The Black Liberation Flag, also known as the Afro-American Flag, Pan-African Flag, and the UNIA Flag, is a symbol of African and African-American unity and pride. In the 1960s this flag became a symbol of Black liberation in the United States. This design was first adopted in 1920 as the official banner of the African Race at a meeting of the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League (UNIA) held in New York City. Popularly known today as the Garvey flag, named after Marcus Garvey, it was originally known simply as the "Red-Black-Green" flag.

The World Peace Association (WPA) was based in Jenkins, Minnesota. The flag was dedicated at Odessa, New York, in May of 1958. It was used at the exhibit for the association at the Brussels World's Fair.

In the 1960's a strong protest movement was born among the draft age college students to protest the Vietnam War. At first the student protesters used crude peace symbols, usually black painted on white backgrounds, at their rallies. The peace symbol was also spray painted on walls and clothing.

In 1962, Cesar Cesar and Dolores Huerta founded the United Farm Workers. Their goal was to organize the Mexican agricultural workers and improve their working conditions, mostly in California. For two decades they attempted to raise public awareness to the struggles of the farm workers for better pay and safer working conditions. They eventually succeeded, using nonviolent tactics, boycotts, pickets, strikes, and hunger strikes.

Two more Vietnam War Era protest flags that are still in use are the "Missing In Action, Prisoner of War" Flags (MIA/POW) being flown by those wishing to remind people that there are still American soldiers missing in action and possibly being held as prisoner by the Vietnamese government. These flags can be found with white and black backgrounds, and with silver, white or red lettering. The flags state: "You are not forgotten."

Interesting enough, in 1990, Congress adopted the MIA/POW flag (Type #1) as a symbol of our nation's concern and commitment to resolving as fully as possible the fates of Americans still held prisoner, or missing and unaccounted for in Southeast Asia," thus making it a national flag which entitles it to be flown above all State flags.

Agent Orange Flag (Type #1)		Agent Orange Flag (Type #2)

The second type of protest flag to come out of the Vietnam War era is from those angered with the secret use of Agent Orange to defoliate the Vietnam jungles, and especially about the harmful health effects the use of this chemical had on people and troops who came in contact with it.

In 1966, in Oakland, California, Huey Newton and Bobby Seale founded the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense. The Panthers practiced what they called "self-defense" for the minority communities against the U.S. government, and fought to establish revolutionary socialism through mass organizing and community based programs. The party was one of the first organizations in U.S. history to militantly struggle for ethnic minority and working class emancipation, and their agenda was the revolutionary establishment of real economic, social, and political equality across gender and color lines.

The Black American Heritage flag was designed in 1967 by Melvin Charles and Gleason T. Jackson. According to the designers, "...the elements of the flag include the color black to represent pride and pigmentation and race; red, to remind us of the rich blood black men have shed for freedom, equality, justice and human dignity throughout the world; and gold, to represent intellect, prosperity, and peace. These colors are woven into a composition that juxtaposes the red and black in a set of three stripes: one black stripe centered between two red."

The first Ecology Flag was made by the San Francisco based Paramount Flag Company in 1967. This flag was based on the Stars and Stripes, but used a Hunter Green background in the canton and lighter Irish Green stripes instead of red stripes. The green and white colors were said to represent "pure air and green land" and environmental action. This first Ecology Flag has seen limited use at American Ecology Conferences, meetings and protests since the 1970s.

The American Indian Movement (AIM) is a Native American activist organization in the United States. Founded in 1968, AIM calling itself the "Trail of Broken Treaties," began championing the cause of Indian unity. AIM was founded by Dennis Banks, George Mitchell, Herb Powless, Clyde Bellecourt, Harold Goodsky, and Eddie Benton-Banai in Minneapolis to address issues of Native American poverty, housing, treaty issues, and police harassment.

