Origins of Constitution Day

September 17th is Constitution Day and it commemorates the signing of the U.S. Constitution in 1787. Schools and libraries will hold special activities in honor of this day.

In 1939 New York City news tycoon William Randolph Hearst suggested having a national holiday to celebrate American citizenship. In 1940 Congress designated the third Sunday in May as “I Am an American Day” and Harry Truman put forth a resolution on March 12, 1946.    

In 1952, Olga Weber of Louisville, Ohio petitioned city leaders to change the date of this holiday so it would coincide with the signing of the U.S. Constitution.  She also petitioned the state of Ohio and later the U.S. Congress. In 1952 Louisville, Ohio became the first city to celebrate the holiday on September 17th. President Dwight Eisenhower signed it into law in 1953 and it became known as Citizenship Day.

In 2004 Louise Leigh founded a nonprofit organization called Constitution Day, Inc. to commemorate the Constitution. During the same year Leigh enlisted the help of Senator Robert Byrd to make Constitution Day an official holiday alongside Citizenship Day.  In May 2005, the U.S. Department of Education became involved and the law was amended so that each educational institution that receives Federal funds will hold programs for students on this day.

Many men were involved in the creation of the U.S. Constitution but only 40 signed the document. It is interesting to note who was involved, who signed or did not sign the Constitution. The Constitutional Convention started meeting in June 1787 in Independence Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.  Seventy men were chosen to attend the convention only fifty-five men attended most of the meetings.  Some states like Rhode Island, decided not to send any delegates.  Among those who signed the document include George Washington, Benjamin Franklin and Alexander Hamilton.  William Jackson, who was the secretary of the convention but who was not a delegate, signed the Constitution. John Dickinson of Delaware left the convention due to illness but asked his colleague Jacob Broome of Delaware to sign his name to the document.  “George Mason and Edmund Randolph of Virginia along with Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts refused to sign the final document because of basic philosophical differences.  Their refusal to sign the final document was due fearful of an all-powerful government and wanted a bill of rights added to protect the rights of the people.

Here are some proclamations relating to Constitution Day:

• 1952 - President Truman proclaims the first Citizenship Day, Proclamation 2984, July 25, 1952, 3 C.F.R. 164 (1947-1953).
• 1953 – President Eisenhower Proclamation 3028 commemorates Citizenship Day September 17th of each year.
• 1955 - President Eisenhower proclaims the first Constitution Week, Proclamation 3109, August 19, 1955, 3 C.F.R. 56 (1954-1958). 
• 2000 - President William J. Clinton’s Proclamation 7343 (PDF), Citizenship Day and Constitution Week, Sept. 17, 2000, 3 C.F.R. 7343 (2000).
• 2005 - Department of Education Notice of Implementation of Constitution Day and Citizenship Day on September 17 of Each Year.70 Fed. Reg. 29727 (PDF).
• 2009 - President Barack H. Obama's Proclamation 8418 celebrating Constitution and Citizenship Day and designating the week of September 17-23 as Constitution Week, 74 F.R. 48129.

Naomi Allen

Reference Librarian

New exhibition on the history of Education in Massachusetts

Opening this week at the State Library of Massachusetts is a new exhibition entitled Back to School A Retrospective View of Education in Massachusetts. Education has long been an important part of Massachusetts culture and commerce, the library’s resources documenting its development cover centuries of history, in a variety of formats, and a wide range of opinions. This exhibition, drawn from the collections of the State Library of Massachusetts, traces the history of education in the Commonwealth, starting with the first school-related legislation in 1642 through the Boston busing crisis of the early 1970s.

The exhibition runs from September 12 through December 31, 2016. It can be viewed outside of the Library, Room 341 of the State House, Monday-Friday, 9am-5pm. This exhibition will also be available to view online as a set of images on the State Library's Flickr site.

Adopt-a-Book Preservation and Digitization Program

YOU can Help Preserve and Digitize State Library of Massachusetts Resources for Everyone!
We are pleased to announce the creation of the Friends of the Massachusetts State Library Adopt-a-Book Preservation and Digitization Program!  And it doesn’t even have to be a book! We also have maps needing adoption!

Your personal sponsorship, or gift in honor of someone else, can help ensure the survival and enjoyment of State Library of Massachusetts’ resources for generations to come. We will put a custom, personalized book plate in each volume or on the item’s container so that users will know whose generosity provided for continuing and future use of the resource. Donors will also be acknowledged (with permission) on a special webpage.  With the help of sponsors like YOU, the State Library of Massachusetts can fulfill its commitment to the conservation, preservation, and digitization of our vast and unique collections with historical significance to Massachusetts and the world.

Please consider becoming a GOLD, SILVER, or BRONZE donor today! Thank you for your support.

