The flag was eventually changed in 2003 after then-Gov. Sonny Perdue gave voters the choice between a drastic, deeply unpopular redesign proposed in 2001, and a new proposal closely resembling the “Stars and Bars.” Government materials confirm the connection: On the Georgia Secretary of State’s site, the current flag is described as being “based on the first national flag of the Confederacy.”

Since the St. Andrew’s Cross is a widely used symbol, it can be easy to mistake Alabama’s flag design as mere coincidence.

However, though the Mississippi flag was the last to bear the obvious image of the Confederate battle flag, there are other state flags that contain Confederate symbology that may be a little harder to spot.

Developed in 2013 by JJ Poole, this flag is intended to give space to those whose gender identity and/or expression fluctuates during different times and circumstances. Each color is meant to represent a different aspect of the genderfluid community: pink for femininity, white for lack of gender, purple for a combination of masculinity and femininity, black for all genders, and blue for masculinity.

There is no one agreed-upon Two-Spirit flag; however, tumblr user 2Sanon developed the most commonly seen two-spirit flag. They submitted it to ask-pride-color-schemes on December 17th 2016. The circle denotes oneness in one, while the two feathers signify woman and man. It's usually put over the LGBT rainbow flag (as pictured here) but it may also be draped over a transgender or nonbinary flag.

As you look at the different flags below, here are some things to note: The arrangement of stripes on the field, the types and placement of stars, and what is going on in the canton – the upper left part of a flag where you would normally see the fifty stars on an American flag. Also pay attention to the presence of a saltire, or St. Andrew’s Cross. That’s the diagonal “X” that defines the Confederate battle flag. (It’s also a part of many other flags around the world, including the Union Jack.)

Ironically, all of that changed when the Confederacy was formed, and with it, an enemy flag. Suddenly, American flags cropped up in and around Union homes, schools and businesses – and the practice extended nationwide in later years.

Controversy over the flag bubbles up in Florida from time to time, although historians disagree over whether the cross was meant to call to mind the Confederacy. Some posit it could be a reference to the flag of the Spanish Empire, known as the Cross of Burgundy.

Though the Arkansas flag is, overall, a visual cousin to the Confederate battle flag, it was actually designed in 1912 by a young woman from the town of Wabbaseka. According to a state historian’s description of the flag, the diamond represented Arkansas’ diamond mine, and the three stars inside represented the three nations the state had belonged to: Spain, France and the US.

In the years since the Civil War, Georgia’s flag has undergone several changes. Yet, it still looks very, very much like the flag of the Confederacy – on purpose. It used to contain a Confederate battle flag on its fly (the free side of the flag), a design change that was made in 1956.

The Polysexual Pride Flag was designed by a Tumblr user known as "Samlin" in 2012 to represent people who identify as being attracted to multiple, but not all, genders. The pink stripe represents attraction to women, the green stripe represents attraction to non-binary and other gender identities, and the blue stripe represents attraction to men.

Before 1899, Florida’s flag was just its state seal on a background of white. That year, voters agreed to add a red St. Andrew’s cross to the flag which, again, could be chalked up to coincidence. But the change was first proposed by then-Gov. Francis P. Fleming, a staunch secessionist who fought in the Confederate Army’s 2nd Florida Regiment and was very active in Confederate veterans groups after the war.

The nonbinary pride flag was created in 2014 by activist Kye Rowe, for people who did not feel that the genderqueer flag represented them. The yellow stripe represents gender outside of the binary, the white stripe represents those who identify with multiple genders, the purple stripe represents a combination of masculinity and femininity and the black stripe represents those who identify as agender.

The rainbow pride flag was created by Gilbert Baker when gay-rights leader Harvey Milk encouraged him to devise a symbol for gay pride. This six-color pride flag was created by Baker in 1978 when the demand for pride flags increased after Milk's assassination in November of that year. It previously included pink and turquoise stripes but those were dropped to more easily mass market the flag.

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The intersex pride flag was developed in 2013 by the co-chair of Intersex Human Rights Australia, Morgan Carpenter. The circle represents wholeness (the purple representing the diversity of intersex people), while the yellow background represents gender neutrality.

The fact that Georgia citizens chose to add a Confederate symbol to their flag to protest desegregation shows how deeply symbolic, and actively rhetorical, flags can be.

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“The analogy that comes to mind is Confederate statues,” says Marc Leepson, the historian. “Most Confederate statues weren’t put up right after the Civil War. They were part of the spreading of the Lost Cause Theory, and then Jim Crow and segregation. They had a purpose in the eyes of the public.”

However, according to the 1915 Alabama Official and Statistical Register, the flag “was intended by the [state] Legislature to preserve in permanent form some of the more distinctive features of the Confederate battleflag, particularly the St. Andrew’s cross.” This origin is also cited by the Alabama Department of Archives and History.

That proved difficult later on in the war. According to Leepson, during the especially foggy battle of Manassas in 1861, Confederate commanders realized it was hard to tell the two flags apart. Eventually, various iterations of the battle flag became more widely used.

While there are ongoing conversations about culture, heritage, history and the role of Confederate monuments and flags, in the case of Georgia’s Confederate battle-inspired flag, it’s hard to push the heritage narrative when the real reason – racism – is cemented right there in the history books.

This design of the Gay Men's Pride flag was introduced by a Tumblr user in 2019. It has previously faced controversy for being transphobic and copying the lesbian flag but ultimately has been accepted and widely used. It features seven stripes (sometimes five), green and turquoise represent community and healing, white represents gender non-binary and transgender individuals, and blue and purple represent love, diversity, and fortitude.

