The Red, the Black, and the Green

The Red, Black, and Green flag was invented to unite Black people all over the world living under racial repression.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Roman Mars?

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• 0:45Roman Mars?

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• 1:07Roman Mars?

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• 1:45Roman Mars?

  This is a rebroadcast of an episode reported a few years ago by Christopher Johnson. It has really interesting history. It's about flags. It's everything I love in a story. So if you haven't heard it before, definitely listen to it. And if you have listened to it before, listen again, because I guarantee you don't remember the details. But if you want to hear a completely brand new episode of 99% Invisible about lifeboats on the Titanic, you can right now if you subscribe to SiriusXM Podcast Plus on Apple Podcasts or visit siriusxm.com/podcastplus to listen with Spotify or another app of your choice. Non-subscribers will hear that very same story next week, so everything will be made available to all. But if you subscribe to SiriusXM Podcast Plus,

• 2:30Roman Mars?

  you can hear episodes of 99% Invisible one week early and ad-free. And subscribing goes a long way to support the work that we do here. Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcast Plus on Apple Podcasts or visit siriusxm.com/podcastsplus to listen with Spotify or another app of your choice. Okay, on with the show.

• 2:54Roman Mars?

  A quick heads up, this episode has some offensive language.

• 3:01Roman Mars?

  After Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd last year, tens of thousands of people all over the world took to the streets to protest police violence against black people.

• 3:17Speaker 01

  And if you look at images from these marches, you'll probably start to notice a common color scheme. Lots of red, black, and green.

• 3:25Roman Mars?

  99PI producer Christopher Johnson.

• 3:27Speaker 01

  You'll see those colors everywhere. Red, black, and green picket signs and banners, red, black, and green hoodies and hats, and red, black, and green flags.

• 3:37Speaker 02

  Sometimes it's good to see that red, black, and green flag, particularly when it's times of strife and people outraged and angry. And they start to come to that realization that we're not getting anywhere with the begging.

• 3:49Speaker 01

  Moya Ma Kamau has several of these flags in different sizes, including a huge one that he likes to fly outside of his house. He says that wherever there are protests or demonstrations against threats to black life, the red, black, and green will be there.

• 4:04Speaker 02

  When people are ready for more than what they've been getting and they're ready to, you know, challenge the system, then you see the red, black, and green flags come out.

• 4:13Roman Mars?

  And not just at demonstrations. This tri-color scheme has been used on T-shirts, on high-top chucks, and in works of art that have sold for millions of dollars.

• 4:23Speaker 01

  The flag was invented to unite black people all over the world who were living under racial repression. And when it first came into existence, the flag posed some bold questions about where black people owed their loyalty, to the nations where their lives were demeaned and threatened, or to a new nation, one they'd build entirely for themselves. And for hundreds of thousands of black folks, the red, black, and green symbolized the answer.

• 4:51Speaker 01

  The flag has been in use since 1918, but I'm gonna start a couple decades before that with the story of a super racist song about flags.

• 5:00Speaker 03

  In the beginning of the 20th century, there was vaudeville, there was minstrelsy in America, and there was this tradition of Coon songs. Can I say that word, Christopher?

• 5:13Speaker 01

  This is writer and historian Colin Grant. He's talking about an old style of American music that's named after a racial slur. Coon songs were exactly what they sound like. The lyrics were deeply racist, based on gross stereotypes about black life and speech patterns, usually sung over ragtime piano.

• 5:31Roman Mars?

  And in 1900, one of the biggest songs of the genre came out.

• 5:36Speaker 03

  There was a very famous Coon song called "Every Race Has A Flag But The Coon." And it was a song that lampooned black people for not having their own flag, and lampooned them for the idea that they should have their own flag.

• 5:51Speaker 01

  Two white composers wrote the song, and I got somebody to play the sheet music for me. Here's what it sounds like.

