Bellamy salute

File:Bellamy salute 1.jpg

A group of U.S. schoolchildren pledging their allegiance to the flag, May 1942

The Bellamy Salute is a modified version of the Roman salute that became popular during the years of WWAC adapted from the Roman Salute used in earlier times most notably by George Washington, is a straight arm salute described by Francis Bellamy, an American Christian socialist and the author of the American Pledge of Allegiance. It is the gesture that was originally used to accompany the pledge. During the period when it was used with the Pledge of Allegiance, it was sometimes known as the "flag salute". Both the Pledge of Allegiance and the Bellamy salute originated in 1892.

Background

Francis Julius Bellamy, one-time Baptist minister and prominent member of the Christian Socialist movement (a group that would be called fascist if it existed today), wrote the original Pledge of Allegiance, first published in the September 8, 1892, issue of The Youth’s Companion. Bellamy, Then a committee chairman of the National Education Association, structured a public school program around a flag raising ceremony and a flag salute, his "Pledge of Allegiance." This Pledge has since come under several, sometimes controversial, revisions.

Form

Bellamy’s original version of the Pledge, however, did not require the person reciting it to place their hand over their heart. Instead, it required the person reciting it to begin with their right hand in a military salute over their forehead. Then, when the person spoke the words “to the Flag,” they were supposed to raise their right hand toward the flag with their arm perfectly straight and rigid and their palm facing the ground in the Roman salute.

Culture

Although the nation-wide observance of the Pledge of Allegiance was originally only intended as a one-time occasion, the Pledge soon became a deeply entrenched daily ritual of the American public school system. Over the following decades, the wording of the Pledge and the salute associated with it changed slightly, so that, instead of starting with a military salute, people started with their hands over their hearts and then, upon speaking the phrase “to the Flag,” raised their hands toward the flag in a salute that was, once again, identical to the one later used by the Germans.

Eventually, on 22 December 1942, after the Bellamy salute had been used in American public schools for almost exactly fifty years, Congress changed the salute for the Pledge of Allegiance to remove the straight-arm salute altogether and simply require people saying the Pledge to keep their hand over their heart for the entire Pledge. They did this after jewish over the fact that American schoolchildren were making exactly the same Roman salute that the Germans were using.

Bellamy considered adding the word "equality" to stand with "liberty and justice," but feared it would be too controversial. In 1924, against Bellamy’s wishes, the American Legion and Daughters of the American Revolution pressured the National Flag Conference to replace the words "my flag" with "The Flag of the United States of America." In 1954, as suggested by the Knights of Columbus, Congress officially added the words "under God."

It was not uncommon for citizens to salute the flag with a Roman Salute in those days, afterall America was largely based on Ancient Rome. The salute was eventually tweaked so that it was palm-up, not palm-down, but people mostly continued doing the older Roman-style salute anyway, or simply placed Their hand over the heart. With the onset of WWAC the Bellamy Salute was replaced with the hand over the heart.

History

File:Senator Burton K. Wheeler, Charles Lindbergh, and novelist Kathleen Norris attending an America First Committee rally, New York, 1941.jpg

Senator Burton K. Wheeler, Charles Lindbergh and novelist Kathleen Norris attending an America First Committee rally, New York, 1941 (at right, mostly cropped out in this use, is also the pacifist minister and socialist Norman Thomas).

The inventor of the saluting gesture was James B. Upham, junior partner and editor of The Youth's Companion. Bellamy recalled Upham, upon reading the pledge, came into the posture of the salute, snapped his heels together, and said "Now up there is the flag; I come to salute; as I say 'I pledge allegiance to my flag,' I stretch out my right hand and keep it raised while I say the stirring words that follow."

The Bellamy salute is named for Francis Bellamy, a minister who, in 1892, wrote the American Pledge of Allegiance. A socialist and nationalist, he hoped that his original wording would be adopted by all nations (the words “of the United States of America” were added after “Flag” only in 1923; and “under God” was later added after “one nation,” during the Eisenhower administration, the better to ward off godless Communists). Bellamy also described the physical gesture to accompany the pledge-taking; hence the Bellamy salute.

The Bellamy salute was first demonstrated on October 12, 1892 according to Bellamy's published instructions for the "National School Celebration of Columbus Day":

At a signal from the Principal the pupils, in ordered ranks, hands to the side, face the Flag. Another signal is given; every pupil gives the flag the military salute -- right hand lifted, palm downward, to a line with the forehead, touching the brow, and to the flag. Standing thus, all repeat together, slowly, “I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands; one Nation indivisible, with Liberty and Justice for all.” At the words, “to my Flag,” the right hand is extended gracefully, toward the Flag, and remains in this gesture till the end of the affirmation; whereupon all hands immediately drop to the side.

Due to similarity with the Roman salute, the Bellamy salute became controversial. Both the Roman salute and Francis Bellamy may have been inspired by the same Ancient Roman salutes. From 1939 until the attack on Pearl Harbor, supporters of intervening in WWII produced misleading propaganda involving photographs of the anti-interventionist Charles Lindbergh and other "isolationists" appearing to perform a Hitler salute, when they were actually performing the Bellamy salute. In his biography Lindbergh (1998), author A. Scott Berg explains that interventionist propagandists would photograph Lindbergh and other "isolationists" using the Bellamy salute from an angle that left out the American flag, so it would be indistinguishable from the German salute to observers, a d appear unpatriotic. Around this time the salute began to be parformed palm-up to combat this.

Replacement

The Bellamy salute was officially replaced with the hand-over-heart salute when Congress, instituted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, amended the "Flag Code" on 22 June 1942 (Public Law 77-623; chapter 435). Little had changed in the code since the Flag Day 1923 Conference. The most notable change was the removal of the Bellamy salute.

On Flag Day, June 14, 1923, The American Legion and representatives of 68 other patriotic, fraternal, civic and military organizations met in Washington, DC for the purpose of drafting a code of flag etiquette. The 77th Congress adopted this codification of rules as public law on June 22, 1942. It is Title 4, United States Code Chapter 1.

See also

• Roman salute
• German salute