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?

 

The True Story of That Socialist The Pledge of Allegiance

 

                             Rev. Francis Bellamy, a Christian socialist and author of the original version of the Pledge of Allegiance. 

On September 8, 1893 a Pledge of Allegiance crafted by Francis Bellamy for the popular children’s magazine Youth’s Companion, where the Baptist minister was on staff made its first appearance.  He was not only a Christian, but also a socialist and first cousin of the utopian socialist Edward Bellamy, whose novel Looking Backwards was one of the most influential books of the late 19th Century.

Pledges of allegiance were still controversial in those days.  After the Civil War former Confederates who wanted their civil rights restored had to swear allegiance to the Union.  Even as late as the 1890 the most un-reconstructed of the old veterans were still refusing to do so.

Bellamy hoped to include the younger generations of Southerners in a new mood of national reconciliation.  But he also wanted to include the children of waves of immigrants then flooding American cities making a new pledge of inclusiveness in their new nation.  He originally wanted to include the words equality and fraternity in the pledge to make that clear, but his editors feared that their inclusion would be resisted by school authorities in the South where equality would be viewed as an endorsement of Black rights just as Jim Crow laws were undoing the last shreds of Reconstruction.  In the North business interests likewise might object to fraternity—brotherhood—for its identification with French Revolution and as possible support for labor unions which often styled themselves as Brotherhoods.

Moreover, there was already a Pledge of Allegiance of sorts in wide circulation and use.  Five years earlier retired Rear Admiral George Balch who served as auditor to the New York Board of Education introduced a simple one line pledge and distributed thousands of classroom flags with the explicit intent of Americanizing immigrant children in public schools.  Balch pledge was widely used in New York City and was spreading with the official endorsement of the Grand Army of the Republic and the Daughters of the American Revolution.  The pledge read:

We give our heads and hearts to God and our country; one country, one language, one flag!

Bellamy and his editors considered the Balch pledge, “Too juvenile and undignified.”  Besides, they had a specific event in mind in which children across the country would say the new Pledge on one day.

 

The Pledge tapped an orgy of patriotic fervor triggered by the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus's New World land fall on display at the World Columbian Exposition in Chicago.  Due to construction delays the fair did not open until 1893. 

The Pledge of Allegiance was first trotted out for Columbus Day 1892. The pledge as Bellamy drafted it was published in the magazine without attribution.  But it was promoted heavily to its 500,000 readers and endorsed by the National Education Association.  President Benjamin Harrison was prevailed upon to declare it part of the national Columbus Day observances of the 400 anniversary of the Italian navigator’s alleged discovery of the New World.  

 

Bellamy's simple original manuscript for his Pledge. 

On October 12, 1893 children across the country recited the following brief pledge in conjunction with ceremonies at the World Columbian Exposition in Chicago at the opening of school:

I pledge allegiance to my flag and the republic for which it stands: one nation indivisible with liberty and justice for all.

It could be said in 12 second flat.  As prescribed in the magazine, the children faced a flag being held by the teacher and held their right arms straight out, palms down in what became known as the Bellamy Salute.        

                                                                                                                                                   

A turn of the 20th Century classroom of immigrant children recite the pledge using the stiff arm Bellamy Salute.  Asian children in the class hint at a West Coast school.    

Although intended as a onetime event, it turned out to be so popular that some schools began using the pledge at the opening of assemblies, concerts, and sporting events.  Others made it a weekly or daily practice.  The hyper patriotism accompanying the Spanish American War and World War II spread the practice further.

Meanwhile the Blach pledge continued in use, although after the DAR switched its endorsement to Bellamy, that one began to seriously pull ahead. 

Unfortunately for Bellamy, his hopes that the pledge would be inclusionary were dashed almost from the beginning.  Many interpreted it as a litmus test for Americanism—meaning native, White Protestants.  In some schools the children of non-citizen immigrants were forbidden from participating.  Elsewhere those whose religion was thought to preclude the recitations of oaths were debarred.  In the segregated schools of the South, white children often recited the pledge, but those in Black schools often did not lest they get the idea that they would ever have the rights of citizens.

