| 1776 | January
1 — The Grand Union flag is displayed on Prospect Hill. It has 13
alternate red and white stripes and the British Union Jack in the upper
left-hand corner (the canton).
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| 1776 | May — Betsy Ross reports that she sewed the first American flag
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| 1777 | June 14 — Continental Congress adopts the following:
"Resolved:
that the flag of the United States be thirteen stripes, alternate red
and white; that the union be thirteen stars, white in a blue field,
representing a new constellation."
Stars represent Delaware
(December 7, 1787), Pennsylvania (December 12, 1787), New Jersey
(December 18, 1787), Georgia (January 2, 1788), Connecticut (January 9,
1788), Massachusetts (February 6, 1788), Maryland (April 28, 1788),
South Carolina (May 23, 1788), New Hampshire (June 21, 1788), Virginia
(June 25, 1788), New York (July 26, 1788), North Carolina (November 21,
1789), and Rhode Island (May 29, 1790) |
| 1787 |
Captain
Robert Gray carries the flag around the world on his sailing vessel
(around the tip of South America, to China, and beyond). He discovered
a great river and named it after his boat The Columbia. His discovery was the basis of America's claim to the Oregon Territory.
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1795 | Flag with 15 stars and 15 stripes Vermont (March 4, 1791), Kentucky (June 1, 1792) |
| 1814 |
September 14 — Francis Scott Key writes "The Star-Spangled Banner." It officially becomes the national anthem in 1931. |
| 1818 | Flag with 20 stars and 13 stripes (it remains at 13 hereafter) Tennessee
(June 1, 1796), Ohio (March 1, 1803), Louisiana (April 30, 1812),
Indiana (December 11, 1816), Mississippi (December 10, 1817)
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1819 | Flag with 21 stars Illinois (December 3, 1818)
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| 1820 | Flag with 23 stars Alabama (December 14, 1819), Maine (March 15, 1820)
- first flag on Pikes Peak
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| 1822 | Flag with 24 stars Missouri (August 10, 1821) |
| 1836 | Flag with 25 stars Arkansas (June 15, 1836) |
| 1837 | Flag with 26 stars Michigan (Jan 26, 1837)
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| 1845 | Flag with 27 stars Florida (March 3, 1845)
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| 1846 | Flag with 28 stars Texas (December 29, 1845)
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| 1847 | Flag with 29 stars Iowa (December 28, 1846)
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| 1848 | Flag with 30 stars Wisconsin (May 29, 1848)
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| 1851 | Flag with 31 stars California (September 9, 1850)
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| 1858 | Flag with 32 stars Minnesota (May 11, 1858)
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| 1859 | Flag with 33 stars Oregon (February 14, 1859)
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| 1861 | Flag with 34 stars; Kansas (January 29, 1861)
Note: Even after the South seceded from the Union, President Lincoln would not allow any stars to be removed from the flag.
• first Confederate Flag (Stars and Bars) adopted in Montgomery, Alabama
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| 1863 | Flag with 35 stars West Virginia (June 20, 1863)
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| 1865 | Flag with 36 stars Nevada (October 31, 1864)
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| 1867 | Flag with 37 stars Nebraska (March 1, 1867)
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| 1869 | First flag on a postage stamp
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| 1877 | Flag with 38 stars Colorado (August 1, 1876) |
| 1889 |
Flag
with 39 stars that never was! Flag manufacturers believed that the two
Dakotas would be admitted as one state and so manufactured this flag,
some of which still exist. It was never an official flag.
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| 1890 | Flag with 43 stars North
Dakota (November 2, 1889), South Dakota (November 2, 1889), Montana
(November 8, 1889), Washington (November 11, 1889), Idaho (July 3, 1890)
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| 1891 | Flag with 44 stars Wyoming (July 10, 1890)
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| 1892 | "Pledge of Allegiance" first published in a magazine called "The Youth's Companion," written by Francis Bellamy.
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| 1896 | Flag with 45 stars Utah (January 4, 1896) |
| 1897 | Adoption
of State Flag Desecration Statutes — By the late 1800's an organized
flag protection movement was born in reaction to perceived commercial
and political misuse of the flag. After supporters failed to obtain
federal legislation, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and South Dakota became
the first States to adopt flag desecration statutes. By 1932, all of
the States had adopted flag desecration laws.
In general, these
State laws outlawed: (i) placing any kind of marking on the flag,
whether for commercial, political, or other purposes; (ii) using the
flag in any form of advertising; and (iii) publicly mutilating,
trampling, defacing, defiling, defying or casting contempt, either by
words or by act, upon the flag. Under the model flag desecration law,
the term "flag" was defined to include any flag, standard, ensign, or
color, or any representation of such made of any substance whatsoever
and of any size that evidently purported to be said flag or a picture
or representation thereof, upon which shall be shown the colors, the
stars and stripes in any number, or by which the person seeing the same
without deliberation may believe the same to represent the flag of the
U.S. |
| 1907 | Halter
v. Nebraska (205 U.S. 34) — The Supreme Court holds that although the
flag was a federal creation, the States' had the authority to
promulgate flag desecration laws under their general police power to
safeguard public safety and welfare.
