Samuel Paul Dinkins Chapter of DAR learn about new American citizenship test

Members of the Samuel Paul Dinkins Chapter DAR met at the Kilgore Public Library with Doris Snow, Agnes Oliver, Martha Smith, Nancy Bullock and Marguerite Lessley serving as hostesses.

The Regent, Joan Smith, called the meeting to order and with the assistance of Martha Smith, Chaplain, led members in the DAR Ritual, the Pledge to the Flag of the United States of American, the Salute to the Texas Flag, the American's Creed, and the National Anthem.

A report on the test for American citizenship was given by Dorothy Brooks, National Defense Chairperson. A new test has been unveiled by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Emilio Gonzales, director of the agency, said the new questions are designed to be more profound and to test knowledge of basic civic concepts essential to being an American. "The questions are more about meaning and understanding than rote memorization," he said. For example, the old test asked, "what country did we fight during the Revolutionary War?" The new test changes the question to "Why did the Colonists fight the British?" Immigrants have to study 100 questions for the test when they take it, however, they will be asked only 10 questions and have to answer six correctly to pass. They also have to read a sentence in English and write a sentence given to them. In the pilot program, 92.4 percent of the immigrants passed the citizenship test on the first try. Currently, the average is 84 percent.

Judy Carpenter presented a program on Insignia. The origin of the word "Insignia" can be traced back to 1300 for the Latin word "arma" meaning "heraldic insignia" as in the coat of arms. Originally, they were borne on shields of fully armed knights or barons.

In 1375, via the Scots, from the Latin "insignia" the sense of "banner, or flag" became associated with coats of arms, or heraldic insignia, thus we have our history of heraldic tartans. The tartan is actually a flag of a clan; people recognized this tartan and knew which family individuals belonged to even if they could not read.

In 1540 it seems that Insignia became associated with the Latin word "regalia" which meant "royal things." This referred to the "rights and power of a king" Therefore, someone who wore insignia was known to belong to a certain order, such as were the king's soldiers.

Then in 1648, the plural form of the word Insignia which is insigne, became associated with our definition of "badge, mark, or emblem." The word Ensign, which is a military rank of our U.S. Navy, comes from the word Insignia. Ensigns served in our Revolutionary War in infantry regiments where they were the lowest ranking commissioned officer.

The DAR insignia was designed by Dr. G.B. Goode and was accepted at the First continental Congress in February 1892 almost 116 years ago. He close the spinning wheel and distaff as emblematic of the daily tasks of our pioneer women ancestors. The dark blue and the white used as the colors of the wheel and distaff represent the DAR colors and were adopted because they were the colors used on the military staff of General George Washington. The next meeting will be March 18 at 2:00 p.m. at the Kilgore Library.