As part of my US education I was taught the meaning of the country in word and song. Here are the main bits:
1776, Thomas Jefferson, Declaration of Independence:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
1787, the First Amendment to the US Constitution:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
1814, Francis Scott Key, “The Star-Spangled Banner”:
O say can you see, by the dawn’s early light,
What so proudly we hail’d at the twilight’s last gleaming,
Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight
O’er the ramparts we watch’d were so gallantly streaming?
And the rocket’s red glare, the bomb bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there,
O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?
1831, Samuel Francis Smith, “America (My Country, ‘Tis of Thee)”:
My country, ’tis of thee,
Sweet land of liberty,
Of thee I sing;
Land where my fathers died,
Land of the pilgrims’ pride,
From ev’ry mountainside
Let freedom ring!
1863, President Lincoln, Gettysburg Address:
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
1883, Emma Lazarus, “The New Colossus” (at the Statue of Liberty):
Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!
1944, Woody Guthrie, “This Land Is Your Land”:
This land is your land, this land is my land
From California to the New York Island
From the Redwood Forest to the Gulf Stream waters
This land was made for you and me.
1954, Pledge of Allegiance:
I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
1963, Martin Luther King Jr, I Have a Dream Speech:
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
My political memory began with the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr and Robert Kennedy and the riots. That was followed by years and years of lip service. And now, in the Trump Era, even that is disappearing as the words themselves are being questioned – in the name of a much narrower, darker vision of the country.
– Abagond, 2019.
See also:
- Stuff I was taught at school
- models of the US:
- The cosmopolitan model – what I was taught
- The diseased-host model – what many Whites are taught
- Quoting MLK
- assassinations
- Niger ’66 – A Peace Corps Diary – returned to the US right after the assassinations
- US White nationalism
- The Trump Era
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Abagond 
All causes both good and bad are always tested in history. All citizens are required to work at making the systems that are good remain good.
No crying!
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Interesting, i have had 50 years and a lot of artistic license, pursuit of happiness? I’ll get back to you on that one! I remember being surprised that the US was in a war, ie vietnam in 1st or 2nd grade.
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@Aqbagond
“My political memory was shaped by the assasinations of Bobby Kennedy and Martin L. King, Jr.”
So you were born in the early sixties? If so, that means that when they were shot, you would have been in elementary school. Not only that, but you could also be my father! My parents were born in 1959 (mother) and 1962 (father) respectively, so that means that in 1968, my father would have been six years old, and when one considers the dates of both men’s deaths, he was in the spring semester of his kindergarten year for the death of MLK, and had probably just finished kindergarten in the case of RFK. My mother would have been in third grade or thereabouts, too, though they were not born or living in America when these things happened. Instead they lived on the island of San Andres in Colombia (father, anyway, mother was in Panama; she had to repeat the fifth grade when she returned to the island, and so did not start middle school when she was supposed to).
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[…] https://abagond.wordpress.com/2019/08/20/the-meaning-of-the-us-in-word-and-song/ […]
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The MLK jr assassination and the ensuing riots in DC as well as the assassination of RFK lie just within my clear purview of political memory. I remember a few things before that (eg, visiting the world’s fair in New York City, or things on the street where we lived) but nothing about politics, except that LBJ was president.
So, no memory of Malcolm X, the march on Selma or JFK anything. I do remember Hubert Humphrey losing the election to Nixon (but barely remember).
Also, in 1968, I remember other things related to politics, although I did not realise it at the time, eg, being able to travel to Alabama together as a family for the first time, or travelling in a car together across the river to Virginia. I didn’t quite understand why we could not before.
I also remember a series of families staying in my grandmother’s house who just somehow escaped from China. I did not know until a few years later that all the stories of the atrocities they witnessed were related to the Cultural Revolution. I also remember meeting my Aunt and cousins from Mississippi, but I did not know they grew up in a grocery store in a segregated black neighbourhood in a small Delta town. Of course, I learned these things a number of years later.
But we all shared those words and song in our education.
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I too was taught these words and and songs in my education as well. It’s a very frightening juxtaposition as we slowly slide into an authoritarian/ white nationalist society.
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America is looking like the United Nations.
The spelling bee should change it name to the Indian spelling bee.
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