African-American Flag

I heard a radio commercial two weeks ago as I was driving around Cream City. I can’t remember what the commercial was for, but I do remember a voice saying at the end of the commercial, “You’ll find us under the African-American flag”. Hearing this last line made me want to learn more about this mysterious flag that I knew nothing about.

The African-American flag or the Pan-African flag was adopted by the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities (UNIA) on August 13, 1920. It consists of three equal horizontal bands colored red, black, and green. The red represents the blood that unites all people of African ancestry and the blood shed for liberation; the black represents all Black people whose existence as a nation, though not a nation-state, is affirmed by the existence of the flag; the green represents the abundant natural wealth of Africa.

The flag was created in response to a racist song titled “Every Race has a Flag but the ‘Coon’”. Equal rights icon Marcus Garvey help spearhead the creation of the flag, saying in 1921, “Show me the race or the nation without a flag, and I will show you a race of people without any pride.”