A recent weekly history page, sponsored by the Knoxville History Project, stirred up some interest in Knoxville’s ancient city flag. Long neglected, forgotten, practically unknown to most, it was designed and approved by City Council in 1896, just in time for it to fly over the Knoxville Building at the Tennessee Centennial in Nashville. Knoxville’s flag and Nashville’s Parthenon were both designed for the same event.
It got some attention this year thanks to renewed interest in Knoxville artist Lloyd Branson—the flag was displayed earlier this year at the Museum of East Tennessee History as part of an exhibit of Branson’s art—and the city’s 225th anniversary last month.
The KHP feature got more attention than I expected. Several readers now say they want to get their own Knoxville flag.
A review of records proves that the Knoxville flag has emerged and re-emerged, several times, and people have always responded the same way: Gosh, I didn’t know Knoxville had a flag. And how can I get one? By my count, the flag has enjoyed eight separate mini-revivals. After which, of course, it’s always forgotten again.
The latest revival of Knoxville’s flag, perhaps unfortunately, happens to coincide with a viral TED Talk lecture about city flags. The speaker was Roman Mars, a previously obscure design pundit (his podcast/radio show is called “99% Invisible”). Mars’ TED talk, first posted in 2015, has made him a podcast superstar. The flag talk has garnered almost 4 million views.
His presentation was based, in part, on a 2004 survey by the North American Vexillological Association of 150 American cities’ municipal flags. Knoxville is often counted among America’s 150 most notable cities, but it’s not on this list. Our flag is obscure, even in Knoxville.
But now that we’re getting to see it again, we have to admit our flag has some problems. It violates two, maybe three of Mars’ five precepts for what makes a good city flag:
Keep it simple. Use meaningful symbolism. Use two to three basic colors. Never use text or seals. Be distinctive.
The Knoxville flag is definitely distinctive. Its main problems are with No. 1 and No. 3. It is not simple. The NAVA guidelines suggest a good flag should be easily drawn from memory, by a child. It also uses more than two or three basic colors. I count at least five basic colors. Different versions of it over the years suggest there may have been even more colors at times. And though it doesn’t use the city seal, its quartered shield is very similar to a seal. One could argue about how meaningful its symbolism is, considering that the colors, in particular, have been re-interpreted over the years.
It has some other problems, too, beyond NAVA’s five guidelines. One could object to it on aesthetic grounds. I have a lot of respect for Lloyd Branson’s career, which produced some gorgeous paintings, a dozen or so of them good enough to hang in the finest museums in America. Some of his work that’s not obviously great is intriguing. But Branson was a practical man, trying to make a living as an artist, as unlikely as that might seem in 1890s Knoxville. Sometimes he was just trying to flatter or please a committee. I bet that was the case with this particular mess.
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If we were to come up with a new flag—and succeeded against all odds in keeping it simple, with just three basic colors—what would be Knoxville’s meaningful symbolism? A diverse economy and culture is a credit to any city, but it poses a challenge when picking an appropriate symbol. In the 1890s, coal and marble and railroads were the big things about Knoxville. Today, what would it be? Cooking shows? Cinema magnates? Coffee K-Cups? Bike trails? Gioachino Rossini? A good biscuit?
Some, naturally, would insist a Knoxville flag include orange and white. If the Vols can’t beat Alabama, damn it, at least they can conquer Knoxville. I’m not sure that emphasis would help the city. One of the heartbreaks of my career as a tour guide is my slow realization that the Vols aren’t all that famous outside of our region. The size of Neyland Stadium often requires some explaining.
In creating city flags, I’m not sure our sister cities have done much better.
I do like Nashville’s city flag, for reasons that have nothing to do with the Nashville I know. It portrays an Indian contemplating a skull, Hamlet-like, with a tobacco plant nearby. Unless the Indian is Kaw-Liga himself, the image does not reference country music. Maybe it’s an early warning about the dangers of cigarettes.
Chattanooga’s relatively new flag, adopted four years ago to replace a plainer one criticized as boring, features a Civil War cannon on Lookout Mountain, overlooking Moccasin Bend. It’s a popular postcard image, and Civil War tourism has been a big part of Chattanooga’s economy for decades. It’s picturesque, if you don’t think about it too much. The people who first saw this image were laboring under the Confederacy’s most incompetent general, and their cannon is aimed right at downtown Chattanooga. Is that a good thing?
Atlanta has a coin-type bird which, judging by the flames, may be a Phoenix. Of course, the Phoenix flag also features a phoenix. But in Atlanta’s flag there’s an unusual word, Resurgens, which is Latin but sounds like one of those medications aimed at older men and advertised during the Nightly News.
In comparing our flag to others around the region, the bar is low.
I propose it be green. Seven or eight months a year, Knoxville is greener than any other city I’ve ever visited, and we’ve done a lot with it. The flag needs some greenery, and it doesn’t have to be indigenous. Mimosas and kudzu are every bit as Knoxvillian as college football and automobiles. And it should have a tamale. We have a 130-year tradition of making and eating tamales here. Our beer-making tradition is even older. So some greenery, and a tamale, and a beer, and I think we’ve got a flag for the 21st century. And something to look forward to after work.
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