• 6:05Speaker 01

  In the lyrics, the head of a black social club gets up to speak, and he says he's just come back from a Labor Day parade where he saw all these different races proudly waving their national flags. Ireland has her harp and shamrock, England floats her lion bold, even China waves a dragon, Germany an eagle gold. And then he comes to the US. And what won't Yankees do for the old red, white, and blue? The lyrics seemed to drive at the idea that the Stars and Stripes didn't belong to black people, that they'd need something else to represent them. The song went on to propose a flag for black people that's crammed with all these racist stereotypes.

• 6:46Roman Mars?

  "Every Race Has A Flag" was performed by more than 100 touring vaudeville acts and was part of the vaudeville circuit for more than three decades. It was huge, which isn't surprising, given the era. The US wasn't even two generations out of slavery. Jim Crow and "Separate But Equal" were in full effect. Lynching and other terrorist violence surged.

• 7:08Speaker 01

  Black Americans were getting the message from all sides, including popular music, that they weren't respected, or safe, or really even considered fully American. Now, as gross as the song was, the lyrics hinted at something that did resonate for black folks.

• 7:24Speaker 03

  That actually, a flag was something that enabled people to be welded together. That idea was one which many black people understood.

• 7:33Roman Mars?

  And in particular, a Jamaican-born labor organizer and journalist named Marcus Garvey.

• 7:43Roman Mars?

  In the early 1900s, Garvey bounced around Central and South America trying to start some advocacy newspapers fighting for working black people. But he wasn't having much luck.

• 7:53Speaker 01

  Garvey wanted more work opportunities and some adventure. He was also curious to see how black people like himself were living in other parts of the British Empire. So in 1912, he set off across the Atlantic.

• 8:06Speaker 03

  Young Marcus Garvey, in his mid-20s, he went to England, at that time, for someone in the British colonies. London is where you would go to try to establish yourself, to say, "I have arrived. I'm going to partake of this splendid imperial enterprise, which the British had ruled over for centuries. He's going to go to the heart of empire."

• 8:34Roman Mars?

  In London, Garvey landed a gig in a newspaper that carried stories about black life throughout the diaspora. He also got a pass to the British Museum, which had a large library.

• 8:44Speaker 01

  Garvey began reading ideas totally new to him, ideas that came to be known as Pan-Africanism.

• 8:50Speaker 04

  Pan-Africanism is concerned with the unity and liberation of Africa and people of African heritage. I like to think of it as a mighty river with many streams and currents.

• 9:09Roman Mars?

  Hakim Adi, a professor of African and Black diaspora history, says the source of that river is the transatlantic slave trade.

• 9:17Speaker 01

  Slavery forced together millions of people from across the African continent. Adi believes Pan-Africanism started there, more than 400 years ago. It developed as those people with different languages and cultures began to understand their shared conditions and then aligned to change them.

• 9:33Roman Mars?

  By the early 20th century, Black intellectuals had done a lot of thinking and writing about global, Africa-centered Black identity.

• 9:40Speaker 04

  Ideas about repatriation, ideas about the importance of independent states like Haiti, like Ethiopia, like Liberia, ideas about colonialism and what needed to be done to reform it, and ideas about the glories of historic African civilization. So it's in this sort of context that Garvey and his work develop.

• 10:06Speaker 01

  One big part of this development was the way Garvey thought about Africa. As a kid, he'd been taught that Africans were primitive and backwards with no history to speak of. What he'd read in London told him the opposite was true. Garvey realized that Africa could be the center of racial pride for all of Black humanity.

• 10:25Roman Mars?

  Along with this Pan-African thought, Garvey was also heavily influenced by writings about Black self-sufficiency, the call to build a Black world that was economically, politically, and culturally independent from white society. Garvey combined these ideas with his newfound Afrocentrism, and a political philosophy started to emerge.

• 10:48Speaker 01

  It had been just two years since Marcus Garvey had arrived in London. He'd left Jamaica hoping to find work and for a chance to see more of the world. But what he found in the heart of the British Empire, the seat of a massive colonial power, was the way, he thought, to free the entire black world.

• 11:05Roman Mars?

  Garvey became convinced that black people in Africa and throughout the diaspora share a common identity. They also shared a responsibility to advance the race and to protect it.

• 11:16Speaker 01

  And the safest place for them was one built solely by black hands.

