Flag Day
June 12th, 2009
This Sunday, June 14, is Flag Day. On June 14, 1777 Congress adopted the Stars and Stripes as the flag of the United States of America. For more than 100 years after that date, however, there was no official holiday to commemorate the flag and its significance.
Bernard J. Cigrand, a young teacher working at the Stoney Hill School near Fredonia, Wisconsin, began the process that eventually led to the recognition of June 14 as Flag Day. In 1885, on the anniversary of the adoption of the flag, Cigrand placed a small (ten inches) flag with 38 stars in an inkwell on his desk and then assigned his students to write an essay explaining what the flag meant to them. Upon the completion of the assignment, however, Cigrand continued to advocate for the adoption of a holiday to observe the significance of the flag.
Others mimicked Cigrand’s sentiment in the late 1800s, perhaps as a means of assisting in the Americanization of the country’s immigrant children. In 1889, for example, George Balch, a kindergarten teacher in New York City planned activities for his students to recognize the flag on June 14. Soon after, the State Board of Education of New York adopted Flag Day as a holiday to be observed by all public schools in the state. Two years later, the Betsy Ross House in Philadelphia held a Flag Day celebration and the following year the New York Society of the Sons of the Revolution officially observed Flag Day. In 1893, Dr. Edward Brooks, then Superintendent of Public Schools of Philadelphia endorsed a resolution that would allow school children in that city to celebrate Flag Day.
