User:Jnestorius/Flag of Arkansas

<Flag of Arkansas

Early proposals
At the Centennial Exposition in 1876, Arkansas was represented by a red flag with the state seal in the center.

Sarah Ellsworth of Hot Springs informed 1911 convention in El Dorado of the Arkansas Federation of Women's Clubs that the General Federation of Women's Clubs recommended that a state's delegates carry its flag to the General Federation's convention, and that Arkansas had no flag. The El Dorado convention recommended a design by Maie Davidson Moore, the wife of John Isaac Moore, a state senator and former acting governor. Ellsworth and Moore went to Little Rock to raise the matter with the Arkansas General Assembly, but found its biennial session was about to adjourn.

zzz Possibly more in Hanger and Eno 1935.

Arkansas Travelogue
Self-published source:

Info:
 * Arkansas FWC for 1910 [sic: recte 1911?] national FWC convention in Cincinnati made blue flag with state seal, the default design of the age.
 * Civil War veteran Stan Harley in a letter to the Gazette, suggested using the flag of the combined 6th & 7th Arkansas Infantry Regiment.
 * After Cincinnati the FWC modified the design: 'the seal was moved to the upper left corner and in the center a "landscape medallion showing the chief assets of the state; a stream of water, green fields, an apple tree in full bloom, in the background the hills filled with mineral wealth.' Doesnt seem to be in online display of candidates; Archives had "on microfilm".
 * John Ike Moore's design was the Cincinnati one, not the modified one.
 * come back another day because that day's session was out of control
 * "The AFWC design was submitted and considered along with all the others"
 * Diamonds were discovered in 1906 so still fresh
 * Unveiled at 1914 Arkansas State Fair at Hot Springs. "Hocker cristened the flagpole with a bottle of Hot Springs mineral water. The band played Dixie and the Arkansas flag was raised."
 * "The state turned to Willie Hocker" for the 1924 rejig:
 * "lettering was moved up"
 * "The two blue stars just below the lettering were redesignated to symbolize Arkansas and Michigan"

Sources:
 * Harley, Stan; "Would Have Club Women Adopt Cleburne Flag"; letter to editor of Arkansas Gazette, 23 April 1910.
 * Jacobson, (senator); "Fight Promised Over Selection of Flag Design"; Arkansas Democrat, 28 Dec 1912, letter to editor.
 * "Committee Named to Select Flag Design"; Arkansas Democrat; December 1912.
 * Dawoody, W. L.; Arkansas Gazette, January 1913, letter to editor from Daughters of American Revolution.
 * "First Appearance of Flag"; Augusta Free Press; 13 March 1914.
 * Hocker, Willie; article in Pine Bluff Commercial; 11 May 1916.
 * "True Story of the State Flag"; from News of the AWFC reprinted in the Arkansas Gazette.
 * Herndon, Dallas; "Arkansas State Flag"; Arkansas Historical Review; vol. 1, #2, June 1934, p. 42.
 * Ingram, Norris; "The Flags of Arkansas", Arkansas Democrat; 21 October 1962, Magazine Section, pp. 1-2
 * Brown 1963

