Flag of Alabama#Other flags

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| footer = {{FIAV|historical}}{{FIAV|twosided}} Obverse (above) and reverse (below) of the 1861 flag

| image1 = Flag of Alabama (1861, obverse).svg

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| image2 = Flag of Alabama (1861, reverse).svg

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On January 11, 1861, the Alabama Secession Convention passed a resolution designating an official flag. Designed by several women from Montgomery, final touches were made by Francis Corra of that city.{{Cite web |author=Bradley |first=Robert B. |year=2000 |title=Flags of the Confederacy – Flags of Alabama |url=http://www.confederateflags.org/states/FOTCalabama.htm |access-date=November 17, 2007 |work=Flags of the Confederacy }} One side of the flag displayed the goddess of Liberty holding an unsheathed sword in her right hand; in her left, she held a small blue flag with one gold star. Above the gold star appears the text "Alabama" in all capital letters. In an arch above this figure were the words "Independent Now and Forever".{{Cite web |author=Alabama Department of Archives & History |year=2001 |title=The Secession Convention Flag |url=http://www.archives.state.al.us/emblems/sessflag.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080115211507/http://www.archives.state.al.us/emblems/sessflag.html |archive-date=Jan 15, 2008 |access-date=November 17, 2007}} The reverse side of the flag had a cotton plant with a coiled rattlesnake. The text "Noli Me Tangere", ("Touch Me Not" in Latin), was placed below the cotton plant.

This flag was flown until February 10, 1861, when it was removed to the governor's office after it was damaged by severe weather. It was never flown again.

File:Alabama state flag.jpg, Helen Keller's birthplace in Tuscumbia]]

File:Flag of Alabama (square).svg

Alabama's current flag was adopted in 1895. The legislation introduced by Representative John W. A. Sanford Jr. stipulates: "The flag of the state of Alabama shall be a crimson cross of St. Andrew on a field of white. The bars forming the cross shall be not less than six inches broad, and must extend diagonally across the flag from side to side."Code of 69 (1975) § 1-2-5 St. Andrew's cross represents the cross on which St. Andrew was crucified.{{cite news|url=https://newspaperarchive.com/politics-clipping-mar-28-1906-3120824/|title=Alabama's Red Cross Flag|newspaper=New York Times|date=March 28, 1906|access-date=March 28, 2022}}

The legislation that created the state flag did not specify that the flag was to be square but defined the width of the bars of the cross. In 1987, the office of Alabama Attorney General Don Siegelman stated in a letter that the proper shape of the state flag is rectangular, as it had been depicted numerous times in official publications and reproductions.{{Cite web |author=Siegelman |first=Don |year=1987 |title=Opinion of Don Siegelman |url=https://www.alabamaag.gov/Documents/opin/8700238.pdf |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080414021933/http://www.ago.state.al.us/oldopinions/8700238.pdf |archive-date=April 14, 2008 |access-date=November 17, 2007 |publisher=Office of the Attorney General of the State of Alabama}} Despite this, the flag is still often depicted as being square, even in official publications of the U.S. federal government.{{Cite web|url=http://www.gpoaccess.gov/serialset/cdocuments/sd109-18/sd109-18.pdf|publisher=U.S. Government Printing Office|year=2007|title=Our Flag|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100805003027/http://www.gpoaccess.gov/serialset/cdocuments/sd109-18/sd109-18.pdf|archive-date=August 5, 2010}}

The saltire of Alabama's flag most closely resembles the saltire of the flag of Florida, which was derived from the Spanish Cross of Burgundy.{{cite journal |last1=Mignanelli |first1=Nicholas |last2=Slinger |first2=Sarah |title=A Matter for Interpretation: An Inquiry into Confederate Symbolism and the Florida State Flag |journal=University of Miami Race and Social Justice Law Review |date=2020 |volume=10 |issue=2 |pages=126–129, 134–137 |url=https://heinonline.org/HOL/Page?handle=hein.journals/umrsj10&id=279&collection=journals&index= |access-date=March 26, 2022}} Southern Alabama was originally part of Spanish Florida and subsequently West Florida.

