Montgomery’s New City Flag Was Designed by Kappa Alpha Psi Brother and Tuskegee Alumnus Joshua Gordon

Montgomery, Alabama, has a new city flag, and it was designed by Joshua Gordon, a member of Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity, Inc. and graduate of Tuskegee University. The City of Montgomery held an official raising ceremony for the new flag at City Hall on Thursday, October 1. It is the city’s first flag redesign since 1952.

Joshua Gordon is a Montgomery native, Tuskegee University graduate, architect, and U.S. Army engineer officer. His design won a public contest that drew 27 submissions. Gordon is a Spring 2019 initiate of the Gamma Epsilon Chapter of Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity, Inc. at Tuskegee University.

Gordon said that while designing the flag, he kept asking himself what it should say about who Montgomery is as a city.

“My goal with the design was to take elements from our existing flag and repurpose them within a new design,” Gordon told Watch The Yard. “I didn’t want to simply erase what came before. Instead, I wanted to acknowledge the city’s history while giving those elements a new purpose and a new direction.”

The effort to change the flag started with Jeremiah Treece, who began a petition while he was a senior at Booker T. Washington Magnet High School. Treece is now a sophomore at Berea College. After researching the old flag’s history, he presented his case to the city council, which sent it to the government affairs committee.

In an Instagram post after the ceremony, Treece reflected on the moment.

“Coming home to be part of such a historic day, as the City of Montgomery removed the old flag and raised the new one, showed me how powerful we are when we come together as a community,” Treece wrote. “I may have had the idea and spearheaded the change, but this movement would not have been possible without every person who supported me through it all.”

At the ceremony, Mayor Steven Reed said the new flag honors Montgomery’s history without being bound by it, and reflects unity, progress, and inclusion.