First in Freedom

There are not many days I wish I were back teaching in the fourth grade, but today is one of those days. I would make sure we had a big, BIG celebration. For today, you see, is MecDec Day! I should call my fourth graders from the past to join me around the flagpole and revel in the joy of having Founding Fathers who cared about freedom. We could toast the concept as only a classroom of history-loving children should. I'd make sure every one of them had a noise maker of sorts. If it weren't illegal, I'd set off big fireworks.

Today is so important to the state and to the nation that it is even on our flag, the one that hung in the front of the room opposite Old Glory herself. 

Isn't it beautiful! Oops, I wanted to show the reason today is MecDec Day, and the image caught the wave at the wrong time. Yesterday morning, I took a picture of the flag at our town's museum. It was still wrapped in plastic when I spread it out on a table, but here it is, in its own kind of glory, wrinkles and all...our own America250 reason to celebrate today, two hundred and fifty years later.

Back when Charlotte was a Hornet's nest of stinging questions about what the British monarchy meant to the citizens of the colony of North Carolina, there was a group of men who gathered to take action against the unfairness of it all. They wrote what has been labeled the Mecklenburg Resolves after Mecklenburg County, where this major step against the crown took place. This was a full year before the more famous and more revered Declaration of Independence of July 4, 1776. In fact, David Fleming's recent book Who's Your Founding Father? about his "quest to uncover the first, true Declaration of Independence," dives deep into the story behind the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence and the controversy surrounding it. If you think a book about history is a dry, boring read, think again. This book was a hoot, a page-turner hoot! Take a look at my copy in front of the state flags on my desktop screen. Didn't I stage it perfectly!

Our declaration was first (despite what naysayers have to say). Once upon a time, not so long ago, we even bragged about it on our car license tags. 

And you best believe that in all the years I taught fourth grade social studies, come every May 20th, we would study the flag and talk about how people can peacefully protest unfair rules. Best of all, you don't have to be a student in a classroom to celebrate. We have the freedom to do so. The Founding Fathers saw to that!

Catch of the day,

Gretchen