• 11:20Speaker 03

  The idea that you had to forge a nation of your own, that you couldn't trust the man to look after yourself, and when I say the man, I mean the imperial powers. We're not going to further the likes of someone like Marcus Garvey or the black people over whom they ruled. And Garvey recognized through reading that actually he could conjure an alternative to the reality in which he found himself. He could change the narrative.

• 11:50Roman Mars?

  Garvey sailed back to the Caribbean in 1914. This was still several years before he'd make the red, black, and green flag that he intended to stand for all of black humanity. But he was already thinking about how to build the kind of nation that such a flag would represent.

• 12:07Speaker 03

  On the ship going back from England to Jamaica, he famously said to himself, "Where is the black man's army? Where is the black man's military chief?" He looked about in his sauna. All he saw was subjugation. And he said to himself, he was going to build that army and he was going to establish a new African empire.

• 12:29Speaker 01

  Garvey put his Pan-African thinking to work almost as soon as he landed in Jamaica. He formed an organization called the UNIA, the Universal Negro Improvement Association. Its primary objective was to establish a universal confraternity among the race. Here's how Garvey described the UNIA many years later.

• 12:49Speaker 05

  Hello citizens of Africa. I greet you in the name of the Universal Negro Movement Association, an organization that seeks to unite into one solid body, the 400 million Negroes of the world, for the purpose of bettering our industrial, commercial, educational, social, and political conditions.

• 13:09Speaker 01

  But the UNIA got off to a so-so start. Garvey once again found himself strapped for cash. So to raise money and build a following, he left Jamaica again. This time, he headed to Harlem. And that's where Marcus Garvey really took off as a race leader.

• 13:29Speaker 03

  America is the seat of wealth, is a seat of promise, is a seat of any person who has some ambition that wants to have a bigger canvas to realize his ambition. So he was a young man in his mid to late twenties. He came with a hope and a prayer, with not two fathers to rock together.

• 13:51Roman Mars?

  When Garvey arrived in 1916, Harlem was going through some major changes of its own. The black population there had been surging for about a dozen years. Folks were coming from other parts of New York City, from down south, and like Garvey, from the Caribbean.

• 14:06Speaker 01

  It was the beginning of the so-called New Negro Era, or the Negro Renaissance. In art and politics, black Harlemites from throughout the diaspora argued furiously over what it meant to be black.

• 14:18Roman Mars?

  Garvey jumped headlong into the debate. He'd stand on one of Harlem's famous soapboxes and address a crowd with his nascent Pan-Africanist ideas.

• 14:27Speaker 01

  But not everybody was feeling young Marcus Garvey, including the era's most famous black intellectual.

• 14:33Speaker 03

  The premier man, the premier leader at that time was W. E. B. Du Bois and his organization, the NAACP.

• 14:43Speaker 03

  Had captured the imagination of black people. At the time, Du Bois was ascendant.

• 14:50Roman Mars?

  W E B Du Bois felt that full civil rights were the keys to black freedom in a country that was hostile to their survival and peace. He believed in America as a viable nation for black folks. It would take real struggle, but there was a path for black people to be whole and safe under the Stars and Stripes.

• 15:08Speaker 01

  Marcus Garvey saw things totally differently. He came to believe that the fundamental problem for black people in the West was the West itself. There was no way the US or Great Britain or any other Western power was going to let black people be truly free.

• 15:31Speaker 01

  Garvey believed that black people were, as he put it, "a mighty race", and that the only way for them to realize their full potential and to survive the anti-blackness of the West was to come together and build a separate black world.

• 15:53Speaker 06

  If you cannot do what other men have done, what other nations have done, what other races have done, then you have better die.

• 16:03Roman Mars?

  The more time Garvey spent in the US, the firmer that position became. In the South, he'd witnessed firsthand the struggles of rural black America living under Jim Crow. He'd come from Jamaican society, where class often outweighed race privilege. But in the US, he noticed that was flipped, a dynamic which inspired Garvey to center his message on blackness.