1913 adoption


[p.215] Early in 1912, the Pine Bluff Chapter, Daughters of the American Revolution, by a unanimous vote decided to present the new battleship Arkansas with a “Stand of Colors,” consisting of a United States flag, a naval battalion flag and an Arkansas State flag. To Mrs. C. W. Pettigrew belongs the honor of having originated this plan of flag giving. The acting regent of the chapter, Mrs. W. L. DeWoody, appointed a flag committee, consisting of Mrs. C. W. Pettigrew, Mrs. W. A. Taggart and Mrs. Frank Tomlinson. They wrote to the Secretary of State asking for a copy of the official State flag. He replied: “Arkansas has no State flag.” The Pine Bluff Chapter, D. A. R., then took the initiative in a movement to have the next (1913) General Assembly adopt a State flag. The flag committee caused to be published in the leading papers of the State an article asking artists and designers everywhere, particularly those of the State of Arkansas, to submit designs appropriate for a State flag to a committee of selection, consisting of not less than seven competent persons, who would, from the submitted designs, select the one most appropriate for a State flag, should an appropriate design be found among those submitted. The designs were to bear no mark of identification, but be accompanied by a typewritten explanation of the design, and by a sealed unmarked envelope containing another explanation, and the name and address of the designer. Mr. Earle W. Hodges, Secretary of State, consented to become the custodian of the submitted designs, and to name the committee of selection. The first committee met in the parlors of Hotel Marion, Little Rock, early in January, 1913. It consisted of the following named persons: Maj. Clifton R. Breckinridge, chairman; Prof. J. J. Doyne [former Superintendent of Education], secretary; Mr. George B. Rose (son of U. M. Rose), Gen. [p.216] Benjamin William Green, Col. Virgil Young Cook, Dr. Junius Jordan [former Superintendent of Education], Mrs. Julia McAlmont Noel and Mrs. Joseph Frauenthal (daughter-in-law of Max Frauenthal). They made no selection, but recommended that a committee be appointed to search the records of Arkansas to see if there ever had existed a regularly adopted State flag. This committee failed to find any such record. The second committee, consisting of Mr. Earle W. Hodges, chairman; Gen. B. W. Green, Dr. Junius Jordan, Mr. G. B. Rose, Mrs. Julia McAlmont Noel, Mrs. Jo Frauenthal, Sarah Ellsworth and Miss Julia Warner, met in the office of the Secretary of State and from the sixty-five submitted designs unanimously chose the design made by Miss Willie K. Hocker of Pine Bluff, a member of the D. A. R. Chapter that had taken the initiative in the flag adoption measure. On Saturday, February 14, 1913, Senator William Riley Phillips introduced a joint resolution to have the selected design adopted as Arkansas' official flag. The measure carried, and the following Tuesday, February 18, the House passed the resolution, and Arkansas had an official flag, regularly adopted by both houses of the General Assembly.

The design is a rectangular field of red, on which is placed a large white diamond, bordered by a wide band of blue — national colors. Across the diamond is the word “Arkansas” (placed there by request of the committee) and the blue stars, one above, two below the word. On the blue band are placed twenty-five white stars.


 * EXPLANATION OF DESIGN:

This design has in it much of Arkansas' history as given below:

Arkansas is one of the United States, therefore the national colors are used.

The three blue stars typify the three nations, Spain, France and the United States, to whom Arkansas has successively belonged. Their number, three, indicates that Arkansas was the third State carved from the Louisiana Purchase Territory; this purchase is the greatest act yet performed by the United States. The three stars also indicate [p.217] the year (1803) when Arkansas became the property of the United States. The twenty-five white stars show that Arkansas was the twenty-fifth State in the order of admission to the Union. The State came into the Union paired with another State (Michigan); this is shown by the pair of stars on the lower angle of the blue band. Arkansas contains the only known diamond mine within the possession of the United States, therefore Arkansas should be known as "The Diamond State".

Resemblance to CSA battle flag?

 * Yes:
 * Whitney Smith "The basic design and colours suggest the Battle Flag of the Confederacy".
 * Kenneth C. Barnes calls the resemblance "obvious".
 * Steven A. Knowlton: Flag of Arkansas is "more reminiscent" and "more blatantly evocative" of the Confederate flag than the Flag of Tennessee is, because it "repeats the angles of the rectangular version of the original".
 * Derek Frisby: "Arkansas's 1912 flag appeared suggestive of the Confederacy".


 * No:
 * "Though the Arkansas state flag does not incorporate elements of the Confederate battle flag, it honors the Confederacy nevertheless."

"many southern state officials incorporated Confederate flag elements into their state flags (eg, Georgia 1879, Mississippi 1894, Alabama 1895, Arkansas 1923)" Can't access directly so may just reference Coski 2005.
 * Unclear:

zzz does sos or encyclopedia comment?

