Red Skelton’s Pledge of Allegiance

On January 14, 1969 comic Red Skelton, on his weekly television show, expressed sorrow that the Pledge of Allegiance might someday be considered a “prayer” and eliminated from public schools. Red Skelton’s words were remarkably visionary and perhaps more prophetic than even he imagined.

On that show, Skelton offered his television audience his reminiscence of an incident from his schoolboy days in Indiana. Mr. Lasswell, Skelton’s teacher, felt his students had come to regard the Pledge of Allegiance as a daily chore to be recited by mechanical repetition. They had lost any sense of the meaning of the words they were speaking. As Skelton related the story, Mr. Lasswell told his class: “I’ve been listening to you boys and girls recite the Pledge of Allegiance all semester and it seems as though it’s becoming monotonous to you. If I may, may I recite it and try to explain to you the meaning of each and every word?”

Skelton then delivered to his audience a stirring version of the explanation provided to his school class by their teacher so many years earlier and a recitation of the pledge itself.