The Pan-African flag, also referred to as the UNIA flag, Afro-American flag or Black Liberation Flag, is a tri-color flag consisting of three equal horizontal bands colored red, black and green. It was originally created as an official banner to represent an international community for all African people. Influenced by the members of the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League (UNIA). The organization formally adopted it in article 39 of the Declaration of Rights of the Negro Peoples of the World [1] on August 13, 1920, during its month-long convention held at Madison Square Garden in New York City, United States.[2][3] The flag can and has been used to represent African or African American unity or pride.
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The three colors represent:
The flag was created in 1920 by the members of the UNIA in response to the enormously popular 1900 coon song "Every Race Has a Flag but the Coon,"[4] which has been cited as one of the three coon songs that "firmly established the term coon in the American vocabulary". A 1921 report appearing in the Africa Times and Orient Review, for which Marcus Garvey previously worked, quoted him regarding the importance of the flag:
Show me the race or the nation without a flag, and I will show you a race of people without any pride. Aye! In song and mimicry they have said, "Every race has a flag but the coon." How true! Aye! But that was said of us four years ago. They can't say it now....
Alternatively, it has been explained by journalist Charles Mowbray White that Garvey proposed the colours for the following reasons: "Garvey said red because of sympathy for the 'Reds of the world', and the Green their sympathy for the Irish in their fight for freedom, and the Black- [for] the Negro."[5]
The flag later became an African nationalist symbol for the worldwide liberation of people of African origin. As an emblem of Black pride, the flag became popular during the Black Liberation movement of the 1960s. In 1971, the school board of Newark, New Jersey, passed a resolution permitting the flag to be raised in public school classrooms. Four of the board's nine members were not present at the time, and the resolution was introduced by the board's teen member, a mayoral appointee. Fierce controversy ensued, including a court order that the board show cause why they should not be forced to rescind the resolution, and at least two state legislative proposals to ban ethnic or national flags in public classrooms other than the official U.S. flag.
In the United States, the flag is presently widely available through flag shops or ethnic specialty stores. It is commonly seen at parades commemorating Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, civil rights rallies, and other special events.
The flag goes by several other names with varying degrees of popularity:
Although other designs are also considered to be International African flags or Pan-African flags, the horizontal stripes of red, black, and green, originated by the UNIA in 1920, is the design most often referenced.
The Australian Aboriginal Flag is horizontally divided into a black region and a red region. A yellow disc is superimposed over the centre of the flag.
The Biafran flag another variant of this one, with a sunburst in the center.
The flag of Malawi is very similar, changed in 2010 to reflect the pan-African flag's order of stripes.
The African National Congress flag is three horizontal stripes, descending black, green, and dark yellow (gold).
The flag of Ethiopia is three horizontal stripes, descending green, yellow, red, with a light blue disk in the center blazoned with a yellow pentagram, with yellow single rays emanating from the angles of the pentagram and terminating before the edge of the disk. It is the oldest national flag in Africa, and the colors of its three horizontal bands are sometime referred to as the Pan-African colours.
The flag of Libya is coincidentally similar. The large central black stripe with the crescent and star was in origin the flag of Senussi flag used in Cyrenaica, while the green and red stripes represented Tripolitania and Fezzan respectively. The four colours also represent the Pan-Arab colors. It was first adopted in 1951 as the flag of the Kingdom of Libya, but was replaced when Muammar Gaddafi deposed the monarchy in 1969. It continued to be used by the Libyan opposition to Gaddafi, even by those who do not favor a restoration of the monarchy. It saw widespread use during the 2011 Libyan civil war, and was readopted by the National Transitional Council after the overthrow of Gaddafi. The Rasta flag is three horizontal stripes, descending green, yellow, and red. It is derived from the Ethiopian flag/Eritrean flag.
The United States Postal Service issued a stamp in 1997 to commemorate Kwanzaa with a painting by fine artist Synthia Saint James of a dark-skinned family wearing garments traditional in parts of Africa and fashionable for special occasions among African-Americans. The family members are holding food, gifts, and a flag. The flag in the stamp may have been meant to represent the Pan-African flag, However, instead of the stripes descending red, black, and green, the stamp's flag transposes the top two bands and descends black, red, and green.
In 2000, artist David Hammons created a work called African-American Flag, which is held by the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. Based on the standard U.S. flag, its stripes are black and red, the field is green, and the stars on the field are black.
In response to the controversy over the flying of the Confederate Southern Cross, an African-American run company called NuSouth created a flag based on the Confederate Naval Jack, with the white stars and saltire outline replaced by green and the blue saltire made black. [1]
The Flag of Kenya is also very similar to the red, black and green flag.
The Flag of Saint Kitts and Nevis is also similar.
The flag of Pakistan Peoples Party is also similar.
June 14 is celebrated as Flag Day in the U.S. In 1999, an article appeared in the July 25 edition of The Black World Today suggesting that, as an act of global solidarity, every August 17 should be celebrated worldwide as Universal African Flag Day by flying the red, black, and green banner. August 17 is the birthday of Marcus Garvey.
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