“Hats off! along the street there comes, A blare of bugles, a ruffle of drums; And loyal hearts are beating high, Hats off! The flag is passing by!” — Henry Holcomb Bennett, “The Flag Goes By.”

The Flag of the United States of America has been prominent in Alpena’s celebration of the Fourth of July. Missing this year will be the colors borne by the honor guard that led marchers and floats representing life in the community, in the annual parade, canceled for concerns of spreading the COVID-19 virus. Instead, the summer of 2020 will be remembered for people marching with flags in hand, revealing the feelings in their hearts, mostly triggered by the dying words of George Floyd, “I can’t breathe.” By acknowledging the strong attachment to people have for flags, we might begin to separate the emotion evoked by the symbol from the reasoning needed to understand the essence of an issue.

“The primordial rag dipped in the blood of a conquered enemy lifted high on a stick.” — Dr. Whitney Smith, author ‘Flags Through the Ages and Across the World.’

The flag in a small-town Independence Day parade is a sharp contrast to what Vexillologist Whitney Smith’s blunt description points out — the sentiment to a flag is strengthened through conflict and victory. Flags are designed with colors and symbols to represent clans, cults, tribes, and nations, that are honored through rituals developed over time. A flag hanging loosely from a staff on a podium poses little threat, but in the hands of a provocateur in an angry crowd, broadcast over television and social media, it becomes a weapon.

Unknowingly, the white lettering, “Black Lives Matter” on a black field might be dismissed as a simplistic phrase lacking substance. The work of Brooklyn artist Dread Scott, the design is based on that of a flag raised daily for 18 years by the New York City chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People beginning in 1920 that read, “A Man Was Lynched Yesterday.” According to records, 1,200 blacks were lynched in the South between 1901 and 1929 — the flag has history relevant to the cause.

The celebration of the Nation’s birthday may not be the celebration that we want it to be, but we have much to be thankful and a lot to look forward to — the flag at the harbor is a reminder of that. Positioned at the mouth of a river, on a large body of water, and measuring 30 feet by 50 feet, Alpena’s American Flag casts an image like that seen by Francis Scott Key at Ft. McHenry in Baltimore, Maryland, September 14,1814, a flag measuring 30 feet by 42 feet. Though he penned the words, “land of the free,” Key, a lawyer, and a poet, was a slave owner and advocate of the colonization movement to return black slaves to Liberia. Events can cause change before attitudes adjust, but if the flag is “still there,” we have something to believe in — ourselves.

“I have slipped the bonds of Earth and stood watch over the uncharted frontiers of space from my vantage point on the moon. I have borne silent witness to all of Americas finest hours. But my finest hours are yet to come.” — Howard Schnauber, poem, “I Am Old Glory.”