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Mississippi has made it official: The state’s flag, which bears the familiar cross of the Confederate battle flag, will officially be changed. The state’s Republican governor signed the decision into law, solidifying yet another response to ongoing racial reckonings around the country.

The actual flag of the Confederate States looks a lot different: It has two red stripes and one white, with a familiar field of stars on the hoist. There were four iterations throughout the Confederacy’s short life, with each one bearing different numbers of stars to correspond to the number of Confederate states at the time.

“For the first third of our nation’s history, from about 1777 to 1861, it was almost unheard of for individual Americans to fly the flag. It was mostly flown primarily by the government, mainly by the military, and especially by the Navy,” he says.

The Genderqueer Pride Flag is a symbol for people who reject the static category of gender. Genderqueer people may see themselves as both or neither male or female, or beyond the binary. Lavender represents androgyny and other queer identities, white represents agender people, and green symbolizes everyone who identify outside of the binary.

It wasn’t until 1923 that a Confederate reference was added. State lawmakers voted to add a fourth star to the inner diamond to represent the Confederacy. The following year, they changed it so the star representing the Confederacy was over the state’s name – and the other three below it. This may be news to most budding vexillologists, but it’s a well-known fact among Arkansans. As recently as 2019, state lawmakers have introduced bills attempting to strike the reference from the flag.

Here’s something else to remember: Flags, as a national symbol, are a relatively new invention. Marc Leepson, a historian and author of the book “Flag: An American Biography,” explains that, up until the last few hundred years, flags and pennants were used most widely for military purposes. (Another fun fact, Leepson notes: The United States had an official national flag years before France. The US adopted its first version in 1777, while France didn’t adopt one until 1794, during the French Revolution.)

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In 2018, Emily Gwen redesigned the lesbian pride flag to include orange stripes. A five-stripe version exists and can be used interchangeably with this one. Dark orange signifies gender non-conformity, orange signifies independence, light orange signifies community, white signifies unique relationships to womanhood, pink signifies serenity, dusty pink signifies love and sex, and dark rose signifies femininity.

It is unclear who created the pansexual pride flag but it first appeared on the internet in 2010 and has been widely used to represent pansexual pride ever since. The pink stripe represents attraction to women, the blue stripe attraction to men and the yellow stripe represents attraction to everyone else in between and beyond the gender binary.

First, let’s clear up a common misconception: The crimson and blue flag we usually refer to as the Confederate flag is in fact a Confederate battle flag, most famously used by Gen. Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia.

The Agender Pride Flag was designed in 2014 by Salem X. The black and white stripes represent an absence of gender, the gray stripes represent semi-genderless, and the green stripe represents nonbinary genders.

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The Aromantic Pride flag was created by a Tumblr user known as "cameronwhimsy" in 2014. The green stripes represent the spectrum of aromantic individuals because the color green is on the opposite side of the color wheel from red (which is typically associated with romance). white represents platonic relationships and gray and black represents those of other sexualities.

The Demisexual Pride Flag was designed in 2010 by a member of the AVEN (Asexual Visibility and Education Network) forum. The black triangle is an acknowledgement of the larger asexual community and is meant to represent a lack of sexual attraction. The white stripe symbolizes allosexuality, the presence of sexual attraction. The purple stripe, which is set in the middle and touches all of the colors on the flag, is another nod to the asexual flag and also represents community. The gray stripe symbolizes the gray-ace or graysexuality community, those who fall somewhere between asexual and sexual or those who might not have a clearly defined identity.

The progress pride flag was initially created by Daniel Quasar in 2018 in response to a need for more inclusive symbol acknowledging the diversity within the LGBTQ+ community. Quasar added a pink, white and light blue stripe to represent the trans community. The black and brown stripes represent communities of color but the black stripe is also a nod to the lives lost during the HIV/AIDS crisis in the 1980s and 90s.The version of the progress pride flag that you see here, includes the intersex flag within it which was created by Valentino Vecchietti of Intersex Equality Rights UK in 2021.

The asexual pride flag was created by a member of the Asexual Visibility and Education Network in August of 2010 as a part of a community effort to create and choose a flag. Each stripe has a different meaning: black represents asexuality, gray means gray-sexuality and demisexuality, white stands for non asexual partners and allies, and purple represents community.

“When the Confederacy broke away, one of the first things that the Confederate Congress did was pick a flag,” Leepson says. “There was a big debate, and the debate centered on how close the flag should look to the American flag. They held a contest, and took votes, and what did they do? They picked a flag with red and white stripes and stars.”

The Transgender Pride Flag was created by trans activist and U.S. Navy veteran Monica Helms in 1999. It was debuted at Phonex Pride in the year 2000. The flag was designed to represent those whose gender identity differs from the sex they were assigned at birth. The light blue stripes represent the traditional color for baby boys, the light pink represents the traditional color for baby girls and the white stripe represents non-binary individuals.

Why add such a problematic symbol? According to a 2000 state Senate report, compiled while Georgia was mulling another flag change, the decision to add the battle flag came during the 1956 legislative session when state lawmakers were intent on “preserving segregation, resisting the 1954 US Supreme Court decision of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, and maintaining white supremacy in Georgia.”

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Michael Page introduced the Bisexual Pride Flag in December of 1998 to represent and increase visibility of bisexual people in the LGBT community and society as a whole. It features three horizontal stripes; pink represents same-sex attraction, royal blue represents attraction to the opposite sex, and purple represents attraction to all genders.

The famed phrase “Stars and Bars,” however, usually refers to the original Confederate flag, designed in 1861, which has seven stars arranged in a circular pattern. This is an important flag to remember as you look at some current state flag designs.