The Republic of New Afrika Movement was created at the Black Government Conference in Detroit, Michigan, held in 1968, This group of Afro-American separatist wrote and signed a "Declaration of Independence" and a "New Afrika Constitution." They then elected a Provisional Government of the Republic of New Afrika (PG-RNA) for their fanciful republic, comprised of the states of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina. The imaginative protest movement then elected Robert F. Williams, a controversial human rights advocate, then living in exile in China, as the President, attorney Milton Henry (a follower of Malcolm X) as First Vice President; and Betty Shabazz, the widow of Malcolm X, as Second Vice President.

The "Flag of Earth" was designed by an Illinois farmer named James Cadle shortly after the first manned landing on the moon in 1969. It consists of a blue circle, representing the earth, on a black background. To the left is a segment of a large yellow circle, representing the sun. On the lower right is a small white circle, representing the moon.

The 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie suggested that if any governmental property became surplus, the Sioux could claim it. When a Sioux social worker living in the San Francisco Bay Area learned that the Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary was to be closed and given to the City of San Francisco, it seemed the treaty provision might apply. In March of 1964 a small group of Sioux wearing traditional clothing demonstrated at the docks on the island for four hours, claiming the island. They displayed a standard 49-star American Flag, but bigger plans were in the works.

The idea of an all-white Stars and Stripes has been around since the 1960s and earlier. The first appearance might have been in the 1955 painting named the "White Flag" by Jasper Johns. Several other all-white flags have appeared in later years as parts of larger art projects, the most recent one being the all-white flag which was hoisted over the Brooklyn Bridge in 2014.

The Earth Flag, often called the Earth Day Flag, was designed by John McConnell in 1970. It is the photographic image of the earth taken during the flight of Apollo 10 in 1969, viewed from above the Indian Ocean just east of the Cape of Good Hope, on a background of dark blue.

This rainbow colored flag is the Italian Peace Flag, which dates from the 1970s. In Italian, the word "pace" means "peace." This foreign flag has in recent years enjoyed some success in the United States as a substitute for the more commonly used and traditional Peace Flag, and is still popular in Italy and other parts of Europe today. The original striped rainbow peace flag, which included a white stripe since removed, first appeared in Italy in 1961, minis the white word "PACE" which was added in the early 1970s.

Because of the Italian PACE flag´s similar appearance it has been confused by the uninformed with the American Gay Rights (LGBT) Rainbow flag. However, upon close examination you will discover that it has more stripes and colors (7 instead of 6) than the Gay Right´s flag. It is basically a case of two similar flags both attempting to mimic the colors of the rainbow, but with the important difference of an extra dark blue stripe added to the Italian Peace flags.

These Italian-style peace flags are now being "localized" in countries other than Italy and the word PACE is being translated to local languages like English, German (FRIEDE) or Turkish (BARIS). In the United States the most common variants (American PEACE variants #1-4) substitute the Italian "PACE" with the inscription "PEACE." A peculiarity of their use in the USA is that they are used not only at the pacifist rallies and protests, but also at LGBT events, having been adopted by their participants, probably because of their similarity with the rainbow LGBT flags. The color shades seem to vary a lot, so note that these images show only the most typical sets of colors.

American PEACE Variant #1		American PEACE Variant #2
American PEACE Variant #3		American PEACE Variant #4

The most widely used American variant (American PEACE variant #1) has the following color pattern: dark blue, cyan, light blue, green, yellow, orange, and red; with the word "PEACE" in white written over the violet blue and green stripes. Unlike the USA, this variant is rarely seen in Europe.

A variant widely used in Europe, but apparently less so in the USA, has the color pattern: purple, dark blue, light blue, green, yellow, orange, red; word PEACE is inscribed in white over light blue and green (American PEACE Variant #2).

Another American PEACE flag variant (American PEACE Variant #3) that is very popular in Europe, but used less in the USA, has the color pattern: dark blue, light blue, purple, green, yellow, orange, and red; word PEACE is inscribed in white over purple and green.

The variant most rarely seen in the USA (American PEACE Variant #4), a bit more popular in Europe, has the color pattern: dark blue, purple, light blue, green, yellow, orange, and red; word PEACE is inscribed in white over light blue and green.

