The first official national flag of the Confederacy, often called the “Stars and Bars," was flown from March 4, 1861 to May 1, 1863. German-Prussian artist Nicola Marschall in Marion, Alabama, designed it. The “Artist of the Deep South” is also credited as the designer of the official grey uniform of the Confederate army. The "Stars and Bars" flag was adopted March 4, 1861, in the first temporary national capital of Montgomery, Alabama, and raised over the dome of that first Confederate capitol. There would be two successive national flag designs that would later serve as the official national flags of the Confederate States of America during its existence.

The Confederate flag was deliberately flown in opposition of U.S. ideology, which symbolized abolitionism and emancipation in the North. The Confederate flag quickly became the symbol of white privilege and segregation, the oppression of Black people, and the fight by Southern states to preserve slavery, which included an American brand of "terrorism" known as lynching. Bryan Stevenson, 55, a professor at NYU Law School and the head of the nonprofit organization called, Equal Justice Initiative estimates, “Three thousand, nine hundred and fifty-nine people were lynched in the U.S. between 1877 and 1950—seven hundred more than was previously known. Georgia, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas and Texas claimed the highest number of lynching, while Florida, Mississippi, Arkansas and Louisiana had the highest rates of lynching." Lynching profoundly impacted race relations in America and shaped the geographic, political, social, and economic conditions of African Americans in ways that are still evident today.

Terror lynching fueled the mass migration of millions of black people from the South into urban ghettos in the North and West during the first half of the twentieth century. Lynching created a fearful environment where racial subordination and segregation was maintained with limited resistance for decades. Most critically, lynching reinforced a legacy of racial inequality that has not been adequately addressed in America.