The Flag of Washington, D.C.

The flag of Washington, D.C. is older than the city, in a sense. Its two red bars and three red stars on white were a coat of arms in Elizabethan England four hundred years before the District adopted them in 1938. It is also, by the most-cited measure available, the best-designed city flag in the United States, and in the twenty-first century it has taken on a second job: the banner of a movement that wants the nation's capital to become its fifty-first state.

A coat of arms four centuries old

The design is the armorial banner of the Washington family. In heraldic language: argent, two bars gules, in chief three mullets of the second. In plain language: a silver (white) field, two red horizontal bars, three red five-pointed stars across the top. Robert Cooke, Clarenceux King of Arms, confirmed these arms to Lawrence Washington of Sulgrave Manor, Northamptonshire, in 1592. Lawrence was George Washington's great-great-great-grandfather; his grandson John Washington emigrated to Virginia in 1656 and brought the arms with him.

George Washington used the family arms extensively at Mount Vernon, on his bookplates, silverware, and carriage, and late in life corresponded with Isaac Heard, Garter Principal King of Arms in London, about the family's heraldic history. The arms even appeared on Andrew Ellicott's 1792 map of the new federal city. So when the District finally went looking for a flag, the raw material had been sitting in plain sight since before the first cornerstone was laid.

A persistent piece of folklore holds that the stars-and-bars pattern inspired the Stars and Stripes itself. There is no evidence for that. The resemblance runs the other way: both draw on the same stock of heraldic elements.

Charles Dunn's seventeen-year campaign

Charles A. R. Dunn, a graphic artist then working for the Chamber of Commerce of the United States, drew up the design in 1921 and began pushing it publicly in the mid-1920s, including through Washington's Evening Star newspaper. Nothing happened for over a decade. The District, run by federally appointed commissioners rather than an elected government, had no mechanism and apparently no urgency for adopting a flag.

Congress finally acted on June 16, 1938, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Public Law 650, establishing a commission "to procure a design for a distinctive flag for the District of Columbia." The commission had three members: Melvin C. Hazen, president of the Board of Commissioners, Secretary of War Harry H. Woodring, and Secretary of the Navy Claude A. Swanson, assisted by the Commission of Fine Arts. It reviewed roughly 50 designs. No local citizens' groups were given a seat, despite formal requests from the Association of Oldest Inhabitants and the Federation of Citizens' Associations, an exclusion that reads differently now that the flag means what it means.

Dunn submitted his 1921 design, and on October 15, 1938 the commission adopted it. The flag first flew days later at the District Building, now the John A. Wilson Building; accounts disagree on whether the date was October 18 or 23. The official record credited Hazen for bringing the design forward and Arthur E. Du Bois, the Army's chief heraldic expert, for its final execution. Dunn spent years correcting the record, most visibly in a 1957 article on the flag's origins, and modern accounts name him as the designer.

The geometry

The 1938 specifications divide the hoist into tenths. The upper white portion takes three tenths, each red bar two tenths, the white gap between the bars one tenth, and the white base two tenths. Each star is two tenths of the hoist in diameter, and the three are spaced equidistantly across the upper white band. No statute pins down an exact shade of red; in practice the city and most reproductions use a bright poster red, and common digital renderings sit around hex #e81b39.

The result obeys every rule of thumb flag designers preach: two colors, bold shapes, no lettering, no seal, instantly recognizable at any size. It works on a license plate, a tattoo, or a two-story banner without modification.

First place out of 150

In 2004 the North American Vexillological Association surveyed public and member opinion on 150 American city flags. Washington, D.C. finished first with 9.17 out of 10, edging Chicago's 9.03. An earlier NAVA survey of 72 U.S. state and Canadian provincial flags in 2001 had already placed the D.C. flag eighth, remarkable company for a city banner competing against full states.

The ranking gave the flag a second life. Reception in 1938 had been lukewarm, but by the 2000s it was everywhere in the city: on Capitals, Wizards, and D.C. United merchandise, on rowhouse porches, on skin. It has appeared on District license plates since 1984, and the local government works it into agency logos and street signage. Among American city flags, only Chicago's rivals it as something residents actually wear.

The statehood flag

Washingtonians pay federal taxes but have no voting representation in Congress, and the flag has become the visual shorthand for that grievance. In 2002 the D.C. Council passed, 10-2, a bill that would have added "Taxation Without Representation" in white letters across the two red bars and the letters "D.C." inside the center star. Mayor Anthony A. Williams declined to sign it, support faded, and the flag stayed clean. The slogan migrated to the standard license plate instead, later sharpened to "End Taxation Without Representation."

Statehood advocates fly the unaltered flag at rallies and hearings, and the design is built into the movement's branding. There is a certain irony in it: a banner chosen by three federal appointees, with no local vote, from the arms of an English manor family, now stands for the demand that the District govern itself. The three stars have picked up an unofficial reading along the way, as the three commissioners who once ran the city, though Dunn assigned them no meaning at all.

References

[1] "Flag of Washington, D.C.," Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Washington,_D.C.

[2] North American Vexillological Association (NAVA), "American City Flags Survey" (2004). https://nava.org/digital-library/design/surveys/2004-American-City-Flags-Survey.pdf

[3] "District of Columbia (U.S.)," Flags of the World. https://www.crwflags.com/fotw/flags/us-dc.html

[4] "Washington DC Flag," WorldAtlas. https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/washington-dc-flag.html

[5] Public Law 75-650, "An Act to provide for the adoption of a flag for the District of Columbia" (June 16, 1938).

What do the stars and bars on the D.C. flag stand for?

Strictly speaking, nothing. They are lifted directly from the coat of arms of George Washington's family, which used two red bars and three red mullets (heraldic stars) on a silver shield. The arms were confirmed to Lawrence Washington of Sulgrave Manor, England, in 1592, centuries before the city existed. Later readers have mapped the three stars onto the District's three original commissioners, but that meaning was never assigned officially.

Who designed the flag of Washington, D.C.?

Charles A. R. Dunn, a graphic artist who first sketched the design in 1921 and campaigned for it for years before Congress created a flag commission in 1938. The commission chose his design but credited its own president, Melvin C. Hazen, and heraldist Arthur E. Du Bois for the final version. Dunn published an article in 1957 setting out his claim, and modern sources generally name him as the designer.

Is the D.C. flag really ranked the best city flag in America?

Yes. In the North American Vexillological Association's 2004 survey of 150 U.S. city flags, Washington, D.C. came first with a score of 9.17 out of 10, just ahead of Chicago at 9.03. Survey respondents rewarded its simplicity: two colors, no seal, no text, and a pattern anyone can draw from memory.

Has the flag ever been changed to protest D.C.'s lack of voting rights?

Almost. In 2002 the D.C. Council voted 10-2 for a bill adding the phrase "Taxation Without Representation" to the flag's red bars and the letters "D.C." to the center star. Mayor Anthony A. Williams never signed it, and the change was dropped. The protest slogan ended up on the District's license plates instead, where it remains.

What did Washington, D.C. use before 1938?

Nothing official. For nearly a century and a half the capital had no flag of its own, and various unofficial banners and militia colors filled the gap. Congress only moved in June 1938, when President Roosevelt signed the law creating a three-member flag commission. It reviewed around 50 designs before settling on Dunn's.

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