Inauguration Day

It is scheduled to happen once every four years. This isn't one of those years. But January 20 is still recognized in our Flag Code as a day to celebrate each year. 

We're one year into the Biden presidency and one year removed from Trump's. It's sad that the tone and mood isn't much different now than it was a year ago. I'm gloomy in reflecting, on this day, about the long and miserable path of illegitimacy we're traveling regarding our presidents. The current office-holder is down in the polls as "Let's Go Brandon" flags fly. A majority of Republicans, it would seem, believe Mr. Biden didn't really win that election. Hmm. 

Then again, Trump wasn't legitimate either. I certainly never considered him such. It wasn't as much the Russian meddling for me as it was him. Oh, and he failed to secure the popular vote. 

Before him was Barack Obama, who Trump tarnished with his racist, birther-ist banalities. 

Before him was George W. Bush. The 9/11 tragedy sometimes obscures the anger many had that Bush found himself in office as the winner of a 5-4 Supreme Court decision. Oh, and he didn't win the popular vote in 2000. 

And then before him was Bill Clinton, the one who kinda-sorta was nearly removed from office due to a tawdry affair. 

Really, we have to go back to George H.W. Bush, who left office 29 years ago this day, to find a president who enjoyed legitimacy in the eyes of voters. 

And with each president since them, the shrillness of those who claim the president is unworthy and illegitimate grows louder. And I fear it will be louder still after this day in 2025. 

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At one point in our history inaugurations were special moments for presidents to lay out their image for our nation. My favorite such time was March 4, 1865, when Abraham Lincoln was sworn in for his second term. Below you'll find a transcript of his address that day. It remains for me the most stirring speech given in the English language. This comes from ourdocuments.gov.

Fellow Countrymen

At this second appearing to take the oath of the presidential office, there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at the first. Then a statement, somewhat in detail, of a course to be pursued, seemed fitting and proper. Now, at the expiration of four years, during which public declarations have been constantly called forth on every point and phase of the great contest which still absorbs the attention, and engrosses the enerergies of the nation, little that is new could be presented. The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as well known to the public as to myself; and it is, I trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured.

On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago, all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil-war. All dreaded it -- all sought to avert it. While the inaugeral address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war -- seeking to dissole the Union, and divide effects, by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war; but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive; and the other would accept war rather than let it perish. And the war came.

One eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the Southern half part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was, somehow, the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union, even by war; while the government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither party expected for the war, the magnitude, or the duration, which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with, or even before, the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces; but let us judge not that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered; that of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offences! for it must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh!" If we shall suppose that American Slavery is one of those offences which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South, this terrible war, as the woe due to those by whom the offence came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a Living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope -- fervently do we pray -- that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue, until all the wealth piled by the bond-man's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said f[our] three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord, are true and righteous altogether"

With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan -- to achieve and cherish a lasting peace among ourselves and with the world. to do all which may achieve and cherish a just, and a lasting peace, among ourselves, and with the world. all nations.

[Endorsed by Lincoln:]

Original manuscript of second Inaugural presented to Major John Hay.

A. Lincoln

April 10, 1865

King Day

It's Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. 

In discussions with my students, I like to emphasize that memorials and holidays always represent three moments in time. The first is when the deed, or act, was done. The second is when the memorial or holiday was created. The third is now, when we look at the memorial or celebrate the day and, hopefully, look back on the act or deed. 

Dr. King's life began on January 15, 1929. This means he was a year and a half older than my dad. His pastoral life began two decades later, and his civil rights activism first drew attention with his leadership of the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1956. For a dozen years he was the most recognizable face of the Civil Rights Movement, which drew him good and ill will. He remains synonymous with the movement to most students. He was murdered in 1968. 

The fight over creating a holiday honoring him was waged in the 1980s. Congressional action to create the holiday met with significant resistance in Congress. The White House opposed it, too, though that same administration signed it into law and made the first proclamations about the day. Many states were reluctant to make the holiday a state holiday: New Hampshire, Arizona, and South Carolina, apparently were the most significant holdouts. Since 2000 every state has recognized the day. 

Though that recognition looks different depending where one goes in the country. In my career in suburban Philadelphia, it's always been a holiday. A true day off. I know of many teachers, however, where today is a soft day off: students at home, teachers in inservice. By the way, Columbus Day has never been a holiday in my career. 

