run all idle Negroes out of Superior and they’re going to stay out.”  How many were actually rousted and deported is not certain, but all of the Blacks employed by a carnival visiting the city were fired and told to leave the city.

A Grand Jury was empaneled on June 17, but despite loads of evidence including photographs and the open boasts of ringleaders, the jury had a hard time bringing indictments.  After a struggle, 37 were indicted for participating in the lynching, 25 for rioting, and 12 for first degree murder.  Several were indicted on multiple charges.  In the end only three were convicted of rioting.

Of the Blacks suspected in the alleged rape and assault, the three survivors from the jail and four others were indicted for rape, but the charges against all but two were dropped.   William Miller was acquitted, and Max Mason was convicted and sentenced to serve seven to thirty years in prison.  Amid growing public outrage, Mason was released from prison after only four years on the proviso that he leave Minnesota and never return.  Somehow, I suspect he was never tempted to violate that provision.

Like many places after such a shameful atrocity, Duluth tried hard to forget it ever happened.  Willful amnesia it’s called.  But nagging reminders kept popping up.

Young Minnesotan Bob Dylan wrote of the lynchings in his classic 1965 song Desolation Row..

In 1965 Duluth born Bob Dylan, whose father was five years old and living two blocks from the lynching in 1920 opened his song Desolation Row with a reference to that awful night:

They’re selling postcards of the hanging

They’re painting the passports brown

The beauty parlor is filled with sailors

The circus is in town.  

In 2003, after a long public campaign, a stunning monument to the three lynching victims was unveiled—a plaza including three seven-foot-tall bronze statues across the street from the site of the lynching. The Clayton Jackson McGhie Memorial was designed and sculpted by Carla J. Stetson, in collaboration with Anthony Peyton-Porter, a California-based Black writer who had taken an interest in the case.

Bas relief images of the three lynching victims over look a downtown Duluth plaza near the scene of their murders.

At the dedication Warren Read, the great-grandson of one of the most prominent leaders of the lynch mob told the crowd:

It was a long held family secret, and its deeply buried shame was brought to the surface and unraveled. We will never know the destinies and legacies these men would have chosen for themselves if they had been allowed to make that choice. But I know this: their existence, however brief and cruelly interrupted, is forever woven into the fabric of my own life. My son will continue to be raised in an environment of tolerance, understanding and humility, now with even more pertinence than before.

Read has since written The Lyncher in Me, a memoir of his family and of his own search for reconciliation with the decedents of Elmer Jackson.

A Lot Going on When Divided America Observes Flag Day

Sunday promises to be a very busy day.  Americans of all--you should pardon the expression--stripes will claim the national banner as their own in many often conflicting ways.  Not only is it Flag Day, but it falls during Pride Month, the nation's 250th Birthday hoopla, and on the 80th birthday of the man who makes everything about himself.  He is celebrating with a widely mocked UFC fight on the White House grounds under a soaring pavilion--an event which seems to be still unraveling hour by hour.  

Naturally the folks behind the hugely successful No Kings Day protests are offering an alternative. A 90‑minute Rise Up, Sing Out concert at The Town Hall in New York City featuring Bette Midler, Patti Smith, Rufus Wainwright, Sasha Allen, Jane Fonda, and Joy Reid, co‑presented with the Committee for the First Amendment. The event will stream nationwide as local groups host of watch parties. Despite organizers requesting that previously announced local rallies and marches, Indivisible McHenry County is going ahead with its plans for a We the People Rally on Sunday, from 3:00 to 5:00 pm at Rt. 31 and McCullom Lake Road in McHenry.  

  

Marchers in the 2025 Woodstock Pride Fest parade.

It is also LGBTQ+ Pride Month and McHenry County will celebrate at the Woodstock Pride Parade and Festival on the Square from 11 am to 4 pm.  That overlaps with the McHenry roadside rally.  This year there has been organized "push back" from MAGA groups and provocateurs at many local Pride marches and events.

Flag Day might be lost in the shuffle if folks on all sides were not waving it and claiming it for their own.

We’ve been here before as an updated blog post. 

In case you hadn’t noticed today is officially Flag Day, a demi-holiday easily overlooked.  It is celebrated by displaying the American Flag.  Veterans groups often organize solemn flag disposal ceremonies. 

No other country on Earth makes quite the fetish of its flag as does the United States.  The word idolatry comes to mind.  At its worst it elevates the symbol—the Flag—over the substance—the democratic values espoused in the Declaration of Independence and protected by the Constitution.  It is an absolute truism that those who wrap themselves most tightly in the Flag—and these days that is not just a figurative term—are the most disingenuous and dangerous.  Witness any performance by the Resident of the White House and the seditious mobs that laid siege to the Capitol.

Donald Trump and one of his regular Flag fondling.

On the other hand—especially those who served in the Armed Forces or who were raised in a veteran’s household—have been taught to respect the Flag and “the nation for which it stands.”  I still hang the Flag on my house on patriotic holidays and always place my hat over my heart when it passes by in a parade.  It’s just the way I was raised.

Part of the national devotion to the Flag comes from an odd combination of cultural coincidence and calculated political strategy.  Our National Anthem, not officially adopted until 1931 but widely used on patriotic occasions for more than a century prior, may be the only national song about a flag.  

