– Marcus Garvey, Message to the People“The flag of a nation is the emblem that signifies the existence of that nation. Have your flag. It is red, black, and green. Be proud of it for it is the emblem of your race. When other nations exhibit theirs, exhibit yours. Make songs about your nation and sing them. Write poetry about your nation and read it; recite it. Glorify your nation in music and songs. Don’t sing the songs of other races. Don’t recite the inspirational poems of other races. Sing and recite your own.
“Everything that inspires other races turn into your own tune and fit it to suit your own inspiration and idealism. See only yourself in everything. Make your nation the highest expression of human idealism. Then live up to it.”
New for May 2024, Kemet Nubia Kamp created a flag design for Juneteenth. Our design returns historical emphasis on the establishment of red, black, and green (Declarations of Rights of the Negro Peoples of the World, No. 39) by the Universal Negro Improvement Association and the African Communities League (UNIA-ACL / UNIA) to the Black cultural identity.
In recent years, there has been social media bot/AI-driven pushback to have Juneteenth only reflect the colors of the USA flag either by the US flag itself – which was the original flag of the Jubilee celebrations in Galveston, Texas – or via a 1997 Juneteenth flag design concept by Boston resident (Hassie Benjamin) Ben “Boston Ben” Haith Jr., a Boston community anti-crime activist, that uses the same colors as the United States flag.
Haith reasoned an African American cultural event is American history and should use the flag colors of the USA. His flag was designed by Lisa Jeanne Graf. Haith is African American. He also founded a Massachusetts-based organization called the National Juneteenth Celebration Foundation. The first flag raising of this red-white-and-blue flag occurred in 2000. Graf, who holds a degree in fine arts and also is a Boston activist who advocates for disabled Americans, is white. Haith was a former Massachusetts director of the National Juneteenth Observance Foundation (NJOF) before starting his national Juneteenth organization, but NJOF still maintains the rights to the red-white-and-blue Juneteenth flag and refers to itself as the official organization for Juneteenth celebrations. NJOF represents several local Juneteenth organizations and says their network is responsible for Juneteenth becoming a federal holiday in 2021 after a 25-year push. The “Grandmother of Juneteenth” is Forth Worth, Texas, retired teacher Opal Lee was present when President Joe Biden signed the Juneteenth holiday into federal legislation. Lee, a long-time Texas community activist who was 97 as of October 7, 2023, also received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2024.
Unfortunately, most recently online social media accounts deride anyone displaying the UNIA flag colors (or the Ethiopian flag / Pan-African colors) as not representing Juneteenth or African American people even though versions of the red, black, and green striped flags have flown at Juneteeth events and other African American cultural events for more than 100 years. Many of these social media “black people” are in the same divisive groups labeling themselves ADOS or FBA who are known provocators stirring up rivalries among liberal and Pan-Africanist-oriented Black people online. Moreover, these FBA/ADOS accounts – who put USA flags in their Twitter social media profile pages – also often promote the late 1960s created African American Heritage Flag that is red, black, and gold over UNIA and UNIA-derived, and Ethiopian-Pan-African flags. ADOS/FBA groups actively promote Right-Wing American Presidential Candidates and conservative business owners while denigrating red, black, and green flags with the older history and more liberal political candidates/office-holders. There would be little opposition to the red-white-and-blue Haith flag if it were not for these groups actively oppressing red, black, and green flags consistently and historically aligned with Black Liberation, Pan-Africanism, anti-racism, anti-colonialism, and self-determination.
The red-white-and-blue Juneteenth flag has been coopted to represent the Black right-wing or at the very least right-of-center ideology. Whether this is a current inadvertent consequence no longer matters. A new push to return Black people to our original flag colors is needed since the online attacks are deriding all of our red, black, and green versions – the flag colors designed for Black people. The Black Liberation flag symbolized the fight against American Jim Crow segregation and European Colonization. Those colors would become the national colors of many newly freed Caribbean and African nations. These mysteriously cohesive acting “black” right-wing groups are noted by those online for their discord and promotion of Right-Wing political and business owners with allegations they received conservative financing since at least 2016 as Talib Kweli chronicled in a 2019 blog post.