Tinkering with the original words was meant to make these things clear.  In 1923 an outfit called the National Flag Conference changed the words from “my flag,” to “The Flag of the United States” so that ignorant immigrant children would not believe they were saluting the flag their home countries.  A year later, still unsatisfied, they it changed to “The Flag of the United States of America.”  After the 1923 Conference the GAR joined the newer American Legion in officially supporting the modified Bellamy pledge which pretty well killed remaining pockets of Blach loyalists.

So things stood until the U.S. entered World War II.  That was why Congress was in session on December 28, 1942 instead of taking their customary leisurely holiday break.  It was on that day that they finally stopped tinkering with amendments to the Flag Code which had been adopted earlier in June.  Of course, there were some minor changes to the pledge which was officially renamed the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag.

The June ’44 amendment to the Flag Act codified the words:

 

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

The change made in December at the suggestion of President Franklin D. Roosevelt substituted the hand over the heart for civilians for the stiff armed Bellamy salute, which then had an uncomfortable resemblance to the salute used by the Nazis. 

 

During World War II the Bellamy Salute was scrapped because of its resemblance on the fascist salute and the words "of the United States of America" were added.  

Changes were not over.  During the post-war Red Scare complaints were rising that the pledge did not defend American values against Godless Communism.  Louis A. Bowman, a chaplain for the hyper-patriotic Sons of Liberty first inserted the words under God into the pledge in 1948. 

The following year Catholic Bishops, eager to prove that Catholics could be “real Americans” and concerned with attacks on the Church in the zone of Soviet influence in Europe and in parts of China under People’s Army control, began a campaign to have the additional language officially adopted.

Despite appeals to President Truman and resolutions introduced in Congress, no amendment to the words was made.

 

 President Dwight D. Eisenhower shored up his shaky support from the right wing of his own party and rarely united Protestant and Catholic leaders by inserting "Under God" into the pledge and using religious language in his address to the nation.

Freshly minted President Dwight Eisenhower had a problem.  Despite his enormous personal popularity as a World War II hero and easy election victory, the right wing of his own party distrusted him for coziness with the Soviets during the War.  Notoriously indifferent to religion, he had come under attack as an atheist.  To combat the latter problem, Ike allowed himself to be baptized a Presbyterian, although neither his public practice of worship nor the general lack of God language in his speeches changed much. 

But on Lincoln’s Birthday, 1954 his ceremonial duties included attending worship at the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church in Washington, where Lincoln had also made occasional public displays of unfelt piety. The Rev. George MacPherson Docherty took advantage of his captive audience by launching into a sermon calling for the inclusion of the religious language in the pledge because Lincoln had apparently inserted the words under God in the Gettysburg Address as delivered.

 

When the words "under God"  were added in 1954 schools were sent materials like these with the subliminal message that the revised Pledge which were wrapped in traditional imagery that inferred it had roots with the Founding Fathers. 

Eisenhower recognized an opportunity to prove his Americanism and his Christianity.  The next day he forwarded a message to Congress asking for the wording of the pledge be changed.  It passed through Congress like an Ex-Lax milkshake.  Ike was able to sign it into law with a flourish on June 14, 1954—Flag Day.

Civil libertarians have opposed the additional language ever since.  Many court challenges have been filed, but none have yet succeeded.  The best that they were able to accomplish was to allow children who could not in good conscience recite the pledge to excuse themselves without penalty. 

 

On one hand Civil Libertarians have objected to the use of "Under God" in Public Schools and compulsory participation.  On the other near riots have erupted at some school board meetings when children were allowed to recite the pledge in Spanish or other languages.  

The controversy, and the feeling that daily recitation was cutting into instructional time, has made about half the states drop the pledge or make it a local option.  In keeping with court decisions the rest of the states “encourage” children to participate in the pledge which now reads:

 

I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

One suspects the whole thing is not what Francis Bellamy had in mind.