Meet all our ADOPTEES here:  http://www.mass.gov/anf/research-and-tech/oversight-agencies/lib/adopt-a-book-program.html

September Author Talk: Megan Sullivan

Parental Incarceration: Personal Accounts and Developmental Impact edited by Megan Sullivan and Denise Johnston  
Tuesday, September 27, 2016—Noon to 1:00 pm
State Library of Massachusetts—Room 341, Massachusetts State House



The State Library is pleased to invite you to an Author Talk on Tuesday, September 27, with Boston University professor Megan Sullivan. Dr. Sullivan will be speaking about her most recent book, Parental Incarceration: Personal Accounts and Developmental Impact, which she co-edited with Dr. Denise Johnston.

Parental Incarceration explores the ways in which the experience of having an incarcerated parent affects the health and development of children throughout their lives. As the number of prisoners in the United States has increased over the years, so too has the number of children with incarcerated parents increased. This book presents the stories of adults who experienced parental incarceration in childhood and discusses the impact of mass incarceration on families in the U.S.

In addition to Parental Incarceration, Dr. Sullivan is also the author of Irish Women and Cinema: 1980-1990 and Women in Northern Ireland: Cultural Studies and Material Conditions, as well as several journal articles. Dr. Sullivan serves as Associate Dean for Faculty Research and Development, Associate Professor of Rhetoric, and Director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Teaching and Learning at Boston University.

Dr. Sullivan’s talk is free and open to the public, and copies of the book Parental Incarceration will be available for purchase and signing at the event. Please register online and join us on September 27th at the State Library.

Laura Schaub
Cataloging Librarian

To Be on the Ballot or Not to Be on the Ballot: That is the Question

This fall not only we will be voting for the President of the United States but we will have ballot questions to consider. All ballot questions go through the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office to make sure they follow the correct legal standards and are called petitions or initiative petitions.

Massachusetts’ citizens can submit petitions to repeal or amend a particular section of an existing law or constitutional amendment for approval. If the questions get approved they appear on the statewide ballot. Each petition must be signed by ten voters and submitted to the Attorney General’s office by the first Wednesday in August and certification happens on the first Wednesday in September.

After a petition is certified by the Attorney General thousands of additional signatures are gathered (the requirement in 2015 was 64,750) and filed with local election officials by late November and then with the Secretary of State by the first Wednesday in December.

If enough signatures are gathered, the measure is sent to the Legislature; the Legislature approves or disapproves the measure, proposes a substitute, or takes no action.

Unless the Legislature has enacted the measure, the proponents continue to gather additional signatures.  If they gather enough signatures, the measure and any legislative substitute are submitted to the people at the next biennial state election.

The Attorney General has designated the following questions as OB - On Ballot for November 2016:
15-34 An Act Relative to Expanded Gaming - Question 1
15-31 An Act to Allow Fair Access to Public Charter Schools   Question 2
15-11  An Act to Prevent Cruelty to Farm Animals   Question 3
15-27 The Regulation and Taxation of Marijuana Act   Question 4

After a ballot question has been approved for the November ballot the Attorney General and the Secretary of the Commonwealth work jointly to prepare voter information materials per Massachusetts General Law chapter 54 section 53. This information includes a short title to the ballot question and fair and neutral sentence statements describing the effect of a yes or no vote.

For additional information on the Initiative Petition consult the Attorney General's web page.

Naomi Allen
Reference Librarian

Happy Statehood Anniversary, Hawaii!

Official seal of the State of Hawaii 

August 21, 2016 marks the 57th anniversary of Hawaiian statehood.  What does this have to do with Massachusetts, you may ask?!  Missionaries who graduated from the Andover Theological Seminary (established in 1807 on the campus of Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts) played a pivotal role in the story of the “Americanization” of Hawaii that ultimately led to the establishment of our 50th state in 1959. Hiram and Sibyl Bingham and Asa and Lucy Thurston were the first company of New England missionaries to lead a mission to the then Sandwich Islands, as we call now the Hawaiian Islands, for the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (which was also founded in 1810 in Massachusetts by recent graduates of Williams College).

Hawaiian Bible

The missionaries arrived in Hawaii in 1820 and were the first to devise a written Hawaiian alphabet from what was until then only a spoken language. They translated the Bible into Hawaiian and taught the native Hawaiians how to read and write their spoken language. In 1841 a copy of one of the first translations of this Hawaiian Bible was presented to the General Court by the members of The Board (as detailed in 1841 Senate Bill 47) and placed in the keeping of the State Library, where this treasure still resides today. As a result of these very early Massachusetts missionary ties with Hawaii, the State Library’s collections on Hawaii and the history of the Hawaiian Islands are particularly rich and varied.

