In an experiment to test vexillological finding aids and to locate access thresholds, the author (a former teacher and librarian) identifies seven steps to research at the state level using the cities of his southern neighbor, Michigan, as an example.

Recent research has questioned whether the Grand Union flag (a.k.a. “Continental Colors”) really flew at Prospect Hill, Boston, on 1 January 1776. Eye­witness accounts use the term “union flag” and a new interpretation theorizes this to have referred specifically to the British Union Jack and not the characteristic “union flag with 13 red-and-white stripes.” This paper rebuts the new interpretation and supports the conventional history through an examination of eighteenth-century linguistic standards, contextual historical trends, and additional primary and secondary sources.

This lecture discusses five flags which the Latter-Day Saints used from 1830 to 1848 in various parts of the United States to represent their early allegiances to God and to the United States. Despite the many problems in the relationship between the Latter-Day Saints and the American government at this time and in the decades to come, the Mormons clearly attempted to show that they could be loyal to both their faith and the political authority.

Covering a little-known subject, this article catalogues the use of flags within slave uprisings in the New World in the nineteenth century. The author demonstrates how the slave banners were typically modelled on the flags of their former masters but also often incorporated African symbols in an attempt to indicate physical freedom as well as the attempt to signal the former slave groups’ equality with their former oppressors.

This Driver Award-winning paper examines the use of vexillidolatry—the reverence of flags—in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea). The author demonstrates the deeply-held reverence to DPRK flags—national, political, and military—which North Koreans hold. This is not the result of political pressure, but more the result of the people’s view of the national flag as a symbol of independence and their strong and widely-displayed patriotism.

This article examines the surprising use of Confederate flag in American popular music, particularly in the music and merchandise of Kanye West, in a period when this design is otherwise witnessing a great deal of negative attention on the national level.

This paper illuminates the history and design process of the various President’s Flags of the United States of America between 1915 and 1959, in particular focusing on the efforts to produce such a banner for President Harry S. Truman in 1945.

Analyzing the occurrence of homes painted in the colours and designs of the United States flag, this article examines the reasons behind this trend, in particular in the months and years following the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001.

Amongst the numerous individuals who have proposed alternative designs for the United States flag was Wayne Whipple. This paper looks at Whipple’s story and the impact of his efforts.

This paper covers the ongoing debate between the author and Mr. Byron DeLear with respect to which flag flew on Prospect Hill, outside Boston, on 1 January 1776. The question of whether it was the “Continental Colors” or a pre-1801 Union Flag and DeLear’s views on the matter lead the author to examine both arguments and new or previously-research documentation to determine if any updates need to be made to his original conclusions.

How, exactly, did the Apollo 11 astronauts come to deploy a U.S. flag on the lunar surface? This paper explores the technical aspects and international considerations surrounding that $5.50 flag.

While 95 years separate the adoption of Canada’s inaugural flag and the adoption of its National flag, the maple-leaf trail connecting one to the other is continuous. The author summarizes Canadian flag history with a cogent narrative running from 1870 to 1965.

Nevada has had the dubious distinction of having had more official flags than any other state in the union. Those designs receive detailed scrutiny and description: the Sparks-Day Flag of 1905, the Crisler Flag of 1915, the Schellback Design of 1929, and the Raggio Modification of 1991, in which the author played a key role.

Some flags influence the designs of others. This paper traces the “family tree” of the red-white-blue horizontal tribar of the Netherlands through five major lines: New Amsterdam, Russian, South African, French, and Dutch, asserting direct ancestry or at least influence for over a hundred flags.

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.