From guest blogger Dr. Mynga Futrell

Promoting a United Citizenry: Fond Memories of Formative Mottos

David Brooks’s op-ed column in the New York Times (10/15/06) struck a chord with me. In it, the NYT columnist set out his view that "Nations are held together by shared beliefs... human beings are social creatures whose actions and views are profoundly shaped by the social fabric that binds them."

The Brooks column got me to thinking about the ingredients that shape our social fabric, about what it is that binds us together as citizens. And I began to recall a few things that strongly influenced me as a young person, growing up in Kentucky. Among the factors I now recall having inspired me were two mottos that I learned.

One was United We Stand; Divided We Fall (for my state), and the other was E Pluribus Unum (for my nation). It was those maxims that helped to fashion my citizenship identity– as belonging to both a state and a nation. Even today I remain fond of both slogans that accompanied my two budding "citizenships."

A motto can be very influential. It can draw people together to act in harmony despite their individual differences.

My State

In Kentucky, all schoolchildren learned the state’s motto. It was then, and is now, part of the state flag. There, on a blue background, a pioneer and a statesman can be seen shaking hands, surrounded by United We Stand; Divided We Fall.

We children were told by teachers that those two persons represented all the people. (The motto, as I saw it then, was inclusive. I took little notice at the time that both individuals were men. That was long before the feminist movement.)

The overall idea of "reaching agreement despite stark differences of circumstance" felt just right to me. To me, the adage indicated a unified state and forward progress.

As Brooks noted, shared beliefs do have holding power. I think that United We Stand alerted us youngsters to the value of binding together with others, as citizens of the state, our state. We were all Kentuckians. The slogan inspired thoughts of acting somehow in a common interest, rather than just for ourselves. That’s a valuable ingredient of a motto. As far as I know, most states in the U.S. today still have state mottos, for such reasons.

My Nation

The national motto that I learned as a child was similarly inspirational. To this day, I think it is one of the more important influences on my interpretation of American citizenship. No, it was not the current "In God We Trust." That slogan came along later. Rather, back in my early school days, the 1950s, I was learning something much older.

The story of the nation's two mottos is told in many places. One source for information is Religious Tolerance.Org, which has rather lengthy material contrasting the original national motto with its replacement. A concise summary is in The Salt Lake Tribune.

In short, the motto I learned, E Pluribus Unum, was dumped in 1956, at the height of the cold war with the Soviet Union. Although no longer the official motto, it was (and remains) a key element of the Great Seal of the United States, and that tidbit of history is worth noting. Three of the founding fathers — John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson — were assigned by Congress to come up with a design for a "Great Seal" for the nation. This committee received its task assignment on an auspicious date – July 4, 1776.

The threesome submitted a design in August that contained the motto, E Pluribus Unum, but that design failed to meet with Congress's approval, and only after several designs and several years did the project reach fruition.

The approved design, submitted by the Secretary of Congress in June, 1782, combined several elements — an eagle with shield, olive branch, and arrows — with the original E Pluribus Unum motto (on a scroll held in the eagle's beak). This Latin phrase for "Out of Many — One" or "One Whole from Many Parts" pertained to the fusing of a group of individual political units into a single federal state.

Although the context for the Founders’ drafting committee was the welding together of the original thirteen colonies into thirteen states of a nation, the "one from many" phrase has practical meaning that goes beyond that milieu. Having studied Latin for two years, at sometime in the past I seem to have assigned my own meaning to it: "one nation out of its many citizens."

In our increasingly heterogeneous nation, this revamped notion gives the motto currency and vibrancy. It really "speaks to me," in that it depicts the melding of a diverse U.S. citizenry into a whole nation under a single constitution. I saw that as the essence of E Pluribus Unum. What a powerful motto! Not just one nation out of many states, but one nation out of the entirety of its people.

In some ways, I think this interpretation laid a pathway to my present-day personal grasp of egalitarian citizenship and civic responsibility. "Everybody in; everybody equal." "Government as wholly inclusive and impartial."

E Pluribus Unum is a nifty piece of our social fabric. As motto, it served the United States for 175 years. This was a maxim that belonged to every citizen alike. It was surely in tune with the sentiments of our forefathers.

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This is the first of a two part piece by Dr. Mynga Futrell. The second installment will run on Wednesday, November 1, 2006.

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Dr. Mynga Futrell is an instructional developer and member of the national advisory council of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. Dr. Futrell led the development of a religion-neutral Worldview Education Web resource to assist teachers who handle that subject matter in curricula.