Amid the racial justice protests of 2020, when Confederate statues all over the country toppled, Mississippi became the last state to remove the Confederate battle flag from its state flag.
It was a moment of reckoning for the Lost Cause mythology about the Civil War that dominated much of the 20th century, but for visual artist Jason Patterson, the work is not done. Patterson, a 38-year-old Black man whose art focuses on African American history, is a self-professed “flag nerd” (more formally, a “vexillophile”), and his obsession with flags has taught him something few Americans realize: Several state flags still commemorate – in ways both obvious and oblique – the bloody attempt to create a permanent slave society.
To Patterson, flags aren’t just images. “They are representations of people,” he said. “They can hold so much meaning.”
Five years ago, Patterson moved from Illinois – he, like many flag enthusiasts, adores Chicago’s banner – to Chestertown, Md., where he is now the interim deputy director of Washington College’s Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience. He loves living on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, a region that produced the likes of Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, and the abolitionist Henry Highland Garnet, of whom Patterson painted a recent portrait.
But he has one sticking point: The state’s eye-catching flag has a disturbing proslavery, pro-Confederate history.
Patterson doesn’t want to change the flag, which is particularly beloved by Marylanders. But he doesn’t think its Confederate ties should be ignored either.
Not every flag with similarities to the Confederate battle flag has a definitive historical connection to secession or slavery. Three state flags – for Alabama, Florida, and Tennessee – contain elements reminiscent of the battle flag and were adopted during the Jim Crow era but otherwise lack historical proof of an intentional link.
But seven state flags, including Maryland’s, have documented links to the Confederacy and white supremacy. Here they are, ranked from least to most obvious.
CALIFORNIA
In June 1846, a couple of dozen American men in what was then the Mexican region of Alta California took over an unarmed fort in Sonoma and raised a flag painted with a red star, a grizzly bear, and the words “California Republic.” Some of them were maybe a bit drunk.
A few weeks later, a U.S. naval squadron showed up in Monterey, and its confused commanding officer raised the Stars and Stripes and claimed California for the United States. The “Bear Flaggers” lowered their banner, and four years and a war with Mexico later, California joined the Union as a free state, meaning slavery was banned. Decades later, in the early 20th century, a version of the Bear Flag became California’s state flag.
SO WHAT DOES ALL THAT HAVE TO DO WITH THE CONFEDERACY?
First, California might have been a free state on paper, but it wasn’t in practice. Many of its early American settlers were proslavery Southerners who brought enslaved people with them, and others enslaved the Indigenous people there, including most of the Bear Flaggers, according to historian Jean Pfaelzer in her recent book, “California, a Slave State.” Enslavers used slave labor in the gold mines, advertised slave auctions in newspapers, and went to great lengths to conceal from their human chattel that they were legally free. Numerous records show California abolitionists purchasing enslaved people to grant them the freedom they were already supposed to have.
As the nation descended into civil war, Californians were fiercely split, and several communities flew the disused bear flag to express their support for secession and slavery. Some even proposed the Pacific states break off and form their nation.
In 1911, the bear flag design became the official state flag, and once again the move was stained with racism, journalist Alex Abella wrote in a 2015 opinion piece for the Los Angeles Times. The flag had been revived again by the Native Sons of the Golden West, a Whites-only fraternal group that pushed anti-Asian immigration laws and whose president wrote in 1920, “California was given by God to a white people, and with God’s strength we want to keep it as He gave it to us.” The lawmaker who introduced the flag legislation in 1911 was a member of the group, according to Abella, and proposed anti-Asian legislation in the same legislative session.
“It’s time California dump that flag,” Abella wrote. “Like the Confederate cross of St. Andrew, the Bear Flag is a symbol whose time has come and gone.”
VIRGINIA
Before the Civil War, few states had official flags. As Southern states began seceding in 1860 and 1861, one of the first things they did in state conventions was establish flags. Just days after seceding in April 1861, Virginia adopted the flag, based on a previously established seal, depicting a female warrior standing over a defeated king.
In vexillology, Virginia’s flag is a big design no-no: a state seal on an otherwise blank field – a “seal on a bedsheet” (or “SOB”), as it’s derisively called. It’s also the only state flag with a bare breast on it. Then there’s the “Sic Semper Tyrannis” (“Thus always to tyrants”) motto – a phrase with a long history in Virginia, but imbued with new meaning in 1861, suggesting the United States had become tyrannical and Virginia would defeat it. Famously, John Wilkes Booth – who was from Maryland, not Virginia – shouted “Sic Semper Tyrannis” moments after assassinating President Abraham Lincoln.