• 16:26Speaker 03

  He believed that actually, race should come before class, that you only became powerful by uniting together, by having a powerful voice through sheer numbers. Therefore, we should cleave together as black people and place primacy on race.

• 16:48Speaker 01

  Then something happened that put the difference between Du Bois and Garvey in sharp relief, and gave Garvey an opportunity to really articulate the Pan-Africanist vision that he'd been developing since his days at the British Museum.

• 17:05Speaker 03

  When Woodrow Wilson brought America into the First World War under the idea that they were going to make the world safe for democracy, Garvey would stand on his soapbox and say, "That's all very well, Woodrow Wilson, but how about making Georgia safer for the black man first?"

• 17:30Roman Mars?

  The US entered World War I in April 1917. That summer, there was large-scale racial violence in several cities. Some of the worst was in East St. Louis. A labor dispute turned into an all-out assault on the city's black residents. Whites set fire to black neighborhoods. White snipers shot and killed black people in the streets. There were mob beatings and lynchings.

• 17:54Speaker 03

  The suddenness and the sheer shock of the violence of East St. Louis changed everybody. And yet, Woodrow Wilson was going to take America into the war because America was this great savior without recognizing that many of the transgressions that were going to be challenged in Europe also existed on home soil.

• 18:17Speaker 01

  Sometimes Garvey would respond to racist violence with calls for revenge or armed self-defense. The boys in the NAACP stood firmly against this approach.

• 18:26Roman Mars?

  The two men also disagreed on whether or not black men should enlist to fight in Europe, given the racial climate in the US.

• 18:34Speaker 03

  So whereas the boys said we must forget our differences between ourselves as black people and the white man, we must put our shoulder to the wheel and fight the common enemy. Garvey was saying the very opposite. Garvey was saying, "No, do not go off and fight the white man's war for him because come the end of the war, things will revert to..."

• 18:56Speaker 03

  The way that they'd been before.

• 18:58Speaker 01

  And that's exactly what happened.

• 19:01Speaker 03

  As those soldiers came back and were, some of them were even lynched in their uniforms. There were many people who saw that Garvey had been right.

• 19:09Roman Mars?

  The idea that World War I would make things better for black people didn't pan out. In fact, as the war ended, cities and towns across the US exploded in an unprecedented wave of anti-black violence. It had been 50 years since black Americans were declared full citizens of the US. Black people had invested in the democratic process. And now they'd gone overseas and fought and died under the Stars and Stripes.

• 19:36Speaker 01

  And yet, the country's deadly racial caste system stayed firmly in place, just as Marcus Garvey had predicted.

• 19:44Speaker 03

  And I think that made him seem, in the eyes of many black people, a kind of prophet, a seer, someone who could see into the future, but also someone who was fearless. I mean, he was fearless. And that was very empowering. People wanted to align themselves with him. They saw that he was a winner.

• 20:06Speaker 01

  Garvey had been adding up events in cities like East St. Louis. He saw what was happening to black soldiers and civilians alike. If the question was, to whom do black people owe their loyalty? Garvey's answer was clear. Black people owe their loyalty first to other black people.

• 20:22Speaker 03

  He recognized that, in his mind, anyway, that black people were Africans in exile in America. And there was going to be no place for them. There was no future for them in America.

• 20:34Speaker 01

  But Marcus Garvey had a plan.

• 20:37Speaker 03

  They had to get out. And they had to establish their own place. And that place was going to be Africa.

• 20:44Roman Mars?

  Garvey believed that every single black person on the planet was an African and that the continent was their birthright. He said Africa should be free of colonial rule so that black people themselves can develop their own societies there.

• 20:57Speaker 06

  For 250 years, we have struggled under the burden and rigors of slavery. We were maimed, we were brutalized, we were ravaged in every way. We are men. We have hopes, we have passions, we have feelings, we have desires, just like any other race.

• 21:10Speaker 03

  And so Garvey would be calling for Africa, for the Africans, those at home and those abroad.

• 21:18Speaker 06

  The cries raised all over the world of Canada for the Canadians, of America for the Americans, of England for the English, of France for the French, of Germany for the Germans. Do you take it unreasonably that we, the blacks of the world, should raise the cry of Africa for the Africans?