The American PACE Flag (Variant #1) uses the same color pattern as American PEACE Variant #1 (dark blue, cyan, very light blue, green, yellow, orange, red), but has the white word "PACE" inscribed over very light blue and green instead.

A recent version of this popular flag (American PACE Variant #3) uses a very distinctive typeface, which is centered on the flag and covering three stripes (orange, green, light blue), and is currently being marketed, but has not yet been actually documented in use.

Other symbols have been added to the rainbow flag. A frequently used one is the peace sign, sometimes combined with the word PEACE, as shown in the example to the left. This flag's origin was at LGBT-related events in the USA in the mid-2000s, but its use spread to Peace Demonstrations and also to Canada in the mid-2010s. Although used at these pacifist events, it still remains primarily a LGBT flag.

This interesting variation of the U.S. flag has its red stripes repainted into the seven colors of rainbow. The remaining red stripe retains its original shade, and the dark blue stripe near the bottom is in the same shade as the canton. It was originally popular in the 1970s with the "Rainbow Children" and other similar counter culture groups, but has gained new life as a Gay Rights/Gay Pride flag today. It was originally used by the "Hippy" generation at their Rainbow Gatherings, but the flag, now re-purposed, was used at the Gay Rally in Dallas in 2008, and again in San Francisco during the 2009 Gay Pride Parade.

The Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) was a proposed amendment to the United States Constitution designed to end sex discrimination and guarantee all women equal protection and rights under the law, especially in the workplace. The concept was originally written and introduced for the first time by Alice Paul and Crystal Eastman in 1923. In 1972, the ERA Amendment passed both houses of Congress and was submitted to the state legislatures for ratification. Congress set a ratification deadline of March 22, 1979. Through 1977, the amendment received 35 of the necessary 38 state ratifications. Five states later rescinded their ratifications before the 1979 deadline. In 1978, a joint resolution of Congress extended the ratification deadline to June 30, 1982, but no further states ratified the amendment and it died.

Buckminster Fuller envisioned one people/one planet, the "Spaceship Earth" as he called it. He predicted the worldwide economic collapse of the early 21st Century and hoped it would be the beginning of humanity acting as one race, one people, one planet. In the 1980s Seth Lefferts, who described himself as "one of the people on Spaceship Earth," created this design based on Fuller's vision.

Policy on lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) behavior in the United States is a hot political and social issue. Five states and one district (Massachusetts, Connecticut, Iowa, Vermont, New Hampshire, and District of Columbia) have legalized same-sex marriage. Sexual acts between persons of the same sex have been legal nationwide in the United States since 2003, pursuant to the US Supreme Court ruling in Lawrence v. Texas. Openly lesbian and gay members of the US military is subject to a "Don't ask, don't tell" policy, but President Barack Obama indicated during the 2008 presidential campaign, and also during his 2010 State of the Union Address, his desire to end this policy.

The Rainbow Flag was designed in 1978 by Gilbert Baker, a San Francisco artist, for the San Francisco Gay Freedom Day Parade (now San Francisco Pride). Its original eight colors stood for sexuality, life, healing, sunlight, nature, magic (or art), serenity (or harmony) and spirit. Demand for the flag greatly increased after the assassination of openly gay San Francisco City Supervisor Harvey Milk in November same year. Due to unavailability of hot pink fabric used for top stripe, the pattern was reduced to seven stripes. In 1979, in the flags hung vertically from the lamp posts of San Francisco's Market Street, turquoise and indigo stripes were replaced by a single blue stripe, so that no stripe could be obscured by the post itself.

Since then, the six-striped flag has become a worldwide symbol of Gay Pride. it is usually flown with red at the top, but also with the reversed color order, or stripes arranged vertically or even with an order not matching that of the natural rainbow. The rainbow pattern may also be combined with other flag designs, such as those of the US or state flags, to produce "localized" LGBT emblems.