Halter involved a
conviction of two businessmen selling "Stars and Stripes" brand beer
with representations of the U.S. flag affixed to the labels. The
defendants did not raise any First Amendment claim.
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1908 | Flag with 46 stars Oklahoma (November 16, 1907)
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| 1909 | Robert Peary places the flag his wife sewed atop the North Pole. He left fragments of it as he traveled north. Ref
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| 1912 |
June 24,
President Taft signs Executive Order which establishes proportions of
the flag and specifies arrangement and orientation of the stars.
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| 1912 | Flag with 48 stars New Mexico (January 6, 1912), Arizona (February 14, 1912)
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| 1931 | Stromberg
v. California (283 U.S. 359) — The Supreme Court finds that a State
statute prohibiting the display of a "red flag" as a sign of opposition
to organized government unconstitutionally infringed on the defendant's
First Amendment rights. Stromberg represents the Court's first
declaration that "symbolic speech" is protected by the First Amendment.
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| 1942 | Federal
Flag Code (36 U.S.C. 171 et seq.) — On June 22, 1942, President
Roosevelt approves the Federal Flag Code, providing for uniform
guidelines for the display and respect shown to the flag. The Flag Code
does not prescribe any penalties for non-compliance nor does it include
any enforcement provisions, rather it functions simply as a guide for
voluntary civilian compliance. |
| 1943 | West
Virginia Board of Education v. Barnette (319 U.S. 624) — The Supreme
Court holds that public school children could not be compelled to
salute the U.S. flag. In a now famous passage, Justice Jackson
highlighted the importance of freedom of expression under the First
Amendment:Freedom to differ is not limited to things that
do not matter much. That would be a mere shadow of freedom. The test of
its substance is the right to differ as to things that touch the heart
of the existing order. If there is any fixed star in our constitutional
constellation it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what
shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion or other matters
of opinion. |
| 1945 | The flag
that flew over Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, is flown over the
White House on August 14, when the Japanese accepted surrender terms.
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| 1949 | August 3 — Truman signs bill requesting the President call for Flag Day (June 14) observance each year by proclamation.
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| 1954 | By act of Congress, the words "Under God" are inserted into the Pledge of Allegiance
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| 1959 | Flag with 49 stars Alaska (January 3, 1959)
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| 1960 | Flag with 50 stars Hawaii (August 21, 1959)
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| 1963 | Flag placed on top of Mount Everest by Barry Bishop. |
| 1968 |
Adoption
of Federal Flag Desecration Law (18 U.S.C. 700 et seq.) — Congress
approves the first federal flag desecration law in the wake of a highly
publicized Central Park flag burning incident in protest of the Vietnam
War. The federal law made it illegal to "knowingly" cast "contempt"
upon "any flag of the United States by publicly mutilating, defacing,
defiling, burning or trampling upon it." The law defined flag in an
expansive manner similar to most States. |
| 1969 |
July 20 — The American flag is placed on the moon by Neil Armstrong. |
| 1969 |
Street
v. New York (394 U.S. 576) — The Supreme Court holds that New York
could not convict a person based on his verbal remarks disparaging the
flag. Street was arrested after he learned of the shooting of civil
rights leader James Meredith and reacted by burning his own flag and
exclaiming to a small crowd that if the government could allow Meredith
to be killed, "we don't need no damn flag." The Court avoided deciding
whether flag burning was protected by the First Amendment, and instead
overturned the conviction based on Street's oral remarks. In Street,
the Court found there was not a sufficient governmental interest to
warrant regulating verbal criticism of the flag.
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| 1972 | Smith v.
Goguen (415 U.S. 94) — The Supreme Court holds that Massachusetts could
not prosecute a person for wearing a small cloth replica of the flag on
the seat of his pants based on a State law making it a crime to
publicly treat the flag of the United States with "contempt." The
Massachusetts statute was held to be unconstitutionally "void for
vagueness." |
| 1974 |
Spence
v. Washington (418 U.S. 405) — The Supreme Court holds that the State
of Washington could not convict a person for attaching removable tape
in the form of a peace sign to a flag. The defendant had attached the
tape to his flag and draped it outside of his window in protest of the
U.S. invasion of Cambodia and the Kent State killings. The Court again
found under the First Amendment there was not a sufficient governmental
interest to justify regulating this form of symbolic speech. Although
not a flag burning case, this represented the first time the Court had
clearly stated that protest involving the physical use of the flag
should be seen as a form of protected expression under the First
Amendment. |
| 1970
1980 |
Revision
of State Flag Desecration Statutes — During this period legislatures in
some 20 States narrow the scope of their flag desecration laws in an
effort to conform to perceived Constitutional restrictions under the
Street, Smith, and Spence cases and to more generally parallel the
federal law (i.e., focusing more specifically on mutilation and other
forms of physical desecration, rather than verbal abuse or commercial
or political misuse).
