Pledge of Allegiance Day is observed annually on December 28.
Congress formally recognized the Pledge of Allegiance on December 28, 1945.
The text of the pledge, as originally written and modified a bit by the National Flag Conference in 1923 and 1924, was inserted into this legislation, but without designating it as the official pledge.
- In its original form, it read: “I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”
- The small changes made resulted in this version: “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 words “under God” were added by Congress on June 14, 1954, in response to the anti-Communist opinion sweeping the country during the Cold War.
- On the morning of October 21, 1892, children at schools across the country rose to their feet, faced a newly installed American flag and, for the first time, recited 23 words written by a man that few people today can name.
- Francis Bellamy reportedly wrote the Pledge of Allegiance in two hours, but it was the culmination of nearly two years of work at the Youth’s Companion, the country’s largest circulation magazine.
- The original version was called “The Youth’s Companion Flag Pledge.” The Pledge was a collaboration between James P. Upham, a junior partner of the magazine’s publishing company, and his assistant, Francis M. Bellamy, a Baptist minister whose socialist ideas had lost him his pulpit.
- In a marketing gimmick, the Companion offered U.S. flags to readers who sold subscriptions, and now, with the looming 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’ arrival in the New World, the magazine planned to raise the Stars and Stripes “over every Public School from the Atlantic to the Pacific” and salute it with an oath.
- Notice the words “my flag.” They stayed this way in the Pledge until 1924, when a National Flag Conference announced that the words “my flag” would be changed to “the flag of the United States of America.”
- The Pledge stayed this way until 1954, when Congress added the words “under God.” This was the final change, giving the Pledge its current wording:
- The year 1942 was the pledge’s 50th anniversary, and Congress had officially adopted the speech for their own proceedings. This was the time when states were making rules about all school children reciting the pledge everyday, but some organizations thought that was overstepping a boundary.
- In 1943, the Supreme Court ruled that children were not legally obligated to recite the pledge if they didn’t want to.
- During the Red Scare in the 1950s, Americans feared the threat of “Godless” Communism. The Knights of Columbus worked to get the phrase “Under God” in the pledge, so President Eisenhower signed the bill including the phrase in June 14th, 1954.
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