King is a challenging figure to teach in a high school classroom. Three events loom largest in his career or activism, and those three events rob the room of oxygen. It's hard to go beyond Montgomery, Birmingham, and March on Washington with King, which is a shame. In an advanced classroom, one might be able to get into the failure King met during the Albany campaign, but not always. Most classrooms don't have time to get into the challenging relationship King and his Southern Christian Leadership Conference had with movements such as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. Also, teachers often don't have time to get into the difficulties King faced as he pivoted toward anti-poverty activism after the high water mark of the "I Have a Dream Speech." The nuances of King's approach, and the nuances of where and when he met with setbacks rather than successes, are easy to gloss over. And that's a shame, for we lose something significant when we have time only for the prominent moments. 

If King were alive today, he would be turning 92. Again, just a bit older than my father. This means that contemporaries of King are increasingly hard to find. I admittedly struggled when I was younger to take the holiday seriously: it was simply a break from school during a stressful time of year. As his times walking this earth recede into the past, it would seem appropriate for me to look for ways to teach the substantive nuance beneath the powerful symbolic surface of this man and his legacy. After all, the nuanced obstacles facing King in the 1950s and 1960s bear remarkable similarity to the terrain facing those who wish to make progress on racial justice today. 

Happy New Year (#1 of 23)

 Well, would you look at that? This account for this blog is still active. Let's see if I have remembered how to write.

Happy New Year! According to the U.S. Flag Code it's appropriate to fly the U.S. Flag every day. But there are twenty-three days on which the display of the U.S. Flag is particularly appropriate. Today, New Year's Day, is the first of them. So, Happy New Year. 

New Year Day was always an unusual holiday in my household. There weren't any firm New Year traditions in our family. I have hazy memories of meeting at my dad's mother's house a few times. Before Covid the day was starting to become a reason for gathering with my parents, siblings, and their families. Sadly we're skipping that this year as my household is still quarantining from a series of Covid infections (all symptoms minor . . . way to go vaccines!). 

Though the holiday has always been muted in my household I know it's a bigger occasion in others. I guess it's in recognition of that the Flag Code sets today aside. 

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The date in history that comes most prominently to me today is this day in 1863. It was on this day that year that the Emancipation Proclamation took effect. This is one of my favorite historical documents to teach in class. It's filled with power and irony. The power comes from how this clearly reoriented the American Civil War into a war of ending slavery. It also clarified the right of black men to serve as combatants in the Armed Forces, no small measure with profound military and civil implications. It's also an ironic document in that technically no slaves were freed that day by that measure. President Lincoln's declaration only applied to slaves in regions of the country in an active state of rebellion. The measure, in fact, delineated states and portions of states (such as counties in Louisiana surrounding New Orleans, various counties in Virginia, and the entirety of Tennessee). Further, Lincoln explicitly told enslaved people to wait for the arrival of armies to enforce the measure rather than assert their freedom that day. 

I found this representation of the immediate applicability of the Emancipation Proclamation online. 

The Emancipation Proclamation also sat on fragile Constitutional grounds. Lincoln knew that an immediately pushed for Congress to move on a Constitutional Amendment that would end the practice. 

I cannot help but look at the Emancipation Proclamation as a brilliant, courageous, and pivotal act of political leadership. I'm humbled, though, knowing that something with such high ends (the ending of slavery) could be considered brought about on this day through fragile means (possible legal chicanery on the part of the Lincoln administration). And that contradiction invites comparisons to moments in our contemporary world I find odious, such as some States' efforts today to turn citizens into vigilantes over various culture war agendas (i.e. Abortion rights in Texas, educational policy in Florida). It also calls to mind a difficult moment of leadership on the eve of Pearl Harbor. Throughout 1941 President Roosevelt was positioning America for war against the Fascists in Europe. Certainly a just cause with noble means. But FDR was also setting precedents of presidential authority that wouldn't look so high in the 1960s. 

Perhaps it's helpful to think, then, about the moral weight behind Lincoln's policy decision rather than the legitimacy of the act itself. Slavery was an evil. It was the rationale for the Confederacy. It was the cause of the war. U.S. political and military leaders fumbled toward this logical outcome, such as the enlistment and hiring of "contraband" as early as May 1861. And, of course, there were those courageous souls who took the risk of running away to federal positions before January 1, 1863 seeking freedom. This document helped make up the point of the spear ending slavery. The true ending of the institution came through the acts of various Americans, among them the enslaved, who acted on this promise. Slavery's end came about through the victorious march of the U.S. Army and Navy in the remaining years of that War. That provided the weight that made ending slavery possible. 

Janauary 1, 1863 marks a prominent moment in which the institution of slavery suffered a mortal wound. A day like that I hope is on our mind on a day the Flag Codes ask us to pause and consider what this symbol of our nation means.