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| 1989 | Texas v.
Johnson (491 U.S. 397) — The Supreme Court upholds the Texas Court of
Criminal appeals finding that Texas law — making it a crime to
"desecrate" or otherwise "mistreat" the flag in a way the "actor knows
will seriously offend one or more persons" — was unconstitutional as
applied. This was the first time the Supreme Court had directly
considered the applicability of the First Amendment to flag burning.
Gregory
Johnson, a member of the Revolutionary Communist Party, was arrested
during a demonstration outside of the 1984 Republican National
Convention in Dallas after he set fire to a flag while protestors
chanted "America, the red, white, and blue, we spit on you." In a 5-4
decision authored by Justice Brennan, the Court first found that
burning the flag was a form of symbolic speech subject to protection
under the First Amendment. The Court also determined that under United
States v. O'Brien, 391 U.S. 367 (1968), since the State law was related
to the suppression of freedom of expression, the conviction could only
be upheld if Texas could demonstrate a "compelling" interest in its
law. The Court next found that Texas' asserted interest in "protecting
the peace" was not implicated under the facts of the case. Finally,
while the Court acknowledged that Texas had a legitimate interest in
preserving the flag as a "symbol of national unity," this interest was
not sufficiently compelling to justify a "content based" legal
restriction (i.e., the law was not based on protecting the physical
integrity of the flag in all circumstances, but was designed to protect
it from symbolic protest likely to cause offense to others). |
| 1989 |
Revision
of Federal Flag Desecration Statute — Pursuant to the Flag Protection
Act of 1989, Congress amends the 1968 federal flag desecration statute
in an effort to make it "content neutral" and conform to the
Constitutional requirements of Johnson. As a result, the 1989 Act
sought to prohibit flag desecration under all circumstances by deleting
the statutory requirement that the conduct cast contempt upon the flag
and narrowing the definition of the term "flag" so that its meaning was
not based on the observation of third parties.
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| 1990 | United
States v. Eichman (496 U.S. 310) — Passage of the Flag Protection Act
results in a number of flag burning incidents protesting the new law.
The Supreme Court overturned several flag burning convictions brought
under the Flag Protection Act of 1989. The Court holds that
notwithstanding Congress' effort to adopt a more content neutral law,
the federal law continued to be principally aimed at limiting symbolic
speech. |
| 1990 |
Rejection
of Constitutional Amendment — Following the Eichman decision, Congress
considers and rejects a Constitutional Amendment specifying that "the
Congress and the States have the power to prohibit the physical
desecration of the flag of the United States." The amendment failed to
muster the necessary two-thirds Congressional majorities, as it was
supported by only a 254 — 177 margin in the House (290 votes were
necessary) and a 58 — 42 margin in the Senate (67 votes were necessary). |
| 1995 |
December
12 — The Flag Desecration Constitutional Amendment is narrowly defeated
in the Senate. The Amendment to the Constitution would make burning the
flag a punishable crime.
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| 2001 |
September 11 — The Flag from the World Trade towers survives and
becomes a symbol of sacrifice in service, loss, and determination. |
| 2002 |
June 26 — A 9th Circuit federal appeals court declares that reciting the Pledge of Allegiance
in public schools is unconstitutional because "under God" (inserted
into the Pledge in 1954) was a violation of the Establishment Clause,
that expression not create the reasonable impression that the
government is sponsoring, endorsing, or inhibiting religion generally,
or favoring or disfavoring a particular religion. This ruling was
reconfirmed in February 2003, and applies only to the 9th Circuit (the
following districts: Alaska, Arizona, Central, Eastern, Northern, and
Southern California, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Eastern
and Western Washington, Guam, and Northern Mariana Islands). |
| 2004 |
June 14
— The Supreme Court declines to hear a case challenging "One country
under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance. "While the court did not
address the merits of the case, it is clear that the Pledge of
Allegiance and the words 'under God' can continue to be recited by
students across America," said Jay Sekulow, chief counsel for the
American Center for Law and Justice. |
| 2005 |
January
25 — Constitutional amendment, sponsored by Rep. Duke Cunningham,
introduced. It reads simply, "The Congress shall have power to prohibit
the physical desecration of the flag of the United States."
June
22 — The Constitutional amendment (see above) is approved by the House
(vote of 286-130). It requires Senate approval. Then it must receive
approval from 38 states within seven years. |
| 2006 | June 28 — The Senate is one vote short of passing the Constitutional amendment (see above). |
| 2006 |
July 19
— H.R.42 is passed, preventing condominiums or residential real estate
management associations from forbidding the flying of the US flag. Read full law |
| 2007 | June — proposed:
To
amend title 4, United States Code, to authorize the Governor of a
State, territory, or possession of the United States to order that the
National flag be flown at half-staff in that State, territory, or
possession in the event of the death of a member of the Armed Forces
from that State, territory, or possession who dies while serving on
active duty. Read full Bill S 720
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| ???? | Proposed flag with 51 stars, to be used if a 51st state is added. |
398 W. Lancaster Ave 
