South Dakota State Motto: Under God the People Rule

South Dakota's state motto is Under God the People Rule, written in plain English rather than Latin. Reverend Joseph Ward proposed it at the 1885 Constitutional Convention, four years before South Dakota became a state. It arcs across the top of the state seal in black letters on a golden background.

Most state mottos from the 1880s used Latin. Ward's choice of English was deliberate: he wanted every citizen to be able to read the state's founding principle without education in classical languages. South Dakota is one of a small number of states with a motto that explicitly names God.

South Dakota tried to become a state twice before it succeeded. A first constitutional convention met in 1883 and applied for statehood; Congress refused. A second convention met in 1885, and Reverend Joseph Ward chaired the Committee on the Great Seal. Ward proposed both the visual design of the seal and the motto, and the 1885 convention adopted both. Congress again declined to admit South Dakota.

Ward was a Congregationalist minister who had founded Yankton College in 1881. He brought both a classical education and a frontier minister's practical sense to the task. Where other states had reached for Latin to signal republican tradition, Ward reached for plain English to signal democratic access. The phrase he wrote expressed his theology and his view of democratic government in six words.

Congress passed the Omnibus Admission Act in 1889, and South Dakota held a third constitutional convention that retained Ward's 1885 seal and motto with only minor modifications. South Dakota and North Dakota were both admitted on November 2, 1889. Ward died on December 11, 1889, forty days after seeing the statehood he had worked toward.