{"id":35,"date":"2021-06-14T19:34:20","date_gmt":"2021-06-14T19:34:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/teagle-ney\/?page_id=35"},"modified":"2021-07-08T18:39:29","modified_gmt":"2021-07-08T18:39:29","slug":"esther-popel-shaw-flag-solute","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/teagle-ney\/esther-popel-shaw-flag-solute\/","title":{"rendered":"Esther Popel, “Flag Salute” (1934)"},"content":{"rendered":"

American Values and Reality<\/h1>\n
\"Esther<\/a>

Esther Popel (Dickinson Archives)<\/p><\/div>\n

Esther Popel\u2019s \u201cFlag Salute\u201d<\/a> was so impactful it was printed in The Crisis <\/i>twice. The first time it was published followed the lynching of a young black man in 1934. The second followed the US Senate’s failure to pass an anti-lynching bill to address the ongoing problem. Popel\u2019s poem highlighted the gross injustice and hypocrisy of the time. She paralleled the Pledge of Allegiance with the gruesome details of the lynching, separating it by line. As the poem progressed, it became increasingly obvious that the Pledge of Allegiance did not accurately reflect African American\u2019s reality.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Her poem is powerful because she called out the bigotry and injustice towards African Americans so perfectly. The Pledge of Allegiance praises America for being one indivisible nation, \u201cWith liberty and justice for all,\u201d but its white citizens did not uphold the very values they pledged to live by. Instead, they made a \u201cspectacle\u201d of lynching their fellow citizens. She described men, women, and children gathering around the young black man\u2019s hanged body as if it was a source of entertainment and satisfaction for them. Perhaps the most callous and apathetic part was Popel\u2019s description of the white people taking pieces of rope and teeth from the boy\u2019s lifeless body as \u201csouvenirs.\u201d<\/p>\n

Popel\u2019s writing style here<\/i> was similar to Frederick Douglass\u2019s in his \u201cFifth of July” speech<\/a>. Just as Douglass called out white Americans for celebrating their liberty on the Fourth of July, Popel called into question white American\u2019s commitment to equality. Popel was being ironic when she referred to the boy who lynched his fellow African American citizen as \u201cpatriotic.\u201d She did so perhaps to make white Americans feel ashamed of their unjust practices, think about what true patriotism is, and question the very notion that they ever<\/i> were committed to ensuring \u201cliberty and justice for all.\u201d<\/p>\n