CULLMAN – On Thursday evening, the Cullman County Board of Education (CCBOE) voted unanimously to authorize the display of the U.S. National Motto “In God We Trust” in the offices of each county system school and to allow teachers the option of displaying the motto in their classrooms, as well.
Superintendent Dr. Shane Barnette told The Tribune Friday, “I’m excited about that. And, you know, there’s going to be people that’s going to complain about that, or they may not like that, or whatever, but, as I explained last night at the board meeting, this is a law that our legislators put in place. And I shared (a fact sheet) that has information about how that became our motto in the United States hundreds of years ago. And there’s no reason that we should shy away from that.
“I think it’s really important for our kids to know our heritage. And so I’m going to be providing–I haven’t decided exactly what that’s going to look like, whether it’s going to be a plaque or something–but it’ll be displayed in every one of our schools’ offices or in the office area. And then, in the resolution as well is a statement that the classroom teachers or coaches, or whoever, if they want to display it somewhere else in the building, they can. It’s just got to be done in a respectful way, and a way that honors that motto and honors God.
“I’m excited about it. I think it’s something that we don’t need to shy away from, and it’s a good thing.”
The National Motto
The United States National Motto goes back to the 1814 Francis Scott Key poem “The Defense of Ft. McHenry” that was eventually renamed “The Star-Spangled Banner,” set to music, and adopted as the country’s national anthem. The poem, as well as the officially adopted form of the song, is four stanzas long and in the last stanza is the phrase:
“Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just; and this be our motto: ‘In God is our trust.’”
The modified and simplified form “In God We Trust” began to appear on certain U.S. coins during the Civil War and has appeared on all coins minted since 1938. In 1956, President Dwight D. Eisenhower and the 84th Congress officially adopted the phrase as the National Motto, replacing E Pluribus Unum (“Out of many, One”) which had been the motto since 1782 and still appears on the nation’s Great Seal.
Resolution National Motto by TheCullmanTribune on Scribd
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