During the Civil War, Virginians loyal to the United States established a state government in exile, first in Wheeling (now part of West Virginia) and then in Alexandria. This government used the same flag but replaced “Sic Semper Tyrannis” on the seal with the words “Liberty and Union.” Virginia kept using the “Liberty and Union” seal until 1873 – not long after former Confederates were allowed to vote again – when the legislature voted to remove “Liberty and Union” and go back to “Sic Semper Tyrannis.” It formally adopted this SOB flag design in 1912, and it has remained the state flag ever since.
NORTH CAROLINA
Like Virginia’s, North Carolina’s state flag dates back to the Confederacy; a version of it was first established in June 1861. The dates inside the banners – May 20, 1775, and April 16, 1776 – predate the Civil War, but they have a secessionist meaning.
According to popular theories in the decades before the Civil War, North Carolinians were the first to declare independence from Britain, with the so-called Mecklenburg Declaration on May 20, 1775, and the Halifax Resolves on April 12, 1776, beating the Second Continental Congress’s adoption of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. The Mecklenburg Declaration’s authenticity has been thoroughly debunked, and the importance of the Halifax Resolves debated, but the flag today is little changed from its Confederate genesis.
In 1885, the blue and red fields were swapped, and the lower date – which used to be May 20, 1861, the day North Carolina seceded from the United States – was changed to April 12, 1776, at the suggestion of a former Confederate soldier.
SOUTH CAROLINA
The Palmetto Flag with the crescent and blue background has been South Carolina’s flag since Jan. 28, 1861 – five weeks after the state seceded from the Union and kicked off the Civil War. The Confederacy hadn’t formed yet, so the South Carolina secessionists who adopted it were establishing a national flag for the short-lived solo republic, according to historian Charles Edward Cauthen.
The crescent symbol – it is not a moon but a Colonial-era chest plate called a gorget – dates to an unofficial flag waved by some South Carolinian soldiers during the Revolutionary War, but the addition of the palmetto tree came in 1861. In fact, according to the National Park Service, a version of the palmetto flag was flown over the defeated Fort Sumter in April 1861, making it the first secessionist flag to replace an American one.
South Carolina just kept on using its Confederate flag as its state flag after the war. Recent controversies over its design have centered around standardizing the palmetto and crescent design, not its Confederate-era birth.
MARYLAND
These days, Maryland is one of the most liberal states in the union, with a higher percentage of left-leaning adults than nearly every other state, including New York and California, according to the Pew Research Center. However, during the Civil War, Maryland was a fractured slave state that very nearly joined the Confederacy.
Tens of thousands of Marylanders fought on both sides of the conflict and used historical flags to declare their loyalties. Union Marylanders flew the black-and-gold Calvert flag, the heraldry of the Calvert family that founded the Maryland colony. Confederate Marylanders flew the white-and-red Crossland flag, believed to be the heraldry of the Crossland family, from which George Calvert’s mother descended.
Though used during the Colonial era in Lord Baltimore’s coat of arms, both heralds had fallen out of use after the Revolutionary War. In 1854, the Maryland government revived the black-and-gold image for a new state seal. In response, pro-secession Marylanders revived and co-opted the Crossland flag in opposition; they also wore Crossland socks, cravats, and even children’s clothing, according to the Maryland Secretary of State’s website. The Crossland flag became so closely associated with support for the Confederacy that during the Civil War, wearing red and white could get you charged with treason, according to Baltimore Magazine. Neo-Confederates still display the Crossland flag today as a symbol of white supremacy.
When the two heralds combined became the official state flag in 1905, lawmakers claimed it was a symbol of reconciliation and unity – symbolism cited by Maryland Republican Gov. Larry Hogan as recently as 2017. But that claim doesn’t tell the full story.
The combined flag was first popularized in the late 1880s and 1890s by the Fifth Regiment of the Maryland National Guard, which was mainly composed of former Confederates, was nicknamed the “rebel brigade” and marched frequently at public events, according to a state website. As with so many Confederate statues, the “rebel brigade” raised this flag at the peak of Jim Crow and white supremacist violence against Black Americans. In the same year, the Maryland General Assembly adopted the new flag, it also tried to amend the state constitution to disfranchise Black men. (Put to a public referendum, the measure narrowly failed, in part because some segregationists, such as Gov. Edwin Warfield, worried the vague wording would disfranchise some White voters by accident.)
