June 14th 2026- Flag day

We take a short look into the beginnings of Flag day and the legacy it leaves.  

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:06

I'm Jesse Spano, and I'm so excited to bring you the stripped out news brief for today's top stories. No sides, all facts. Let's dive in, shall we?

SPEAKER_00 0:19

Welcome to the Stripped Out News Daily Podcast. It's Sunday, June 14th, 2026. Flag Day. Instead of giving you the daily stories, we are going to do a mini-dive into a holiday that should get more attention than it does. It's a Tuesday morning in the fall of 1885. Inside a one-room schoolhouse on Stony Hill Road, just outside Waubeka, Wisconsin, a 19-year-old teacher named Bernard Segrand is standing in front of his class. There are maybe a dozen children. Farm kids. Their boots are muddy. The windows are drafty. It looks like every other rural schoolhouse in America. But today, Seagran does something none of them expect. He walks to his desk, pulls a small 10-inch American flag out of a drawer, and places it into an inkwell so it stands upright. Then he turns to his students and gives them an assignment. Write an essay about what this flag means to you. He calls it the flag's birthday, June 14, 1885, 108 years after the Continental Congress passed a resolution in Philadelphia adopting the Stars and Stripes as the official flag of the United States of America. That moment in a tiny schoolhouse that most Americans have never heard of is the origin of Flag Day. And the story of how it got here is one of the most American stories ever told. Bernard Segrande was nobody. He wasn't a senator, he wasn't a general, he wasn't wealthy. He was a 19-year-old kid in rural Wisconsin who loved his country and believed the flag deserved to be honored. And in America, that's enough. One person with a conviction and the freedom to act on it can change everything. Segrand never stopped after that day. He left teaching, became a dentist, eventually a dental professor and college dean in Chicago, but the flag was his life's mission. He wrote articles, he gave speeches, thousands of them, all across the country. He founded the American Flag Day Association. He published essays, petitioned congressmen, and rallied communities for decades. It took 61 years. The federal government didn't acknowledge Flag Day until 1916, when Woodrow Wilson issued a presidential proclamation, 31 years after Sigrand put that flag in an inkwell. Congress didn't officially designate June 14th as National Flag Day until 1949, under Harry Truman. 64 years of one man's unwavering belief. But that's America. This country wasn't built by people who gave up. It was built by people like Sigrand, stubborn, relentless, convinced that something mattered even when nobody else was paying attention. Now, about the flag itself. The story most of us grew up with is that Betsy Ross sewed the first flag in her Philadelphia shop in 1776 at George Washington's personal request. She suggested five pointed stars instead of six, arranged them in a circle, and the stars and stripes was born. The truth is we don't actually know who designed it. There are no contemporary records linking Betsy Ross to the flag's creation. The story comes from her grandson, William Canby, who told it to the Historical Society of Pennsylvania in 1870, nearly a century after the fact. Some historians believe Francis Hopkinson, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, is a more likely candidate. He even submitted a bill to Congress for the work. Congress didn't pay him. They said it was a shared effort. But here's what matters. Whether it was Betsy Ross, Francis Hopkinson, or someone whose name was never recorded, the flag endured. It became the most recognized symbol of freedom on the planet. The original 1777 resolution didn't even specify much. 13 stripes, alternating red and white, 13 stars, white in a blue field representing a new constellation. No arrangement, no dimensions, no proportions. So for decades, American flags looked wildly different from one another. Stars in rows, in circles, in scattered patterns. Some had six points, some had four. And that's kind of beautiful. Because even in its earliest days, the flag wasn't one rigid thing. It was an idea. And ideas are alive. They grow. The flag has been officially changed 27 times as new states joined the Union. Every single change was an act of inclusion. Another star, another state, another community of Americans saying, we're part of this. The current 50-star flag has been flying since 1960. It has been carried to the summit of Mount Everest. It was planted on the surface of the moon. It has been draped over the coffins of presidents, soldiers, firefighters, and police officers who gave everything for the country it represents. It has been raised over battlefields from Normandy to Iwo Jima to Kabul. And every single time it meant the same thing. We are here and we are free. And then there's the chapter that proves more than any other why America is different from every other nation on Earth. 1984. He's arrested and convicted under a Texas law prohibiting the desecration of a venerated object. The case goes all the way to the Supreme Court, and in 1989, in a 5-4 decision, the court rules that flagburning is protected speech under the First Amendment. Justice William Brennan writes the line that defines American freedom more clearly than almost anything else in the legal canon. If there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that the government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable. Let that sit for a moment. The United States of America, the country that flag represents, protects your right to burn it. Not because burning it is good, not because it's admirable, but because the freedom that flag stands for is so deeply embedded in our system of government that even the most offensive expression of dissent is safeguarded. Name another country that does that. Name one. You can't. That is what makes this country exceptional. Not that we agree on everything. We never have and we never will. But that the framework the founders built, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the institutions, they are strong enough to protect the people who challenge them. That's not weakness. That is strength. That is confidence in who we are. A 19-year-old teacher in Wisconsin believed the flag deserved a birthday, and he spent his entire life making it happen. A seamstress in Philadelphia may or may not have sown the first one, and it doesn't matter because the story became part of who we are. A protester in Dallas set one on fire, and the Supreme Court said that's his right, because the freedoms that flag represents are bigger than any one person's anger. Two hundred forty-nine years ago today, a room full of colonists who had no army, no navy, no money, and no guarantee they would survive a year voted to adopt a flag for a country that didn't fully exist yet. They put 13 stars in a blue field and called it a new constellation. They were right. Happy flag day, America. It's still the greatest country on the face of the earth.

SPEAKER_01 8:17

I hear the horns, so it's time to bug out. I'm Jesse. I've been great, and those have been today's top stories. Brought to you by Stripped Out News. Dive deeper on these and more at stripptoutnews.com. Go on, hit me up. Oh, wait, don't forget. Buy stuff for pour.