No eyewitness described in specific detail what flag or flags flew over the Alamo. One candidate, the guidon of the New Orleans Greys, is held in a museum collection in Mexico and its return has been eagerly sought by Texas politicians and other activists for many years. This article explores the history of the flag and the obstacles to its return.

This paper examines the creation of patriotic memories of Canadian flags—in particular, the Canadian Red Ensign—among British Canadians through the lens of Dominion Day, challenging the legalistic view of flag adoption in favor of a vernacular view that national flags may be created, adopted, and sanctioned by those using a flag for that purpose and that flag is as much a national flag as any adopted by statute or regulation.

Focusing on the period from 1880 to 1930, this paper examines some sixty American “flag incidents” where Canadian “vexilloclasts” strongly—sometimes violently—objected to displays of American flags in Canada and, at the same time, strengthened the development of Canadian flag culture in the form of the Union Jack and the Canadian Red Ensign.

This article examines the adoption of the provincial flag of Manitoba in 1966 as a protest to the adoption of the new Canadian national flag in 1965. The new provincial flag symbolized 96 years of the establishment and preservation of British cultural hegemony in Manitoba and the result of an oppositional reaction to the evolving discourse of a bilingual and bicultural Canadian nationalism.

Timed for the fiftieth anniversary of the adoption of the Canadian national flag, this article speaks to this flag as the culmination of a post-Second World War tradition that developed out of, and as a counterpoint to, the earlier flag tradition of Canadian banners based on the British ensign pattern or those which utilized emblems of British and French heritage.

In the 1950s and 1960s, all sides in the struggle over civil rights used the U.S. flag in different and evolving ways, competing for the power of the nation’s primary symbol. This article traces in scholarly detail how flag use influenced and gave images to the era.

A controversial flag art exhibit documenting a period of social upheaval in the United States generated its own local uproar. Over a dozen visits to the show, combined with an examination of the local press coverage, inform this thoughtful, personal reflection on its meaning.

From the resolution in the Continental Congress on June 14, 1777 which first defined the United States flag, to the latest presidential proclamation, all relevant legal citations are listed. They cover the flag’s description, display, and protection, providing a resource never before published elsewhere.

The government agency that did the most to spread the flag across the western United States in its first century was not the Army, not the Navy, but the Indian Department. Its “presentation flags,” often of a variant design with eagles or coats of arms in their cantons or with alternate star patterns, combine with the military’s standard flags in this article based on many primary sources.