Revised American Flag

What an exciting time it must have been. Two American territories, Alaska and Hawaii were poised to become states. Thousands of citizens, many of them children, submitted suggestions on how the American flag should be revised to include stars representing the two new states.

While they were obviously never adopted, it is fun on this anniversary of our country’s independence to revisit our flag and see how at least two people thought it might look.

Both of the American flag drawings below are housed in the Dwight D. Eisenhower Library. They were both submitted by Donald Edwards in 1959 and are construction paper collages.

I think both of these American flag suggestions were quite clever. I’m happy with the flag we have now but how much fun it must be for Edwards’ family to know that his designs were not only considered but kept so long after the final decision was made to maintain the original configuration with slightly different spacing.