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Liberty League of Negro Americans Flag Inspiration Marcus Garvey wanted to create a flag to fight back and promote racial pride. He was inspired by the 1917 flag of
The Liberty League of Negro-Americans whose perpendicular
tri color flag was black, brown, and yellow. These three colors were meant to symbolized the all the colors the people from Africa in America, and their relationship to their own people and other peoples of the world. He would later use this as inspiration for his 1920 Black Liberation Flag, changing the colors to black, red, and gold. Then finally the black, red, and green. This song has been cited as one of the three songs that "firmly established the term
coon in the American vocabulary". In a 1927 report of a 1921 speech appearing in the
Negro World weekly newspaper,
Marcus Garvey was quoted as saying: The
Universal Negro Catechism, published by the UNIA in 1921, refers to the colors of the flag meaning: When the UNIA owned newspaper, the
Negro World, held a competition in 1927 for why its readers considered themselves
"Garveyites", many of the entries and winning entries said it was because the organization had a flag. According to the UNIA more recently, the three colors on the Black Nationalist flag represent: • red: the blood that unites all people of Black African ancestry, and shed for liberation; • black: black people whose existence as a nation, though not a nation-state, is affirmed by the existence of the flag; and • green: the abundant natural wealth of Africa. The flag later became a Black Nationalist symbol for the worldwide liberation of Black people. As an emblem of
Black pride, the flag became popular during the Black Liberation movement of the 1960s.
New Jersey School Board 1971-2026 New Jersey School Board 2026 In 1971,
Lawrence Hamm, a seventeen year old
Newark New Jersey school board member proposed a resolution to fly the Black Liberation Flag at schools and in classrooms as a teaching aid, at schools in Newark that were majority black. All five of the school boards members present approved this resolution that day, however four of the nine total school board members were absent at the time of voting. One of the absent school board members, who was white, took the board to court because he believed the resolution was illegal and unconstitutional. The school board member, John Cervase is quoted in saying,"(it) would deprive the public of tax‐supported schools free from propaganda and doctrine favoring a select racial or ethnic group, contrary to the public welfare." The Superior Court restrained the Newark School board's resolution. The same day as the restraining order on the resolution was signed, a bill in the
New Jersey State Assembly was proposed and passed, restricting that no flag other than the flag of the United States of America can be flown on schools and government building and be put in classrooms.
New Jersey School Board 2016 In February 2026, after 50 years since first proposed, the Newark School Board allowed schools to raise the Black Liberation Flag in classrooms and buildings.
Juneteenth 19 June 1865, is the date in which enslaved people in Galveston, Texas, finally received the news of their freedom. This is commemorated every 19 June with
Juneteenth, which is considered the longest-running
African American holiday. Many in the African American community have adopted the Pan-African flag to represent Juneteenth. The Juneteenth holiday became an official federal holiday 17 June 2021, and does have its own flag, however, created in 1997the
Juneteenth flag.
2010s usage In the United States, following the refusal of a grand jury to indict a police officer in the August 9, 2014,
shooting of Michael Brown in
Ferguson, Missouri, a
Howard University student replaced the U.S. flag on that school's Washington, D.C., campus flagpole with a "black solidarity" flag (this tricolor) flying at half-mast.
2020s usage In February 2023, the Pan-African flag was flown over the
Denver Federal Center to commemorate
Black History Month, which was the first time that flag was flown over any federal building. In
Martinique, a new flag was raised which symbolises the same ties to
Africa. ==Derivative flags==