§153. State flag; when to be displayed
A. The official flag of Louisiana shall be that flag now in general use, consisting of a solid blue field with the coat-of-arms of the state, the pelican feeding its young, in white in the center, with a ribbon beneath, also in white, containing in blue the motto of the state, "Union, Justice and Confidence," the whole showing as below.
B. The state flag shall wave from sunrise to sunset every day, over the State Capitol and the public departments and institutions of the state and over the court houses in the several parishes during the sessions of the courts.
C. The state flag shall wave during the regular school hours every day of the school year over the public institutions of learning in the state that are now flying the United States flag and all other public institutions of learning in the state are authorized to fly the state flag.
Amended by Acts 1954, No. 449, §1; Acts 1964, No. 390, §1; Acts 1966, No. 42, §1.
David Iwancio 9 March 2003
The website at http://www.2theadvocate.com/news/2586846.html reported on 6 April 2006 that a bill requiring the flag to have three drops of blood on the pelican's breast was approved by a House Committee. Historical renditions and descriptions of the flag also include three drops of blood on the mother’s breast. The blood signifies the willingness of the state to sacrifice for its children, said D. Joseph Louviere, an eighth-grader at Vandebilt Catholic High School in Houma. It was part of the original descriptions of the state’s earliest flags. But Louviere found that the use of blood drops on the state flag has been inconsistent. Last month Louviere wrote a school report on the flag, which he presented to his local legislator, Rep. Damon Baldone, D-Houma. Baldone, a lawyer, said he noticed that, despite all the historical evidence, state law did not specify the number of blood drops. He drafted legislation to fix that. The House Judiciary Committee unanimously recommended House Bill 833, which would require all Louisiana flags made in the future to have three blood drops. The bill would not require old flags to be changed.
Louviere’s quest for flag history took him to a study printed by LSU in January 1920. The pelican was added to the state seal by William C.C. Claiborne, the state’s first American governor, and used unofficially to rally Andrew Jackson’s troops at the Battle of New Orleans in 1815, according to the LSU study. Over the years, the pelican was on all sorts of flags, some red, others blue, according to the LSU study. A blue pelican flag was displayed at the convention when Louisiana seceded from the Union at the start of the Civil War. Union Admiral David Farragut removed a pelican flag from the Old State Capitol when he captured Baton Rouge. The pelican symbol was described in state law in 1902. The flag used now was legalized July 1, 1912. Its description requires “a pelican vulning herself, which means the mother’s beak is tearing at her breast to feed her own young. The bird is considered a symbol of self-sacrifice.
Lewis A. Nowitz, 6 April 2006 |
Louisiana (LA) State Flag