Thursday 24 November 2016

By Gloria Johns


The first clear record of African-Americans in Arkansas is from 1721, more than a hundred years before statehood. In the decades that followed, Black men and women maintained an important presence in the state.

The flag of Arkansas consists of a red base with a white diamond in the center that is bordered in blue. There are 25, white, five-pointed stars in the blue border. In the center of the white diamond the word 'Arkansas' is written and there is one blue, five-pointed star above it and three more below it.

They represented the three countries that Arkansas had been a part of (Spain, France, and the United States), the date of the Louisiana purchase which made Arkansas part of the US (1803) and the fact that Arkansas was the 3rd state created from the Louisiana purchase land. The 25 stars on the flag designated Arkansas as the 25th state of the Union. Hocker modified the flag several times before it was ratified as the official flag.

The topmost single star above the name stands for the membership of Arkansas to the Confederate States of America. The 3 blue colored stars below the name are symbols for France, Spain, and the US, the countries to which Arkansas had belonged. There are also 2 stars parallel to the state name, that symbolize the twin states of Michigan and Arkansas.

Because adding the fourth star made the flag look asymmetrical (the bottom three stars were still arranged in a straight line) the legislator also offsets one of the stars at the bottom giving us the flag we fly today.

There is a barrage of cheap and inferior Arkansas flags being imported and sold, that do not comply with the flag statute. This is bad for a number of reasons. Imported flags are cheaply made and more importantly, the designs, materials, colors, and methods of printing do not compare well with the better quality, longer-lasting, and correctly designed flags made by American manufacturers. The Flag Company Inc specialized in flag designs offered a special edition of decals and flags to memorize the history of Arkansas flag for the future.




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