• 21:33Roman Mars?

  Garvey had long understood that he needed cohesion in order to achieve his dream of an independent black world. The campaign for a homeland would fail if black people didn't see themselves as a single global race.

• 21:46Speaker 03

  How are you going to cleave those people of that race together? What can you do to reimagine a society where whiteness is not the thing that defines you? You're not in opposition to whiteness. You are just black. You are just your own people.

• 22:09Speaker 01

  Ironically, part of the answer came from white people. Garvey drew on what he'd seen years earlier in London. He was inspired by how the British used symbols to flex their strength and to unite people across their vast empire.

• 22:24Speaker 03

  He saw the great buildings of power. He saw these great columns with these admirals on top of them. He saw that the way that the British celebrated their history through symbols of conquest, through symbols of authority. I think he really understood the power of symbols to enliven people, to conjure this notion that you are part of something greater than yourself.

• 22:49Roman Mars?

  Garvey had taken note of all the trappings of nationhood.

• 22:53Speaker 03

  He was very influenced by the idea that the show of power came through things like the idea of planting yourself under a flag, of saying that you belong to a group. He recognized that that's what imperial powers did.

• 23:08Speaker 01

  Marcus Garvey filtered all of that inspiration through his black nationalist prism, and out came a flag, a banner that would stand for the entire black world.

• 23:20Speaker 06

  Oh, yes, the cause is grand, the cause is glorious. Surely we shall not turn back. Oh, ceylon, ceylon, ceylon, oh, mighty ship of state, ceylon, ceylon, until the flag of the red, the black and the green is put upon the hills of the Rosicul.

• 23:33Roman Mars?

  Garvey designed the Pan-African flag as a rectangle with three horizontal bars, red on top, then black, and green at the bottom.

• 23:42Speaker 01

  According to the UNIA, the red stands for the blood spilled in the fight to protect and defend Africa. Green represents Africa itself, its lushness, and the motherland that Garveyites saw as their birthright. And black stands for the people of the continent and the diaspora.

• 24:00Roman Mars?

  Garvey introduced the Pan-African banner in 1918, and it quickly became the symbol of his rapidly growing international movement.

• 24:08Speaker 01

  And that success came partly from the sheer potency of Garvey's message, which he spread throughout the Americas during these exhausting speaking tours. Plus, the UNIA's newspaper circulated Garveyism all over the world.

• 24:20Roman Mars?

  And then there was Garvey's single biggest recruiting tool: the UNIA's commercial and passenger steamships called the Black Star Line.

• 24:30Speaker 01

  Garvey wanted a fleet that would sail between ports in North and South America, the Caribbean, and Africa. The Black Star Line would be 100% black-owned and operated.

• 24:40Roman Mars?

  In a world where public transportation was often segregated and black people were routinely limited to the lowest classes of travel, the Black Star Line promised comfort, respect, safety, and speed to its black passengers.

• 24:52Speaker 01

  5,000 black folks showed up to watch the first Black Star Line ship leave its East Harlem port in 1919. According to at least one observer, the crowd was delirious with excitement. The Black Star Line never got as big as Garvey had envisioned, but it inspired pride and hope in black people around the world.

• 25:17Roman Mars?

  There was even a song about the ships, recorded while they were still active.

• 25:31Roman Mars?

  Each and every one of those Black Star Line vessels hoisted the red, black, and green colors from its masts.

• 25:38Speaker 03

  And when those ships came into harbor with UNIA flags flapping, there was the most extraordinary excitement because that was a manifestation of something that they thought to be impossible. So the flags on board the ships acted to promote the growth and the huge ambition and reach of Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association. But for the flags and the ships, there would be no mass movement. They needed those symbols in order for the movement to grow. Without those flags, there would be no Marcus Garvey in our memory.

• 26:21Speaker 02

  Garvey to me is the, I call him the standard bearer of success under duress, who was blessed to do far more with less.

• 26:29Speaker 01

  Moya Makamau is the official historian of the UNIA.

