Children reciting the Pledge, 1899.
June 22, 1942
The Pledge of Allegiance of the United States, originally composed by Francis Bellamy in 1892, was adopted by Congress. Bellamy, a Christian socialist and the cousin of socialist utopian novelist Edward Bellamy (Looking Backward), wrote the Pledge for the magazine “Youth’s Companion,” who tied it into the 400th anniversary of Columbus’s voyage and a marketing scheme to sell flags to schools; 25,000 schools acquired flags in first year. In 1923, the National Flag Conference called for the words “my Flag” to be changed to “the Flag of the United States,” so that new immigrants would not confuse loyalties between their birth countries and the United States. The phrase “under God” was incorporated into the Pledge of Allegiance on June 14, 1954.
