Flag Day
14 June 2027
Flag Day is 14 June, the anniversary of the resolution passed by the Second Continental Congress on that day in 1777: “that the Flag of the thirteen United States be thirteen stripes, alternate red and white; that the Union be thirteen stars, white in a blue field, representing a new constellation.” In 2027 it falls on a Monday.
It is not a federal holiday. Mail is delivered, banks open, and nothing closes. It is a day for display rather than for time off.
The observance is much younger than the flag. Localities and a few states had been marking the day for years when President Woodrow Wilson issued Proclamation 1335 on 30 May 1916, asking that 14 June “be observed as FLAG DAY with special patriotic exercises” in every community. That made it a request, not a law. Congress made it National Flag Day in 1949, in a joint resolution President Harry S. Truman signed on 3 August, which also directs the president to issue a proclamation each year.
The resolution of 1777 named no arrangement of stars and no maker. The best-known story about the flag’s origin is a family tradition rather than a record: that a Philadelphia upholsterer, Betsy Ross, made the first one in 1776 after George Washington and two others brought her a sketch. It was told in public for the first time in 1870 by her grandson, William J. Canby, at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, with sworn statements from relatives but no documents from the 1770s. The Smithsonian’s National Postal Museum calls it most likely false, and curators at the National Museum of American History say they have never seen a surviving Revolutionary-period flag with thirteen stars in a circle.
Flag Day also opens a period Congress has set aside. Under title 36 of the U.S. Code, the 21 days from Flag Day through Independence Day are Honor America Days.
Sources
- Library of Congress, “Today in History — June 14”
- American Presidency Project, Woodrow Wilson, “Proclamation 1335 — Flag Day”, 30 May 1916
- Smithsonian Institution, National Postal Museum, “The Legend of Betsy Ross”
- Smithsonian Institution, Sidedoor, “Broad Stripes, Bright Stars, and White Lies”
- U.S. Code, title 36, section 112, “Honor America Days”
- Timeanddate.com, “Holidays and Observances in the United States in 2027”
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