Some notable items include:

•  A Residence of Twenty-one Years in the Sandwich Islands, by Hiram Bingham, 1855.
• A Dictionary of the Hawaiian Language, by Lorrin Andrews, 1865.
• Narrative of a Tour through Hawaii, or Owhyhee, by William Ellis, 1827.
• Hawaii's story, by Hawaii's Queen, Liliuokalani, 1898.
• Hawaii and its People: the Land of Rainbow and Palm, by Alexander S. Twombly, 1899.
• Hawaii, U.S.A. and Statehood: History, Premises and Essential Facts of the Statehood Movement, 1951.

Judy Carlstrom

Technical Services

The Loyal Nine, a secret precursor to the Sons of Liberty

Boston’s rough and rowdy reputation goes back farther than the establishment of local sports teams and rivalries. In colonial New England, the anti-Catholic “Pope’s Day,” stemming from the tradition of Guy Fawkes Day in England, was widely celebrated by building large carriages with effigies of popes, bishops, and devils and parading these figures toward a great bonfire, where they would be burned. In Boston, however, the celebration became a bloody competition between gangs from the South End and North End. Each gang would attempt to possess the other’s carriages, resulting in “a ferocious battle” where “people were killed and maimed for life” (Paul Revere & the World He lived in). When England began enforcing stricter taxes on its American colonies in the mid-1700’s, Samuel Adams and his political contemporaries believed that they could harness the North End and South End gangs to further their political agendas.

Via Wikipedia Commons
(https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1769_PopesDay_Boston.jpg)

In reaction to the Stamp Act, a group of nine middle-class artisans and shopkeepers joined together in a secret political group which referred to itself as the “Loyal Nine.”  These men were listed by John Adams as braziers John Smith and Thomas Chase, painter Thomas Crafts, printer Benjamin Edes, distiller Joseph Field, naval officer Henry Bass, and jeweler George Trott. While none of the members were high-profile political figures in Boston, they recognized the threat that the Stamp Act would have on their businesses and crafts. Samuel Adams was not listed as among their ranks but appears to have worked closely with these men to subvert the economic intentions of Great Britain.

Preferring to avoid publicity, the secret group enlisted the help of Ebenezer MacKintosh, the leader of the South End gang that had brutally defeated the North End gang in the last Pope’s Day Riots. On August 14, 1765, MacIntosh orchestrated the hanging of two effigies on the Liberty Tree: one, an effigy of Andrew Oliver, the official responsible for implementing the Stamp Act in Massachusetts, and the other a boot effigy containing a devil figure, a reference to the Earl of Bute who was mistakenly thought to be the architect of the act in England.  A crowd surrounded the tree and effigies and would not allow “peace officers” nor the local sheriff’s forces to cut them down. Eventually, the crowd removed the figures themselves and carried them toward Oliver’s home, where they beheaded and burned the effigy. MacKintosh further incited the mob into ransacking Oliver’s home and forcing Andrew Oliver to flee to Castle William, violence that may not have been part of the original plan. Days later on the 26th of August, MacKintosh also lead a mob which destroyed Governor Hutchison’s North End mansion.

Henry Bass, a member of the Loyal Nine, wrote in a letter to Samuel Savage that “we do every thing in order to keep this & the first Affair Private: and are not a little pleas’d to head that McIntosh has the Credit of the whole Affair… we Endeavour to keep up the Spirit which I think is as great as ever” ("A Note on Ebenezer MacKintosh"). Perhaps because their support of violent action against those supporting the Stamp Act, John Adams seems surprised that the night he spent with the Loyal Nine was unmarred by conflict or drama. Adams reported that he was “very civilly and respectfully treated by all present” and that he “heard nothing but such conservation as passes at all clubs, among gentlemen, about the times. No plots, no machinations. They chose a committee to make preparations for grand rejoicings upon the arrival of the news of a repeal of the Stamp Act, and I heard afterwards they are to have such illuminations, bonfires, pyramids, obelisks, such grand exhibitions and such fireworks as were never before seen in America. I wish they may not be disappointed” (The Works  of John Adams)

After the repeal of the Stamp Act, the Loyal Nine all became active members of the more public Sons of Liberty.  MacKintosh continued to be a persuasive leader for the Boston mobs during the revolutionary period and, along with four members of the Loyal Nine, was recorded as participants in the Boston Tea Party protest years later in 1773.

Further reading:

• The Stamp Act Crisis: Prologue to Revolution by Edmund S. Morgan and Helen M. Morgan. 
• Cradle of Violence: How Boston’s Waterfront Mobs Ignited the American Revolution by Russell Bourne 
• “A Note on Ebenezer MacKintosh” from the Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, Vol. 26  

Alexandra Bernson
Reference Staff