More adventures in vexillology: Mississippi's new flag

I'll have more thoughts about the 2020 election in a few days, but right now, I wanted to spend a few minutes writing about Mississippi's new state flag:

Mississippi's new state flag will feature the magnolia flower after the state in a historic move this summer parted with its decades-old banner that included a Confederate battle emblem.

Voters on Tuesday approved the "In God We Trust" magnolia design as the new state flag, CNN projected.

The state Legislature will now have to enact into law the new design as Mississippi's official state flag during its next regular session in 2021.

The flag features a white magnolia blossom on a dark blue backdrop, with red bands and gold stripes -- fitting for the Southern state whose nickname is the Magnolia State, whose state flower is the magnolia and whose state tree is the magnolia tree. The flower is surrounded by 20 stars, signifying Mississippi's status at the 20th state in the union, and a gold five-point star to reflect Mississippi's indigenous Native American tribes.

Mississippi was the last state in the country whose flag, which was adopted in 1894, included the Confederate emblem.

After the state legislature voted last summer to retire the 1894 flag, the Mississippi Department of Archives and History held an open competition where people could submit flag designs of their own. Over 3,000 submissions were received, and several hundred were chosen in the initial round of public vetting (an awesome mosquito-themed flag didn't make the initial cut, unfortunately). Over the following weeks these designs were eventually whittled down to five, and then two, finalists. 

The design ultimately chosen for voters to approve was the "Magnolia Flag," created by Hunter Jones, Sue Anna Joe and Kara Giles:

• Sue Anna Joe wrote, “The magnolia is the central element as it is our state flower and tree. Because its fossils date back 100 million years, it symbolizes longevity and perseverance.”
• Hunter Jones wrote, “The original inspiration for my flag design came from the old Mississippi license plate. I recreated the Magnolia flower from the license plate flower in a way that I thought kept the same flower but made it more applicable across mediums with bolder lines.”

                                                                                                         Image: Mississippi Department of Archives and History

Okay, but it is it a good flag? 

Let me start that anything is better than the flag Mississippi used from 1894 until earlier this year, which prominently featured the blue-on-red Confederate emblem (that is sometimes and somehow, confused for the Norwegian flag). As recently as 2001, Mississippi voters chose to retain that controversial flag in a referendum; it was only this past summer, when protests against racial injustice sparked by the murder of George Floyd gripped the nation, that enough momentum developed to definitively replace the state's flag.

That said, my first impression is that the new flag is kind of busy. Stripes, flowers, stars, mottos... This flag has a lot going on with it. 

Ted Kaye, of the North American Vexillological Association, lays out five principles for good flag design: 

1. Keep it simple, so simple a child can draw it from memory.
2. Use meaningful symbolism.
3. Use two to three basic colors.
4. No lettering or seals of any kind.
5. Be distinctive or be related.

Now, many people might disagree with these rules, and there are wonderful exceptions to them in any case. But the basic concept behind the five principles is that a flag should be simple and recognizable.  

As far as this flag's adherence to these principles, it's a mixed bag. Most children couldn't not draw this flag from memory; the magnolia blossom is complicated, as is the arrangement of twenty stars around it and the golden "Choctaw Star" at the top. 

The symbols in the flag - the magnolia blossom, the Choctaw Star, the twenty stars representing Mississippi's status as the 20th state in the union - are definitely meaningful, but it's worth asking if there are too many of them. The flag would not be any less representative of Mississippi if it did away with the stars and the motto and only had the magnolia blossom on it.

The flag consists of four colors: red, dark blue, white and gold, which at least one more color than the third principle suggests. However, I don't necessarily have a problem with this, especially since the gold functions more as an accent, rather than primary, color. For what it's worth, I'm a bit skeptical of this principle myself; I think limiting a flag design to only two or three colors constrains creativity, and some of my favorite flags have more than three colors on them. 

The flag's biggest problem relates to principle four: the "In God We Trust" motto below the magnolia blossom. “Writing doesn’t belong on flags. Flags are graphic symbols, not verbal symbols," Kaye explained to Fast Company. This makes sense; if flags are to be understood from a distance (especially while in motion from the breeze), adding text to a flag defeats its core purpose. 

However, the inclusion of "In God We Trust" was a requirement of the legislation authorizing the new flag design process. Perhaps it was an enticement to religious conservatives who were skeptical about changing the state's flag in the first place. In any case, there was no getting around it. I don't really like it - I'm opposed to flags being used to further religious beliefs in general - but sometimes compromises such as these are required. I also recognize that it could be worse: more than half of the flags of the individual states include the state's name (or its initials) on them, something that definitely defeats the purpose of having a state flag.

Where the flag wins, I think, is in regards to the fifth principle: it is definitely distinctive, yet it also relates to other flags. It is one of only two state flags to feature vertical stripes (Iowa is the other), and the only other major national or subnational flags in the world I could find with a red-blue-red vertical pattern are the flags of Mongolia and the Russian oblast of Kostroma. When one considers that more than half of the flags of the individual states are nothing more than a variation of the state's seal on a blue or other color background, Mississippi's new flag definitely stands out.

At the same time, the circle of stars on this flag can also be found on other state flags such as Georgia, Indiana and Missouri; it even recalls the design of the stars in the Betsy Ross flag. It's also worth mentioning that the "In God We Trust" motto also appears on the flags of its southern neighbors, Georgia and Florida. It is clearly a flag of a US state; Even if you were a foreigner, you could probably look at this flag and assume as such.

The bottom line is that a lot of thought and care went into the design of this flag. It might be a bit over-designed, but I think it serves its purpose and, as it seeps into the public consciousness, will easily be recognizable as "Mississippi."

For what it's worth, I preferred it to the other finalist, the "Great River" flag, which featured a red-and-white shield that reminded me of Union Pacific Railroad's logo. My favorite of the five finalists prominently incorporated the outline of the state's eastern border, which is defined by the Mississippi River. However, it was also a complicated design, and if you weren't into geography, you might not understand it at all. 

The Chronicle's ShaCamree Gowdy celebrates her home state's new flag. Quartz digs deeper into the story behind the new flag's design.