![]() Third graders from a local school lead the Pledge of Allegiance during a walkthrough before the start of of the Democratic National Convention Septemin Charlotte, North Carolina. In the United States, the general unease about it – “the embarrassing resemblance between the ‘Heil Hitler’ salute and the salute that accompanied the Pledge of Allegiance,” in Richard Ellis’s words – was combined with the fear that scenes of Americans offering the Bellamy Salute could be used for propaganda purposes. ![]() Newsreels and still photos were regularly depicting rallies in Europe’s dictatorships, with thousands of people showing their fealty by extending straight-armed salutes. ![]() Ellis, in his book “To the Flag: The Unlikely History of the Pledge of Allegiance,” wrote that “the similarities in the salute had begun to attract comment as early as the mid-1930s.” In the United States there was a growing feeling of discomfort that, when people within the nation’s own borders pledged their right-arms-extended allegiance to the flag, they might be construed as inadvertently showing solidarity with the fascist regimes across the ocean. With their right arms aiming stiffly toward the flag, they recited: “I pledge allegiance…”įor a while, the salute wasn’t especially controversial.īut, as World War II was forming in Europe, and Italians and Germans began saluting Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler with extended-armed “Heil Hitler!”-style gestures… The Bellamy Salute consisted of each person – man, woman or child – extending his or her right arm straight forward, angling slightly upward, fingers pointing directly ahead. The gesture came to be called the Bellamy Salute, in honor of the Pledge’s author. Instructions for carrying out the salute were printed in the pages of Youth’s Companion. At schools, at campgrounds, at public gatherings, in Congress, people routinely faced the flag and pledged their allegiance to it.īecause, inherently, there is something physically awkward about people simply standing in place, their arms hanging limply by their sides, staring at a flag and reciting a pledge, it was decided that devising a salute would be appropriate. It didn’t take long for the Pledge to become wildly popular, even omnipresent. Bellamy wrote it, and it was published in the magazine. Sharp asked Bellamy to compose a Pledge of Allegiance to the flag. Bellamy, who was an author, a minister and an advocate of the tenets of Christian socialism. National unity was a fragile concept.Īs part of the campaign, Sharp gave an assignment to a member of his staff: Francis J. Keep in mind: Not even 30 years before, the Civil War had still been raging. Until 1892, there was no such thing as a Pledge of Allegiance.ĭaniel Sharp Ford, the owner of a magazine called Youth’s Companion, was on a crusade to put American flags in every school in the country.
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