1923–4
The resolutions adding and relocating the extra star were moved by Neill Bohlinger of Pulaski County, a member of the Ku Klux Klan who had been elected as a Democrat after a Klan primary. In August 1924 the Arkansas Daughters of the Confederacy reported that a flag company in New York had refused to manufacture the new design. For Barnes and Dougan, the location of the CSA star indicated its legitimacy and pre-eminence. Preamble of SB715/2021 says, "In 1924, the General Assembly moved the star commemorating the state's historical membership in the Confederate States of America above the word "ARKANSAS" on the flag and placed the star commemorating the United States of America in subordination to it". This is reflected in the cover design of a 2021 University of Arkansas Press history of the Klan in 1920s Arkansas.

Later
Arkansas law was codified in 1947 as the ASA (Arkansas Statutes Annotated). Despite being derived from resolutions rather than acts, the flag definition was included as ASA §zzz. The flag pledge was adopted in 1953 and inserted into the code as ASA §zzz.

In 1987 state senator William T. Moore (zzz perhaps a grandson of Isaac "Ike" Moore?) introduced a bill to restate the provisions of the 1913–24 resolutions in the form of an act. Reasons for the restatement were the state sesquicentennial in 1986, during which numerous new state symbols were adopted, and a pending bill banning flag desecration. The restatement bill passed unanimously in both houses of the assembly. It and the desecration bill were signed into law by Bill Clinton, the Governor of Arkansas. The same year, the ASA was replaced by the Arkansas Code Annotated (ACA) with ASA §Szzz becoming ACA §§zzz.

On 27 July 1999 aides to Rudy Giuliani, then Mayor of New York City and a prospective Republican candidate in the 2000 United States Senate election in New York, flew the Arkansas flag over New York City Hall. Giuliani claimed this was to reciprocate the flying of the New York City flag at the Capital Hotel in Little Rock where he was campaigning; opponents claimed it was to present as a carpetbagger his likely Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, then U.S. First Lady.

A 2011 act formally specified that the Arkansas flag's red and blue were the same as those in the U.S. flag, called "Old Glory Red" and "Old Glory Blue". The act also required the state government to use U.S.-manufactured flags.

In 2013 the centenary of the flag was marked. February 26 was declared "Willie Kavanaugh Hocker Day" by resolutions of the state House and Senate. On October 12 a memorial in Wabbaseka City Park was opened, with a plan in the shape of the flag's central diamond and flagpoles in three corners flying the 1913, 1923 and 1924 versions of the flag.

During Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign, media pointed out that the 1987 act signed by Bill kept the Confederate symbolism of the fourth star, implying hypocrisy in both Clintons' later anti-Confederate statements. Hillary Clinton supporters called shenanigans.

Specifications
The state code does not specify the spacing or orientation of 25 stars etc. There must be a detailed regulation somewhere? Well, Zachary Harden notes inconsistencies [slanted white stars; blue stars bigger than white stars], which suggests otherwise.

In the 1913 USS Arkansas flag:
 * 1) All stars (blue and white) point to top. This may be the flag which Harden says "flew over the USS Arkansas during WWII". He says its stars' orientation is exception.
 * 2) ARKANSAS is in tall thin letters with small serifs. Letters are bisected vertically (baseline–cap height midpoint) by the horizontal axis of the diamond

Derivatives


Unlike the Tennessee flag, Arkansas' is not widely referenced in state-related graphic design culture; perhaps because it is "too cluttered".

The state flag was adopted in 1940 as the flag of the University of Arkansas. Fans of the school's Razorbacks sports team prefer flags with its cardinal-and-white colors and razorback hog mascot.

Major influence on the flag of Faulkner County and the seal of the state Judicial Discipline and Disability Commission.

The diamond-and-stars element appears in the seal and crest of the Arkansas National Guard and the flag of Benton County.

Local LGBT pride flags have been based on state flag, replacing either the outer red or inner white panels with the stripes of the rainbow flag.