Alabama State Flag

Montgomery women built Alabama's first flag for the January 11, 1861 secession vote. The silk banner showed the Goddess of Liberty, sword raised, with Independent Now and Forever across the top. On the reverse, a cotton plant and rattlesnake flanked the Latin warning Noli Me Tangere. A storm destroyed it within one month. It was retired to the governor's office, never flown again.

For three decades after, Alabama flew no official state banner, using the Confederate National Flag through the Civil War and the U.S. flag after. On February 16, 1895, the legislature passed Act 383, adopting the crimson diagonal cross on white that still flies today.

Little is recorded of the legislative debate beyond the final bill text. John W. A. Sanford Jr., a legislator from Montgomery County who introduced the bill, offered no floor explanation. The law named one color, set one minimum measurement, and stopped there. Mississippi adopted a Confederate-canton flag the same year.

Alabama's flag uses crimson and white. No official shade of crimson has been defined in law, so reproductions range from deep rose to near-scarlet.

Two theories explain the cross, and the historical record supports both. The first holds that Sanford designed it to mirror the Confederate Battle Flag through its square shape and diagonal cross. In 1905, the legislature considered adding stars to make the resemblance more direct. The proposal failed.

The second points to the Spanish Cross of Burgundy, a red diagonal cross on white that Spanish soldiers carried through the Southeast in the 1500s. Alabama's territory passed through Spanish, French, British, and Confederate control before statehood. In 1939, Alabama adopted a state coat of arms that incorporated the Confederate Battle Flag alongside the flags of France, Spain, and Britain.