This use of the lambda as a gay symbol began when it was adopted in 1970 by the New York Gay Activists Alliance as the symbol of their growing movement of gay liberation. The lambda was subsequently adopted by the International Gay Rights Congress in 1974 in Edinburgh, Scotland. Today, the symbol generally denotes lesbian and gay men´s concerns together because the lambda was not linked to any specific gender or sexual orientation. Rainbow Gay Pride Flags with white letter lambda either centered or placed in the cantons have been used in West Hollywood, Long Beach, San Diego and other areas of Southern California. Other symbols may be added to the rainbow flag in the same manner.

Since 2000, Baker has been promoting the re-introduction of his original design, which has sparked more interest in seven-striped flag as well, both designs still being in limited use. Neither of them is really meant to completely replace the six-striped flag: "The idea of the rainbow is what counts", Baker himself said. The use of sets of six or eight solid color flags instead of a single rainbow flag has also been introduced.

Originally used as one of the Nazi concentration camp badges, the pink triangle was used to identify male prisoners who were sent there because of their homosexuality. Today the pink triangle appears on modern gay pride protest flags centered on a variety of colors used as a field. Shown here is the most common with a black field, with a large pink triangle, point down, centered on the flag, but also one with a white field.

A fusion of the "Gay Rights, Gay Pride" Flag and the "Rainbow Children" Flag of the 1970s has resulted in this interesting flag. The New "Old Glory" Rainbow Flag is a more recent development. It basically adds a familiar blue canton of 50 stars to the Gay Pride flag to stress that equal rights for gays and lesbians are crucial in all 50 states. This strange merging of the long haired "Rainbow Children" of the 60s and 70s with the Gays of the 90s is an interesting vexillological development.

This flag was designed by David Hammons, an African-American artist from New York City. His works were inspired by the civil rights and Black Power movements. He designed the "African-American Flag" in 1990 by recoloring the US national flag in the Garvey colors. The flag is now a part of the permanent collection of the New York Museum of Modern Art and a copy is flown daily at the entrance of the Harlem Studio Museum, a New York museum devoted to the art of African-Americans, so his design is no longer just a work of art, but has become a very real and used flag.

The African American Unity Flag was designed by Vincent Paramore as part of the African American Unity Flag Association (AAUF) grant. The Flag "tells the history of a people who originated from Africa and found themselves in a new land stripped of their religion, culture, language and history. It also memorializes black heroes and heroines known and unknown. The AAUF [flag] Serves to salute our continued progress for total freedom and equality."

This flag was created in 1991 by David and Tonya Harvey of Baltimore, Maryland. Their flag represented the African-American population as a whole, and was not related to any political movement. The flags were sold by a company founded by the Harveys, and were quickly accepted by a number of institutions, including the Morgan State University, the National Black Catholic Congress, and many others. The flag has a black eight-pointed star, surrounded with four gold "flashes of light", on purple field, all within a complex border composed of red, white, blue, green, gold and black segments.

The Gulf Wars and later the Afghanistan War brought a whole new generation of Peace Protests to life, and with them a whole new set of flags to wave.

Type #1 features the traditional peace symbol done with 50 five-pointed stars and Type #2 seems to be a marriage of the Ecology Flag and the Peace flag. Type #3, with an enlarged plain white peace symbol comes with either a blue (as shown here), black, green, or red background. Type #4 turns the Italian Pace Flag upside down, adds a white stripe and white peace sign and the English translation of "Pace," (Peace) to the mix.

New Peace Flag (Type #5)		New Peace Flag (Type #6)

Type #5 has the field in a rainbow swirl pattern, the colored stripes separated with black, issuant from a white peace sign, bordered black and enclosing a disc composed of six segments in rainbow colors, while Type #6 has a white peace sign, bordered black, over the field in rainbow colors.

New Peace Flag (Type #7)		New Peace Flag (Type #8)

Type #7 has a black peace sign, enclosing a white disc, over the Rastafarian tricolor. Type #8 is similar to type #3, only with smaller peace sign, shown in red over a yellow field.

Because of the popularity of these flags, quite frankly, too many variants exist to be able to show them all here. Each year variants are added to the collection.

