Flag of Arkansas

A contest for a state flag

In the early 1910s Arkansas still had no state flag, and the Pine Bluff chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution decided to change that. It ran a statewide contest, and about 65 designs came in. The winner was Willie Kavanaugh Hocker of Wabbaseka in Jefferson County. Her design put a white diamond on a red field, framed by a blue band of white stars, with the word ARKANSAS across the diamond. The General Assembly adopted it on February 26, 1913.

What the flag means

Hocker built meaning into every part of the design, and the state has kept her explanations:

• The diamond. Arkansas was the only state where diamonds had been found, and the diamond shape honors them.
• Twenty-five white stars. Arkansas was the 25th state admitted to the Union.
• Three blue stars below the name. France, Spain and the United States, the three nations that have held the land. They also mark Arkansas as the third state carved from the Louisiana Purchase. Two of them match, for Arkansas and Michigan, the twin states admitted by the same act of Congress in 1836.
• One blue star above the name. The Confederate States of America.
• Red, white and blue. The colors of the United States. The law requires the same red and blue as the US flag.

The Confederate star

Hocker’s original flag had only three blue stars inside the diamond. In 1923 the legislature added a fourth to represent the Confederacy, and in 1924 it rearranged the stars into the layout used today, with one star above the name and three below it in an inverted triangle.

That fourth star has become controversial. In recent years legislators have proposed keeping the flag’s design but changing what the star officially stands for, assigning it to the United States and giving another star to Native American nations. The bills have failed in committee every time, including a 2019 attempt that lost 10 to 5 despite the support of Governor Asa Hutchinson. The meaning set in 1923 still stands.

The law today

The flag’s description is in section 1-4-101 of the Arkansas Code. Besides specifying the colors, the law requires that official Arkansas flags be made in the United States. Arkansas also has an official salute to its flag, adopted in 1953, which pledges loyalty to the flag and refers to its diamond and its stars.