Even the Calvert half of the flag – the one flown by Union supporters during the Civil War – was “the crest of the Calvert family, who were made wealthy off of slavery,” noted Patterson, the Maryland artist.
Still, Patterson thinks Maryland’s flag, unlike the Confederate battle flag, isn’t irredeemable.
“You can’t ignore what the flag means to all Marylanders now,” Patterson said, noting the popularity of Maryland flag-themed clothing, bumper stickers, and other decorations. “I think that, culturally, it[s meaning] has changed, and I think it’s reasonable for people to say, ‘We want it to mean this now.’ But if you say, ‘We’re just going to ignore it and pretend that other stuff didn’t happen,’ that’s bad.”
He thinks the state legislature and governor should publicly acknowledge the flag’s history. “Acknowledge that the Calvert family profited off of slavery,” he said. “Acknowledge the Confederate use of the Crossland portion and say, ‘This is such dark history, but that’s not us anymore. This flag overwhelmingly pulls all Marylanders together, and we want it to represent that, not these other things.’ And make that a public thing.”
Until that happens, Patterson is hesitant to embrace the flag, even though as a vexillophile he admires its aesthetics. When he moved to Maryland and registered his car for new license plates, he opted for the “Protect the Chesapeake” design offered by the state’s motor vehicle agency instead of the default, flag-themed one.
ARKANSAS
The Arkansas state flag oozes Confederate battle flag vibes: The St. Andrew’s Cross with stars has morphed into a diamond shape, but the angles and colors are all the same. But that’s not the big issue with it so much as the blue star over the word “Arkansas.” That star, according to the Ku Klux Klan member who put it there, stands for the Confederacy and was intentionally placed above the three blue stars representing the other nations Arkansas has been part of France, Spain, and the United States.
The original version of this flag, adopted in 1913, was designed by a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution and contained only three blue stars, symbolizing a few things: 1) that Arkansas was the third state to come out of the Louisiana Purchase, which 2) happened in 1803, and 3) that it had been part of France, Spain and the United States, according to a state website.
But this was the height of the “Lost Cause” mania, and many Arkansans immediately complained about the lack of acknowledgment of the Confederacy. In 1923, state lawmaker Neill Bohlinger, an “avowed member of the Ku Klux Klan,” according to Arkansas Online, proposed adding a fourth star for the Confederacy, resulting in two stars above and two below the word “Arkansas.”
The change was made, but that still wasn’t good enough. The following year, Bohlinger revised his proposal, this time opting to place just the start for the Confederacy above the state name, with the other three below. A century later, that is still Arkansas’s flag. In 1987, Gov. Bill Clinton signed a law reaffirming the design and stating, “The blue star above the word ‘ARKANSAS’ is to commemorate the Confederate States of America.” Recent attempts to reassign the symbolism of the fourth star to honor Arkansas’s Indigenous people have failed.
Earlier this year, Patterson traveled to Fayetteville, Ark., and collaborated on a printmaking project exploring this history with students and instructors at the University of Arkansas.
Some Arkansans have defended the star’s current meaning by making arguments about states’ rights and Southern heritage, but Patterson doesn’t buy it. “The Klan decided the most important star was the Confederate star,” he said. “The Klan.”
GEORGIA
In modern times, what a lot of people know as the “Confederate flag” – a blue St. Andrew’s Cross with white stars on a red field – was the Confederate battle flag. The official flag of the Confederate States of America, colloquially called the “Stars and Bars,” was different. And if you’re wondering what it looked like, well, take a gander at Georgia’s state flag: Remove the seal from the circle of stars, and voilà, you’ve got the official flag of the Confederacy.
As obvious as this flag’s Confederate origins are, it’s perhaps a little better than the flag that came before it. From 1956 to 2001, Georgia’s state flag was a Confederate battle flag with the state seal stamped on one side. According to a state report commissioned in 2000, it was instituted in 1956 specifically as a show of defiance in the face of the federal government’s efforts to end school segregation.
That flag was briefly replaced in 2001 by one that featured among the worst flag designs in history. In 2003, Georgia changed the flag again, to a design similar to the one it had before 1956, which mimics the “Stars and Bars.” This flag still flies today.
Patterson thinks that, unlike the Maryland flag, Georgia’s is irredeemable and should be changed.
“It’s like you pull a knife out of somebody’s back and then stab them with another one,” Patterson said of the change from the battle flag design to the current one. “I think it’s disgusting.”
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