Flag of the District of Columbia

The flag of the District of Columbia consists of three red stars above two red bars on a white background. It is an armorial banner based on the design of the coat of arms of George Washington, first used to identify the family in the twelfth century, when one of George Washington's ancestors took possession of Washington Old Hall, County Durham, northeast England. As elements in heraldry, the stars are properly called mullets.

History

For over a century, the District of Columbia was without an official flag and flew several unofficial banners—usually the flag of the D.C. National Guard. In 1938, Congress established a commission to choose an official, original flag design. The commission held a public competition, and picked the submission of graphic designer Charles A. R. Dunn, who had first proposed his design in 1921.

His design was officially adopted on October 15, 1938, using the following specification:

In 2002, the D.C. Council debated a proposal to change the flag in protest of the District's lack of voting rights in Congress. The new design would have added the letters "D.C." to the center star and the words "Taxation Without Representation" in white to the two red bars, a slogan already in use on the District's license plates. The change presumably would have been temporary and revoked once the city achieved equal representation or statehood. It passed the council on a 10–2 vote, but support for the proposal soon eroded, and then-mayor Anthony A. Williams never signed the bill.