• 26:33Speaker 02

  Make sure you also call him the outrunner and the outdoer and out of this world. Third rock from the sun by none, as far as I'm concerned.

• 26:41Speaker 01

  By the end of the decade, Garvey's movement was massive. Two million people had joined the UNIA. It would eventually become the largest organization in Black history, and its members proudly flew the Pan-African banner.

• 26:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, you would see a lot of houses with, you know, red, black, and green flags on the outside, as well as mass meetings in local cities all around the globe. They would have red, black, and green flags whenever, you know, they had meetings, you know, red, black, and green buttons as well on the lapel. And even some of the ministers would have their robes, you know, with red, black, and green, you know, when they were preaching the gospel of Garveyism.

• 27:16Roman Mars?

  In 1920, the UNIA held its convention in New York City. It was a sprawling, month-long affair, attended by tens of thousands of people.

• 27:25Speaker 01

  And there, the UNIA officially declared red, black, and green, the colors of the Negro race.

• 27:32Roman Mars?

  Then those colors were put on spectacular display when the UNIA held a massive parade meant to conjure a state procession. The flag was part of this medley of symbols that Garvey used to project to the world Black unity, strength, and greatness.

• 27:49Speaker 03

  Primarily, Marcus Garvey was a showman. And in 1920, Marcus Garvey put on the greatest show on earth. And he had the uniform of authority with his Victorian military regalia with his bicorneet helmet and his plumes in his helmet. There were huge choirs of a hundred and more on the streets, walking with him. There were uniformed guards with their sabers rattling. There were placards saying, "Our time has come," downward lynching. There were bands playing. There was a spirit of carnival. It was the thing you wanted to be a part of.

• 28:30Speaker 03

  And it was a street performance that led to the most magnificent statement of black intent that there'd ever been.

• 28:44Speaker 01

  But Marcus Garvey also drew a lot of fire. Federal investigators had been after Garvey since he first came to the US. And at the same time, W E B Du Bois and other black leaders were also coming for Garvey. They said his talk of an African empire was foolish. They called his business dealings shady and said that they were especially dangerous to the working-class black people who invested in them. Others saw the UNIA's pomp and military regalia as clownish and embarrassing to the race.

• 29:13Roman Mars?

  A campaign called "Garvey Must Go" pressured law enforcement to redouble their investigation of the UNIA. Garvey was eventually locked up for almost three years for mail fraud. In 1927, he was deported to Jamaica. UNIA shrank severely after that, especially in the United States. In 1940, Marcus Garvey died in London. He was 52 years old.

• 29:41Speaker 01

  "Show me the race or the nation without a flag," Marcus Garvey once said in a speech, "and I will show you a race of people without any pride." In the same address, Marcus Garvey invoked that minstrel tune from 1900. "In song and mimicry, they have said, every race has a flag but the coon." But as far as Garvey was concerned, he'd silenced any notion of a flagless race with the red, black, and green banner that was flying all over the black world.

• 30:27Roman Mars?

  It's been more than 80 years since Marcus Garvey passed, but the UNIA still exists, and members like Moriyama Kamau still salute its century-old banner.

• 30:38Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I always keep the flag up in the house. Sometimes, you know, when I'm going to meetings, I take the big flag on the train or hanging out in my car when I'm riding down the street, just so folks can ask you, "What's that? What country is this?"

• 30:53Speaker 01

  But the red, black, and green has grown way beyond the UNIA. In the decades after Garvey's death, several African countries incorporated the Pan-African colors into their own national flags as they gained independence.

• 31:06Roman Mars?

  In the US, the red, black, and green colors were prominent during the Black Power Movement and the Black Consciousness Renaissance in the 1960s and 70s. Starting in the late 80s, the tri-colors were a big part of hip-hop fashion.

• 31:19Speaker 01

  In a way, the Pan-African flag has done exactly what Garvey had hoped. He made this enduring symbol that transcends any one organization, or country, or even hemisphere. He created a single flag that's recognized all over the world as the symbol of blackness.

