Georgia (United States)

Last modified: 1997-09-11 by rob raeside
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Rich Orman

• The flag's legislative history
• Old flag
• Attempts to change the flag

See also:

• United States of America
• States of the United States

Act approved Oct. 17, 1879, 1878-1879 Georgia Laws 114 (adopting state flag consisting of blue vertical stripe in hoist and the confederate stars and bars, three red-white-red horizontal stripes), repealed and reenacted by Act approved Aug. 22, 1905, sec. 85, 1905 Georgia Laws 133, 162 (reorganizing state military forces and adding state seal to flag's blue vertical stripe) (effective Oct. 1, 1905), modified by Act approved Aug. 17, 1914, 1914 Georgia Laws 1247 (changing date in state seal from 1799 to 1776), repealed and reenacted by Act approved Aug. 21, 1916, sec. 3, para. 60, 1916 Georgia Laws 158, 177 (reorganizing state military forces and including description of flag), repealed and reenacted by Georgia Military Forces Reorganization Act of 1951, sec. 43, 1951 Ga. Laws 311, 346 (reorganizing state military forces and including description of flag), repealed and reenactted by Georgia Military Forces Reorganization Act of 1955, sec. 43, 1955 Georgia Laws 10, 113 (reorganizing state military forces and including description of flag), amended by Act approved Feb. 13, 1956, 1956 Ga. Laws 38 (changing stars-and-bars in flag design to so-called confederate battle flag) (effective July 1, 1956) (codified in part at Georgia Code Ann. sec. 50-3-1 (1994)).

The United States Supreme Court handed down its opinion in Brown on May 17, 1954, unaminously ruling that racial segregation in the public schools violates the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. To say the Court's opinion was unpopular would be an understatement. The Georgia state legislature amended its flag law twenty-one months later to change one confederate flag design, the stars and bars, to another, the so-called confederate battle flag. If the Georgia state legislature did change the design to a symbol of racial segregation to protest the Court's opinion, then the legislature would certainly not been so indiscrete to admit its true reasons on the record.

I don't have any direct evidence that the 1956 Georgia flag redesign was motivated by racial prejudice, but that was certainly the reason Alabama Governor George Wallace ordered the flying of the confederate naval jack, the so-called "flag of the south," over the Alabama state house post-Brown. Wallace and his aides steadfastly denied the true reason for decades, but the truth came out under oath in a deposition in a 1990s lawsuit over the flying of the flag. I personally think Georgia's rationale was the same, but regardless, the current Georgia flag is perceived to be a racist symbol by a significant percentage of the state's population. Not a good flag for a democratic state.

Anonymous, 1996-APR-29

Actually, they changed from one Confederate flag to another. The flag before this was based on the First National and was designed by Georgia Confederate veterans in the late 1800's. The legislature added the battle flag of the Army of Northern Virginia in 1956 - NOT, according to the legislative record - to resist school desegregation, but to raise consciousness about the deteriorating battle flags of the state collection. Georgia started one of the first flag conservation movements in the country. The school desegregation proposal came three weeks after the flag law was changed. Even the Atlanta Journal newspaper, in a 1992 investigation of the change, stated that no evidence exists to link the change with racial motives. However, people in this country just prefer to believe mythology (like Washington throwing the silver dollar across the Potomac River) rather than facts - time and time again.

Greg Biggs, 1996-AUG-01

Filip Van Laenen, 1997-FEB-16

I just completed a conference in Atlanta and noticed that Atlanta's Hartsfield Airport flies the old (pre-1958) Georgia state flag. This flag, for those who don't know, is modeled after the First Confederate Flag. It has in the hoist a horizontal blue stripe approximately one third the width of the flag with the state seal in the stripe's center, and three horizontal stripes of red-white-red (like Austria) in the fly. The current flag, modified in the late '50s in time for the centennial of the Civil War (and not, as many claim, in response to the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas--check the Georgia state legislative record for proof), replaced the three horizontal red-white-red stripes with the Confederate Battle Flag. Efforts have been made to revert to the old flag, but these have not succeeded. Apparently the Atlanta Airport Authority decided to make their opinions known in a very visible way.

Steven Shea, 1996-APR-26

Several Southern states use various of the confederate flags as the basis of their state flags and in addition fly the confederate battle flag along with the state flag. There is a movement afoot to cease this practice. In Georgia, the state most in question, some blacks and anti-southern whites wish to replace the current Georgia flag of 1956 with the flag of 1879. The amusing thing is that they don't realize that this is the one based upon the Stars and bars. The governor of Georgia, Zell Miller attempted to have the law revamped. He changed his mind because he wished to retain his job.

William M Grimes-Wyatt, 1996-JAN-23