Recently, McCaskey High School began playing the pledge of allegiance every morning on its announcements. 

“It mocks our ancestor’s cries and screams: their terror,” shared Essence Winters. “What justice has America shown?” she asked. “Black people still haven’t received reparations.” 

“Not saying it is disrespectful to those who have died. We should honor it, value it, and be fair to it,” said Sujan Upreti. 

These statements, from two seniors at McCaskey, reflect a broader school- and nation-wide divide over the significance and meaning of the Pledge of Allegiance. 

Many view it as offensive and degrading to groups of people who have been oppressed by the government and the systems it’s put into place, while others feel very strongly that the pledge should be played, and that to exclude it would be a dishonor to fallen soldiers and other people who had served our country. 

But what was the intended message of the Pledge of Allegiance?

The original pledge was written by socialist minister Francis Bellamy in 1892, for the patriotic magazine Youth’s Companion, as part of a commemoration of the 400th anniversary of Columbus’ “discovery” of America. It read: I pledge allegiance to my flag and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. 

At the first National Flag Conference in 1923, the words my flag were replaced with the flag of the United States because, as VFW.org describes, “it was thought that the foreign-born might have in mind the flag of their native land when they said ‘my flag.’” Thirty years later, during the Cold War, the pledge’s significant and much-debated “under god” portion was added by congress as a response to the atheistic ideals of communism. 

Legal deliberation over whether or not schools could actually force students to recite the pledge began in 1940, when the Minersville, Pennsylvania school district expelled two Jehovah’s Witness students after they refused to stand for the pledge. This decision was upheld by the Supreme Court.  

However, following the 1942 enactment of a West Virginia rule requiring all students to stand for the pledge, Walter Barnette, a Jehovah’s Witness and resident of West Virginia, sued the state. When the case ultimately reached the Supreme Court, it was overturned in a 6-3 vote, with Justice Robert H. Jackson saying, “If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion, or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein.”

The belief that no one should be forced to say, or not say, the pledge is something that is shared by most McCaskey students, whatever their other beliefs. 

 But from there, perspectives diverge and are influenced by a myriad of factors such as race, gender, sexuality, religion, family background, and political stance. 

“It doesn’t mean anything to me,” said current McCaskey Junior Mike Dones. “I’m not white…It says it does, but it doesn’t pertain to me in any type of way. This isn’t a free country at all.” 

Julee Getz, another 11th grader, said that she believes the pledge “honors everyone in the US and the military, and represents the history that Americans have,” while students like Freshman Jessa Groff don’t care either way. “I’ll stand if people tell me to stand,” Groff shared. 

The current schoolwide division over the pledge signifies a greater conflict in American politics and culture over what exactly it means to be an American.

What is American heritage, and what do we stand for? Who counts as an American? Is it really liberty and justice “for all”? 

For some, the pledge is just words transmitted over an intercom. For others, those words can be extremely empowering and respectful, or severely debilitating and offensive. 

We can’t keep playing the pledge blindly with the knowledge that it is severely hurtful to certain groups of people. But we also can’t just stop playing it without trying to understand the reasons for this greater divide.

It’s vital, not only to our community as a school, but also to ourselves as a generation, that we not try to silence those differences, but rather, acknowledge them in a way that gives room for a broader conversation about the past, present and future. There are aspects of American History we must reckon with, and until the greater population of the United States is willing to do so, it will be difficult to ever resolve conflicts such as the one currently surrounding the Pledge of Allegiance.