Red flag (American slavery)

A red flag was a traditional signal used by slave traders of the United States to indicate that a slave auction was imminent.

In 1861, Richmond slave trader Hector Davis paid $16.95 for a secession flag to fly outside his business; according to historian Robert Colby, "This was only the first of many gestures he made signaling his support for the fledgling Confederacy...Day by day, his secession flag flew alongside the red cloth square that signified an impending sale of slaves, the twin standards of the new Confederacy." Among the items looted by Charles Carleton Coffin from Ziba Oakes' slave jail in 1865 was a red slave-sale flag. According to the Museum of African American History, "Red flags outside slave sites signaled that enslaved people were 'ready for sale' and often had an inventory of the enslaved attached. Sometimes enslaved children were sent through the streets carrying the red flag and ringing a bell to announce a slave sale."

In an 1850 speech before New England Anti-Slavery Society, C. C. Burleigh painted an image of an injustice being done "under the blended shadows of the red auction flag and the stripes of the Republic". When Maryland passed the abolition of slavery in 1864, The Liberator reprinted an editorial from the Cincinnati Catholic Telegraph, that referred to both the red flag and the symbols on the flag of Maryland: "We rejoice that Maryland, the cradle of the Catholic Faith in the United States, is now untarnished with slavery...and that the Cross, the true sign of liberty, more so than any banner that ever waved on earth, will no longer be insulted by looking down on the red flag of the auctioneer where men and women are offered for sale to the highest bidder."