• 31:37Speaker 02

  Some of those, like I say, in the community who fly the flag, they know it makes them feel good. They may not understand its history, its full power, but they know it represents them as a people.

• 31:50Speaker 01

  Okay, so I want to say one last thing about the Pan-African flag. I'm a black man. I was born in the US. As far back as I know, my family is from this country. They helped build it. My mom worked for the DC government. My dad is a war vet, and so are a bunch of my uncles. My great-grandfather is buried at Arlington National Cemetery. But even with all this family history, for me, there's also the experience of being black in America, which can make safety and belonging feel tenuous. Standing under the Stars and Stripes is, at best, an uneasy and insecure thing, because the flag stands for lots of things, including imperialism and white supremacy.

• 32:34Speaker 01

  So for me, it's not a place where I feel at home. Whenever I find myself in neighborhoods where US flags are displayed, unless it's a super-black part of town, I get pretty uncomfortable. I don't feel safe. It's very different with the red, black, and green. If I see someone flying that flag outside of their home or in their business, I may have no idea what that person believes. We may not even like each other. But that flag, the decision to fly that flag, it feels like someone's telling me, "You're in a place that's safe for black people." And you know, I think that was a big part of what Garvey wanted to say with the red, black, and green. Black folks, in a world that is constantly threatening you,

• 33:19Speaker 01

  come together under this flag and feel safe.

• 33:31Roman Mars?

  We talk about another interesting flag from our history, the Juneteenth flag, after this.

• 33:40Roman Mars?

  Instagram teen accounts have automatic protections on by default. Built-in content settings for the content teens can see, contact limits for who can contact them, and time management tools like daily time limits and sleep mode. Teens are automatically placed into teen accounts, and teens under 16 will need a parent's permission to change any of these settings to be less strict. Instagram will continue adding built-in safety features to help create age-appropriate experiences. Learn more about teen accounts and Instagram's ongoing work to protect teens online at instagram.com/teenaccounts. Ready to give your home a style refresh? Article makes it easy to create a stylish, long-lasting home at an unbeatable price. They offer a curated selection

• 34:23Roman Mars?

  of mid-century modern coastal and Scandi-inspired pieces that will make a perfect addition to your home. All Article collections are carefully curated, focusing solely on high-quality, meaningful pieces that will stand the test of time. And with Article's 30-day satisfaction guarantee, you can shop with confidence. I'm trying to think of any of the Article furniture I haven't talked about at this point. I have couches. I have dining room sets. I have sideboards. I have, what do you call it? A media center? Thing that you put a TV on? Side tables? End tables? Chairs? All of them are still in heavy use in my house, and all of them have held up great. Article is offering our listeners $50 off your first purchase of $100 or more. To claim, visit article.com/99

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  and the discount will be automatically applied at checkout. That's article.com/99 for $50 off your first purchase of $100 or more.

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  To the millions of small business owners out there, we appreciate you. We see your early mornings, late nights, and all the hard work in between. And with the US Bank Business Essentials card, you don't have to go it alone. With unlimited 2% cash back on every purchase, because we know your community's counting on you to be here, there, everywhere. So yeah, we don't just appreciate you, we support you. The creditor and issuer of this card is US Bank National Association. Pursuant to a license from Visa USA, Inc. Some restrictions may apply.

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  The best pieces in your closet are the ones you can count on, whether you're heading to work, going out, or keeping things casual. And this time of year, Quince makes finding something great for everyone else just as easy. Quince focuses on high-quality staples made with premium materials like 100% Mongolian cashmere, 14-karat gold, and Italian leather. All timeless, versatile pieces that feel special to unwrap and become everyday favorites long after the holidays. I'm a huge fan of the whole line of Quince sweaters. I have button-up ones, zip-up ones, black, gray, brown. I use them when I just go upstairs, when I get on a call, when I take a dog for a walk. These are favorites that everyone would love. Give the gift of quality this holiday season.

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  Download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK, too. And when Quince asks you where you heard about them, let them know that it was 99% invisible. It's the best way to support the show.

