Constitution Day takes place on September 17th each year. Constitution Day is celebrated in order to honor the final meeting of the Constitutional Congress back on 17th September 1787. That final meeting was held in order for the signing of the Constitution of the United States of America, which was the very document that the Constitutional Congress had so painstakingly worked in order to both create and perfect.
Not that that meeting was actually the end of the matter, of course. There was still a great deal to do afterwards, with individual states then having to meet and vote as to whether they were for or against it. The Constitution did not actually come into effect for another two years, beginning on 4th March 1789.
The law that established Constitution Day as a holiday did not actually come about until as recently as just eight years ago, back in 2004, when Senator Robert Byrd added the passage of an amendment to that year’s Omnibus spending bill. Since then the holiday has been renamed Constitution and Citizenship Day, with the act also mandating that educational programming in regards to the history of the American Constitution should be given by all publically funded educational institutions on this day.
Despite the official sanctioning of the day as a holiday coming just recently, Constitution Day was being recognized by schools in Iowa as far back as 1911, and was promoted as such by the Sons of the American Revolution in 1917.
Lance Grooms