NuSouth Apparel was a clothing company from Charleston, South Carolina whose logo, used as the conspicuous decoration of their products, was derived from the Confederate flag by replacing white and blue with green and black, respectively, thus displaying Garvey colors - a design to be rightfully called a vexillological oxymoron. The emblem actually predates the company, whose founders, Angel Quintero and Sherman Evans, created it in 1993 while running the recording company named Vertical Records, along with the concert and event promotion agency named Free at Last Entertainment. As a part of the promotion campaign for local hip-hop group named DaPhlayva, a symbol was made to express the group members' identity as the African-Americans from the South.

On a less serious vain, Cascadia is an imagined independent state that would incorporate parts of British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, Southern Alaska and Northern California. It would somehow be formed if these states and province would ever successfully secede from their respective federal governments.

Designed in 1994 by a Portland University Political Science professor named Alexander Baretich, the flag has appeared on a couple of local microbrews labels with strange names like "Secession IPA" or "Cascadian Dark Ale," and has been seen at occasional sporting events and on college campuses. Most recently it has popped up at Occupy protests held in the Pacific Northwest. A Rainbow version of the Cascadian Flag has also made its appearance. At the present time, there seems to be more flags than acres.

Cascadian National Party Flag (Type #1)		Cascadian National Party Flag (Type #2)

Besides the two "national flags" variants, there are also two varaint Cascadian National Party flags. The party goal is the creation of an independent Cascadia. It was founded in 2001, but quickly went inactive. The party proposal for the national flag (Type #2) has two gold stars in canton, above a bicolor wavy stripe, green above white, all on blue field. According to the CNP website the flag symbolism has "the two gold stars represent the states of Oregon and Washington. The top blue background represents freedom. The white flowing stripe represents hope. The green flowing stripe represents the environment and resources of Cascadia. The bottom blue background represents the water of the Pacific Ocean, the Columbia River, and the Puget Sound."

The United States Department of Defense issued a World War II 50th Anniversary Flag as the first of a new officially sanctioned set of commemorative flags designed to honor and commemorate the 50th anniversaries of modern American military campaigns and those who served in them. This World War II 50th Anniversary flag will be followed by a Korean War 50th Anniversary flag in 2000 and a Vietnam War 50th Anniversary flag in 2015 honoring the veteran´s of those conflicts.

This flag was first flown at the African American Flag House in Charleston, South Carolina, on July 3, 1995, just one day before our nation's 4th of July celebration. The African American Flag House foundation hoped the flag would become "a positive and unifying symbol that represents the enormous historical investment of African Americans in the Nation, their defense of the Constitution of the United States, and the promise of opportunity for all. This original flag proclaims African Americans as an important part of the rich mosaic of the United States of America, its protectorates and territories."

In the summer of 1996, a flag symbolizing the values of the Hip Hop Nation was officially revealed in San Francisco. The Hip Hop Unity Flag is the brain child of community activist James P. Queen, who is the President of Racial Unity Inc. The flag features the colors of our human family: Black, Brown, Red, Yellow and White. Unlike most flags whose stripes are laid horizontally the Hip Hop Generation-Unity Flag's stripes stand vertical/side by side. The significance of this is to show equality because no color is above the other. In short, the flag stands for unity.

The One World Flag was designed by David Bartholomew in 1996. He claims it occurred to him in a dream. It consists of a traditional yin-yang symbol, blue above and green below, representing the planet earth living in harmony, on a background of white, representing peace. The edges are formed of colored bars, red above, yellow on the right, white below, and black on the left, representing the four compass directions.

The original African American National Heritage Flag was created in 1998 by James Wesley Chester, founder of the Institute for African American National Heritage. It was divided horizontally red above green, with a black canton, which is charged with 50 white stars, arranged as in the USA national flag, but set upside-down, perhaps indicating distress and sorrow.

This flag was designed by Cecil Lee, a visual artist from New York City known by combining the painting, photography and computer graphics into the Computer Evolved Multi-medium Art (CEMA), as he has named it. He created the flag in 1999 and presented it at a one man art show at Gallery X in Harlem. From 2002 to 2009, T-shirts decorated with the flag image could also be purchased from his website.