The Juneteenth flag, explained |
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The Juneteenth flag, explained
The flag’s designer shares the story and inspiration for his design.
Illustration by KaCeyKal! for Vox
Editor’s note, June 19, 2026, 6 am ET: This story is being republished for Juneteenth. It was originally published in 2022.
Part of the Juneteenth issue of The Highlight, produced in partnership with Capital B.
As the Juneteenth holiday approaches, you’ll start to see various symbols of Blackness across the country. Front lawns, apartment balconies and clothing with the Pan-African flag, “Black Power” fist, and other celebratory symbols will be everywhere. But did you know there’s a specific flag for Juneteenth?
In fact, it has a backstory that goes back to the late 1990s. Capital B spoke with Ben Haith, the flag’s creator, and others to learn more about its history and impact.
Haith, a community organizer and activist known better as “Boston Ben,” created the flag in 1997. In an interview with Capital B Atlanta, Haith said once he learned about Juneteenth, he felt passionately that it needed representation.
“I was just doing what God told me,” Haith said. “I have somewhat of a marketing background, and I thought Juneteenth, what it represented, needed to have a symbol.”
Haith wasn’t impressed by his initial version — a “rough draft” — but every Juneteenth holiday he would raise the flag near his son’s middle school in Roxbury, a majority-Black community in Boston.
After getting some inspiration, he knew which colors and symbols he wanted in the flag, he just needed to finalize it. That’s when he met illustrator Lisa Jeanne Graf, who responded to an ad in a local newspaper and finalized the flag in 2000.
Juneteenth is often associated with red, green, and black: the colors of the Pan-African flag. However, those aren’t the colors of the Juneteenth flag. The banner shares the colors of the American flag: red, white, and blue. In the past, Haith has said it was a purposeful choice — a reminder that Black Americans descended from enslaved people are exactly that: American.
“For so long, our ancestors weren’t considered citizens of this........