Flag of Louisiana

A pelican instead of an eagle

The pelican has been Louisiana’s emblem almost since statehood. Governor William C. C. Claiborne, the state’s first governor, put a pelican feeding its young on the state seal in place of the bald eagle used before. Pelican designs soon appeared on flags too, but none was official, and the details changed constantly: the number of chicks in the nest, the direction the mother faced and even the wording of the motto. During the Civil War, Louisiana briefly used a completely different flag, with a yellow star and thirteen stripes.

Official in 1912

In 1912 the legislature officially adopted the pelican flag “now in general use” as the state flag. It described the flag only in broad terms, leaving many details open, and over the following decades Louisiana’s flags continued to vary.

The pelican in her piety

The image at the center is old. The “pelican in her piety” comes from medieval European tradition, which held that a mother pelican would wound her own breast to feed her young with her blood when no other food could be found. Christians took it as a symbol of Christ’s sacrifice, and more generally of self-sacrifice and charity. On Louisiana’s flag and seal it stands for the state’s care for its people.

Three drops of blood

In the early 2000s a Houma eighth grader, David Joseph Louviere, noticed that many Louisiana flags, some of them flying at the Capitol, showed the pelican without any blood, which made nonsense of the image. His observation led to a 2006 law, Act 92, that requires both the seal and the flag to show three drops of blood. A new standardized design by Curtis J. Vann Jr. became official in 2010. It shows three drops of blood, gives the mother pelican a golden-brown tuft on her head so she looks more like a brown pelican, the state bird, and shortens the motto to “Union Justice Confidence.” State agencies were told they did not have to throw away older flags or stationery.

What the flag shows

• The blue field. A solid blue background.
• The pelican. In white, a mother pelican tearing at her breast to feed her chicks in the nest, with three drops of blood.
• The motto. A white ribbon below carries the state motto, “Union, Justice and Confidence,” in blue.

Critics point out that the white pelican on the flag still looks more like the American white pelican than the brown pelican, Louisiana’s state bird.

The flag pledge

Louisiana has an official pledge to its flag, adopted in 1981, which pledges allegiance to the flag and to the motto “for which it stands.”