The championing of the red-white-and-blue Juneteenth flag by divisive, online “black” groups who uniformly promote and laude Right-Wing figures makes the flag less representative of Black people or Black Liberation than the older UNIA flags flown and worn at African American cultural and historic events for more than 100 years.
History of the Red, Black, and Green Flag
Marcus Garvey founded the UNIA in Jamaica in 1914 and opened an office in Harlem, NY, by 1917. At the organization’s 1920 meeting in Harlem, the UNIA stated those three colors – red, black, and green – represented Black people (Negroes) globally. The wider proclamations of the organization from that meeting and an earlier 1918 meeting demanded freedom from desegregation, colonialism, and other race-based oppressions experienced by Black people throughout the world; hence, the striped red, black, and green flag came to be known as a Liberation Flag but also became the most prominent voice of Pan-Africanism, both of which were themes expressed nearly 100 years earlier by Martin Delany who is considered the father of Black Nationalism who also was influenced by older Black anti-slavery and Black independence fighters such as Nat Turner, David Walker, Toussaint L’Ouverture, and others.
Some historians state Garvey thought he was using the color scheme of Abyssinia (Ethiopia), Africa’s Christian nation that was not colonized by any European nations. Ethiopia’s flag colors are red, yellow, and green. By the time Garvey learned he had the incorrect color scheme, the red, green, and black colors were widely being adopted mostly by Black people throughout the Western Hemisphere and Africa. Garvey stated red represented the blood of Black people, black represented the people, and green represented the land. The Ethiopian red, yellow, and green flag became the color scheme of the Pan-African Movements and also have been repeated throughout Africa and the Americas to represent ideals related to the significance of African nations working with one another for mutual benefit and progress. Both color schemes exist among the national flags of Africa and the Caribbean. Often each set of flags has been mistaken for one another or has incorporated the missing color – black or yellow – in the other flag’s design. Therefore, it’s not unusual to see national flags with red, black, green, and yellow.
A 2024 Red, Black & Green Juneteenth Flag
With all of this under consideration, the colors of Kemet Nubia Kamp’s 2024 Juneteenth/Black Liberation flag are the color palette of the UNIA. Our Juneteenth Black Liberation Flag still follows, from top to bottom, the red, black, and green layout of the UNIA flag only our flag has two stripes and a star instead of three vertical stripes. Our colors also represent UNIA’s color meanings plus the meanings from the Ancient Nile Valley. Red is for blood (UNIA) and power/authority/protection (Kemet). Black is for our people (UNIA) and deification/farmable soil (Kemet), and green is for land (UNIA) and life/rebirth/vegetation (Kemet).
A five-pointed star was chosen in place of the black horizontal stripe of the traditional Black Liberation Flag to represent the state of Texas – the birthplace of Juneteenth. Texas is known as the Lone Star State and has a single star on its state flag. A star, possibly yellow, also can be seen on a 1924 UNIA flag of a marching women’s auxiliary group known as the Universal African Motor Corp. Finally, the five-pronged star is commonly how nighttime stars are depicted in Kemety (Ancient Egyptian) artifacts. The single, black star also aligns symbolically with Garvey’s Back to Africa resettlement plans and commerce initiatives of his shipping company called The Black Star Line Navigation and Trading Company. The palettes of red, black, and green as well as red, green, and yellow most represent global Black identities and are traditional at Juneteenth events along with the US flag in Texas and in parades throughout the country.
Feel free to visit the Kemet Nubia Kamp shop and find items with the 2024 Kemet Nubia Kamp Juneteenth Flag. Repeated use of the red, black, and green color scheme has always been part of our Kemet Nubia Kamp logo. At present, we are drafting materials to free people’s minds from misconceptions and disinformation about Black History by creating teacher professional development workshop materials and elementary and primary school lesson plans focusing on Kemet and Kush. Feel free to contact us if you wish to use the new Juneteenth Flag.
