It’s Flag Day. For those of you who don’t know or don’t remember, here’s a little refresher on this day that the United States officially commemorates the adoption of our national flag.
On June 14, 1777, the Continental Congress approved the Flag Resolution of 1777, which stated, “That the Flag of the United States be thirteen stripes, alternate red and white; that the Union be thirteen stars, white on a blue field, representing a new constellation.” This original design directive is still reflected in the modern flag of the United States, which now has 50 stars.
While lore has it that George Washington commissioned Philadelphia seamstress Betsy Ross to create a flag for the new nation in 1776, scholars credit the flag’s design to Francis Hopkinson, who also designed the Great Seal and the first United States coin. However, it is considered likely that Ross did sew early American flags in her family’s Philadelphia upholstery shop.
The national flag was first carried into battle during the Revolutionary War’s Battle of the Brandywine on September 11, 1777. Although it became an important symbol of the nascent country, Flag Day was not observed for almost one hundred years.
The first reported celebration was said to be in Hartford, Connecticut, during the first summer of 1861. By the late 1800s, schools across the United States had initiated Flag Day programs to “Americanize” the growing number of immigrant children across the country. A celebration in New York by Professor George Bolch, principal of a free kindergarten for the poor of New York City, on June 14, 1889, attracted the attention of the State Department of Education and led to Flag Day being observed in all of New York’s public schools.
While Flag Day celebrations spread across the country, it was not officially observed at a national level until 1949. President Woodrow Wilson issued a proclamation in 1916 to make June 14 National Flag Day, as did President Calvin Coolidge in 1927. On August 2, 1949, Congress approved the national observance of Flag Day, and President Harry Truman signed it into law.
Today, raise your American flag and give a nod to those you see when you’re out and about. As so aptly delivered in the closing line of The Star-Spangled Banner, “And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave, O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.”
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