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8 Things About The Black Liberation Flag You May Not Know

UNIA Parade

via blackbusinessnetwork.com

Its Origin and the UNIA

According to the official website of the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League (UNIA-ACL), the flag was developed in the 1920’s by the UNIA and with the support of Marcus Garvey, as a response to a racially derogatory song. The ridiculously popular 1900 coon song “Every Race Has a Flag but the Coon,”helped to solidify the term “coon” in the American vernacular.

Black Power Pan-African Flag

Pan-Africanism and the Black Liberation Flag

For years, the flag has been utilized as a symbol for the idea of Pan-Africanism and the Pan-African Movement. Dr. Minkah Makalani, a Black Professor of African and African Diaspora Studies describes Pan-Africanism as the following: “Pan-Africanism represents the complexities of Black political and intellectual thought over two hundred years. What constitutes Pan-Africanism, what one might include in a Pan-African movement often changes according to whether the focus is on politics, ideology, organizations, or culture. Pan-Africanism actually reflects a range of political views. At a basic level, it is a belief that African peoples, both on the African continent and in the Diaspora (sic), share not merely a common history, but a common destiny. This sense of interconnected pasts and futures has taken many forms, especially in the creation of political institutions.”

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