The Grand Army of the Republic promoted the Flag as a symbol of the Union and a thumb-in-the-eye to former Rebels.

Not widely displayed except at military posts, on Navy ships, and on some Federal buildings prior to the Civil War, the Grand Army of the Republic heavily promoted its use after the war in a spirit of triumphalism of the Union over the vanquished South.  For that reason, display of the national flag was highly unpopular in the South until World War I.

The flag and the Pledge of Allegiance were used to Americanize immigrants, especially children as in this Jacob Riis photo.

The Pledge of Allegiance was penned by Francis Bellamy, a Baptist minister and socialist, for use during celebration the 400th anniversary of the supposed discovery of the New World by Christopher Columbus.  Quickly adopted by schools as part of the daily ritual of beginning classes, the Pledge does not swear allegiance to the government—an inclusive tip-of-the-hat to resentful former Rebels—or even to the Constitution, but to a symbol, the Flag.

By the turn of the 20th Century the Flag was being used as a symbol of assimilation for the waves of emigrants swamping our shores—and as a test of their loyalty.  The most popular composers of the era—the March King John Philip Sousa and Broadway’s George M. Cohan made literal flag waving as popular as moon-June-spoon ballads.

During World War I, the Woodrow Wilson administration used flag imagery as part of their very sophisticated domestic propaganda operation designed to rouse support of the war effort and raise Liberty Loans.  After the war, the Flag was used to rally support for suppression of the labor movement, radicalism, Socialism, and Communism said to represent sinister alien ideologies.

The flag has often been appropriated to give patriotic cover to hate groups.  Witness this 1925 Ku Klux Klan march in Washington.  But it was also carried by militant unionists at the Lawrence Textile Strike and Chicago Memorial Day Massacre and also by Civil Rights Movement marchers.

Wilson proclaimed the first official Flag Day in 1916.  In 1949, with the country in the grips of yet another Red Scare, Congress made it an official Federal Holiday, although withholding the paid days off for Federal employees standard for other holidays.

June 14 is Flag Day because on this date in 1777 the Continental Congress passed the Flag Act which officially described a new national banner:

Resolved: That the flag of the United States be made of thirteen stripes, alternate red and white; that the union be thirteen stars, white in a blue field, representing a new Constellation.

Betsy Ross almost certainly did not sew the first flag, Washington never viewed it, and the 13 stars in a circle banner may not have never been actually used during the Revolution.  None of that stopped myth makers.

The new official flag—not, by the way, likely first sewn by Philadelphia seamstress Betsy Ross—was based on the unofficial Grand Union flag used by General George Washington during the Siege of Boston.  That flag had the same thirteen alternating red and white stripes but had the English Union Jack in its canton.  Of course, that was before Independence was declared in July of 1776.  It wouldn’t do to keep the reference to the British flag. 

The Act was vague—it did not describe the arrangement of the stars in the field, how the stars should be shaped, or even how large the field should be.  Local flag makers working from the sketchy description produced many variations with five, six, and even twelve-pointed stars; with stars of different sizes; and many variations of arrangement.  Also, the shade of blue used for the field depended largely on what blue cloth the maker might have at hand.

The familiar thirteen stars in a circle was not only not standard, but some historians also doubt if it was used at all during the Revolutionary War.  Others believe that it might have been the flag used at the British surrender at Yorktown.

After Vermont and Kentucky were added to the Union two additional stars and two stripes were added.  That was the Star Spangled Banner observed still flying over Ft. McHenry in Baltimore harbor after an all-night British naval bombardment in 1815.  It became apparent that with more new states, adding stripes would quickly become clumsy. In 1818, after five more states were added, Congress fixed the number of stripes at thirteen with an added star for each new state. 

But it still did not specifically designate an arrangement for the stars.  During the Civil War flags with all manner of arrangements were used.  It was not until the creation of the 48 star flag in 1912 that a specific arrangement was established.  The current 50 star flag has been in use since July 4, 1960 after the admission of Hawaii to the Union.  This year will mark the 66th anniversary of that flag, which has been in service longer than any previous national banner.

Today, the flag is waved by forces on both sides of the great social and political divide even as the nation for which it stood after the perilous on the verge of a second civil war in January 2021.  But many on the left are still chagrined and conflicted about the flag.  Does it represent the on-going lethal threat to which the Black Lives Matter Movement responded?  The ongoing expressions of White supremacy and the continued attacks on basic voting rights?  The attempts to degrade women and attack their bodily autonomy?  The treatment of immigrants and refugees? The continuing militarism and low-grade but bloody war around the world?  Or can the flag be honored as a yet unfulfilled promise? 

The upside-down flag is a traditional sign of distress and has been adopted by Trumpistas, election deniers, and some alt-right militia type groups much to the dismay of many veterans.  Even a Supreme Court Justice--guess who--was caught flying it at both his Washington area home and a Rhode Island summer retreat.

Both sides of the current American social chasm claim to love their country but have seemingly irreconcilable notions about what America is, what it means, and what it should become.

As for me, I will choose hope.  I’ve got my flag out today on the belief that it stands for “Liberty and Justice for All.”  What does your flag mean?