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  Flag Day may be over, but there's another big day coming up later this week that involves its own flag: Juneteenth, which is a portmanteau of June and 19th. Juneteenth has other names, too, including Freedom Day or Liberation Day. But by whatever title, the day is really important. It commemorates the emancipation of slaves in the United States, specifically the date when the end of slavery was enforced by the Union Army in Galveston, Texas on June 19th, 1865. The date has been celebrated in many places for over a century, but it wasn't a federally recognized holiday until June 2021. As part of the push for the holiday to be recognized, the founder of the National Juneteenth Celebration Foundation,

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  Ben Haight, designed a Juneteenth flag in 1997. It was then revised in 2000 by Lisa Jean Graff before it was officially flown. Now, this time of year, people ask me about the Juneteenth flag all the time, more and more every year, because it is a great flag. It's really lovely. Like the American flag, the Juneteenth flag is red, white, and blue, which is a more striking choice to me since all the stuff I learned from Christopher's reporting in this episode about the Pan-African Red, Black, and Green Flag. The Juneteenth flag features a central white star referencing the Lone Star State, where the last of the country's enslaved population finally learned of their freedom in 1865. And around that is another 12-pointed white star outline.

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  And together, they symbolize a star of Texas bursting with new freedom throughout the land over a new horizon. That horizon consists of a red arch meeting the blue sky above. To quote the creators of the flag, the red, white, and blue colors communicate that American slaves and their descendants were all Americans. Sometimes the flag is shown with the Juneteenth date, June 19, 1865, written across the fly end. Frankly, this is not my favorite addition, but the basic Juneteenth flag is top drawer. It is a good flag, as is the red, black, and green. So if you fly them together, get ready to talk about all the interesting history that we discussed in the show with the people

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  who passed by. This episode of 99% Invisible originally aired in 2021. It was produced by Christopher Johnson, edited by Emmett Fitzgerald, music by Swan Real, mixed by Amita Ganatra. Kathy Tu is our executive producer. Kurt Kohlstedt is the digital director. Delaney Hall is our senior editor. The rest of the team includes Chris Berube, Jason DeLeon, Martine Gonzalez, Vivian Lay, Laishma Dawn, Joe Rosenberg, Kelly Prime, Jacob Medina Gleason, and me, Roman Mars. The 99% Invisible logo was created by Stefan Lawrence. We are part of the SiriusXM Podcast family, now headquartered six blocks north in the Pandora Building in beautiful Uptown, Oakland, California.

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  And if you want to hear another brand-new episode of 99% Invisible one week early and ad-free, subscribe to SiriusXM Podcast Plus on Apple Podcasts, or visit siriusxm.com/podcastplus to listen to Spotify or any other app of your choice. You can find us on all of the usual social media sites, as well as our own Discord server. There's a link to that, as well as every past episode of 99PI at 99pi.org.

• 40:26Speaker 06

  It starts with a handshake. A word becomes an agreement. An agreement becomes a contract. A contract becomes bound by law. Today, Harvey, the AI platform designed specifically for legal work, is powering that next step. More than 200,000 lawyers and 80% of the Am Law 100 are building with Harvey. Accelerating review, sharpening negotiations, and more. Harvey. Learn more at harvey.ai. Harvey does not provide legal advice. Users should always independently review and verify any output from Harvey. Time for a quick break to talk about McDonald's. It's the tangiest time of the year. For a limited time, head to McDonald's and get a McRib sandwich. Make it a meal by adding a medium fries and a soft drink like an ice cold Diet Dr. Pepper.

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  So grab a McRib sandwich and embrace the tang. Save time by ordering ahead on the app. At participating McDonald's for a limited time. Dr. Pepper is a registered trademark of Dr. Pepper 7-Up Inc. Within every beautifully busy day, there's a brief moment between now and next. A moment made just for you to recharge, refuel, and most importantly, bring out the Bob. Bring out the new Bob Evans Protein Mac and Cheese. Bring out the rich, velvety goodness now with 18 grams of protein-packed perfection. Bring out the mmm. Before you ask what's next, just take one more bite. For a delicious protein power up, bring out the Bob. Bob Evans, new protein macaroni and cheese.