Alabama adopted its flag design in 1895, five years earlier than Florida did.

The inspiration for Alabama's flag is not known. Many have noted that a saltire also appears in flags used decades earlier by the Confederate States of America, a group of states, including Alabama, that declared secession and warred against the United States during the American Civil War. No documentation in the legislative records indicates the Alabama flag was intended to commemorate the Confederacy.{{cite news|last1=Williams|first1=Dave|title=Flag debate spreading across Deep South|url=http://savannahnow.com/stories/091700/LOCflaginsight.shtml#.VaunxRNVhBd|access-date=March 25, 2022|work=Savannah Morning News|date=September 17, 2000|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150722185513/http://savannahnow.com/stories/091700/LOCflaginsight.shtml#.VaunxRNVhBd|archive-date=July 22, 2015|url-status=dead}}

Still, various people have asserted over the decades that the design was drawn from the Confederate battle flag.

In 1900, the Montgomery Advertiser reported the flag was "a memory and a suggestion of the Confederate battle flag".{{cite news |date=12 December 1900 |title=The Flag of Alabama |newspaper=Huntsville Weekly Democrat |url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/54577632/alflag-19001212-repeat/ |access-date=5 April 2022}} In 1906, a piece in the Birmingham Age-Herald stated the Alabama state flag "has no history woven into it". In 1915, Thomas M. Owen, the first director of the Alabama Department of Archives and History, wrote that the flag bill's sponsor and the rest of the legislature had intended to "preserve, in permanent form, some of the more distinctive features of the Confederate battle flag".{{cite book |author1=McAdory Owen |first=Thomas |url=https://archive.org/details/historyofalabama01owen |title=History of Alabama and Dictionary of Alabama Biography |date=1921 |publisher=The S. J. Clarke Publishing Company |volume=1 |location=Chicago |page=592 |author1-link=Thomas M. Owen}} The authors of a 1917 article in National Geographic expressed their opinion that the Alabama flag was based on the Confederate battle flag.Lt. Commander Byron McCandless & Gilbert Grosvenor. "Flags of the World." National Geographic Magazine. Vol 32. No. 4, pp. 281–420 (October 1917).

In 1924, Bell Allen Ross, a member of the Daughters of the Confederacy, said that Rep. John W.A. Sanford Jr. modeled his design of the Alabama flag on the battle flag used by his father, John W. A. Sanford, while commanding the Hilliard's Legion regiment.{{Cite web |author=Alabama Department of Archives & History |year=2007 |title=Flag: Hilliard's Legion |url=https://archives.alabama.gov/referenc/flags/075.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220329232107/https://archives.alabama.gov/referenc/flags/075.html |archive-date=Mar 29, 2022 |access-date=March 28, 2022}} She said Sanford's design was meant to preserve some of the distinctive features of the Confederate battle flag, particularly the Saint Andrews Cross.{{cite news|url=https://newspaperarchive.com/other-articles-clipping-dec-14-1924-3126058| title=Interesting Facts Regarding Alabama Flag| newspaper=Anniston Star|date=December 14, 1924 |access-date=March 28, 2022}}

In a 1987 letter, Alabama Attorney General Don Siegelman wrote that the flag was modeled after Sanford's 60th Alabama Infantry Regiment battle flag.

More recent commentators note that the Alabama flag was adopted during a period of promotion of the "Lost Cause" of the culture of the antebellum South. Other former Confederate slave states, beginning with Mississippi, and followed by Florida, had also adopted new state flags around the same time that they disenfranchised African Americans and passed laws establishing Jim Crow segregation.{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=zs0VJTbNwfAC&pg=PA80|title=The Confederate Battle Flag: America's Most Embattled Emblem|date=2005|first=John M.|last=Coski|access-date=March 25, 2022|pages=79–81|location=United States of America|publisher=First Harvard University Press|isbn=0-674-01983-0|quote=The flag changes in Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida coincided with the passage of formal Jim Crow segregation laws throughout the South.|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160309032406/https://books.google.com/books?id=zs0VJTbNwfAC&pg=PA80#v=onepage&q&f=falsee|archive-date=March 9, 2016}}{{cite news |last1=Ingraham |first1=Christopher |date=June 21, 2015 |title=How the Confederacy lives on in the flags of seven Southern states |newspaper=Washington Post |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/06/21/how-the-confederacy-lives-on-in-the-flags-of-seven-southern-states/ |url-access=subscription |access-date=March 25, 2022}}

