Proclamation 3852—Citizenship Day and Constitution Week, 1968

On September 17,1787, the Founding Fathers signed the United States Constitution—the charter of a government founded upon the will of the governed, and consecrated to the preservation of freedom, equality, and justice.

For 181 years, our constitutional government has remained strong and vigorous in the protection and advancement of our fundamental rights and privileges.

We have received a magnificent heritage: a heritage of law and freedom, of order and liberty. To our generation, as to all others in the nearly two centuries of the American past, falls the task of guarding that heritage for ourselves and those who will follows us.

If we seek to suppress individual rights in the quest for order, we shall betray our democratic heritage.

If we confuse individual rights with license, we shall leave a disordered land to later Americans, a land where the rights of no one can be truly secure.

Our Constitution, as it has developed through amendment and interpretation over 181 years, is a powerful star by whose light we chart the course of order and liberty.

The Congress has wisely made provision for an annual rededication to the principles and ideals of the Constitution. By a joint resolution of February 29,1952 (66 Stat. 9), the Congress designated the seventeenth day of September of each year as Citizenship Day, not only to commemorate the signing of the Constitution on September 17,1787, but also to honor those citizens who came of age or were naturalized during the year. By a resolution of August 2, 1956 (70 Stat. 932), the Congress requested the President to designate the week beginning September 17 of each year as Constitution Week.

Now, Therefore, I, Lyndon B. Johnson, President of the United States of America, call upon the appropriate officials of the Government to display the flag of the United States on all Government buildings on Citizenship Day, September 17, 1968. I urge Federal, State, and local officials, as well as all religious, civic, educational, and other interested organizations, to arrange meaningful ceremonies on that day to inspire all our citizens to pledge themselves anew to the service of their country and to the support and defense of the Constitution.

I also designate the period beginning September 17 and ending September 23, 1968, as Constitution Week; and I urge the people of the United States to observe that week with appropriate ceremonies and activities in their schools and churches, and in other suitable places, to the end that they may have a better understanding of the Constitution and of the rights and responsibilities of United States citizenship.

In Witness Whereof, I have hereunto set my hand this first day of June, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and sixty-eight, and of the Independence of the United States of America the one hundred and ninety-second.

LYNDON B. JOHNSON