But other contemporary commentators, such as Steve Murray, Director of the Alabama Department of History and Archives, believe the origins of the flag are unclear.{{cite news|url=https://www.waff.com/2020/06/30/historical-record-thin-specifics-regarding-alabamas-flag-design/|title=Historical record thin on specifics regarding Alabama's flag design|first1=|last1=|website=WAFF (TV)|date=June 30, 2020|access-date=March 28, 2022}} According to Murray, the flag's connections to the battle flag are thin and based on suppositions. Murray said, "I would conclude that if they were wanting to evoke the Confederate battle flag, they would have been more explicit about doing it either in the design which could have more closely resembled the Confederate flag." Murray also noted that Alabama may have wanted to approve a new state flag to prepare for an exposition in Atlanta, Georgia, later that year.

Hilliard's Legion Flag.jpg|According to Bell Allen Ross, the Hilliard's Legion Flag served as inspiration for John W.A. Sanford Jr.'s Alabama flag design.

Flag of Cross of Burgundy.svg|The Spanish Cross of Burgundy.

{{See also|Flags of governors of the U.S. states}}

The flag of the governor of Alabama is a variant of the state flag. In the top saltire, the flag displays the state coat of arms. The bottom saltire contains the state military crest, which consists of a cotton plant with full bursting boll.

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|Flag of the Governor of Alabama.svg|Flag of the Governor since 1939

|Flag of the Governor of Alabama (1968-1939).svg|Flag of the Governor before 1939

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| Alabama statehood flag.png|Flag allegedly flown to commemorate Alabama statehood, c1819{{Cite web |title=Sold at Auction: A 22-Star American Flag commemorating Alabama statehood or Exclusionary Flag, circa 1830 |url=https://www.invaluable.com/auction-lot/a-22-star-american-flag-commemorating-alabama-sta-20-c-e2f49e891a |access-date=2025-05-12 |website=invaluable.com |language=en}}|Alabama Centennial flag (1919).png|Alabama Centennial flag, made in 1919 by Mrs. Idyl King Sorsby to celebrated 100 years of statehood{{Cite news |last=Humanities |first=National Endowment for the |date=1922-09-14 |title=The Birmingham age-herald. [volume] (Birmingham, Ala.) 1902-1950, September 14, 1922, Image 4 |url=https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn85038485/1922-09-14/ed-1/seq-4/#date1=1756&sort=relevance&rows=20&words=banner+flag+state&searchType=basic&sequence=0&index=11&state=&date2=1963&proxtext=state+flag+banner&y=0&x=0&dateFilterType=yearRange&page=4 |access-date=2025-05-08 |pages=FOUR |issn=2692-6318}}

|Alabama Bicentennial Flag.svg |Alabama Bicentennial Flag, designed in 2019 to mark Alabama's 200th anniversary of statehood}}

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• Flag of Jersey
• Seal of Alabama
• Saint Patrick's Saltire
• Spanish Empire
• List of Alabama state symbols

{{Reflist}}

• [http://www.archives.state.al.us/emblems/st_flag.html Alabama State Flag] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190106215755/http://www.archives.state.al.us/emblems/st_flag.html%20 |date=January 6, 2019 }} at the Alabama Department of Archives & History
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20080414021933/http://www.ago.state.al.us/oldopinions/8700238.pdf written account of the flag in 1987 by Don Siegelman, Alabama Attorney General]

{{US state flags}}

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Category:Symbols of Alabama

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Category:1895 establishments in Alabama