Perhaps the most vitriolic change of the flag's design occurred in 1956 when supporters of racial segregation pushed through a flag design that included the Confederate battle flag to display their opposition to the 1954 Brown vs. the Board of Education decision.


Georgia House Speaker, Tom Murphy, stands at attention with a Klu Klux Klan member while holding the 1956 version of the Georgia flag. Opposite Murphy, a group poses in the Iwo Jima memorial position, holding the flag voted on after the Civil War, and yells, "Hey, Murphy, the war's over!" From the Clifford Baldowski Editorial Cartoon Collection. Created for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and licensed to the Richard B. Russell Library for Political Research and Studies by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Since this contentious revision to the flag's design,several politicians have made unsuccessful attempts to the change the flag's design to represent a moreinclusive design. In 2001, Governor Roy Barnes put forward a new flag design that included small references to previous Georgia flags. This was an attempt to compromise with the flag design factions, but in 2002 Barnes lost the election to Sonny Perdue, who, in part, ran on a campaign that promised Georgia citizens an opportunity to vote on the design of the state flag. Governor Perdue did put forth a referendum to change the state flag in the General Assembly but it did not include the 1956 flag design as an option. The bill passed in the Georgia House of Representatives and narrowly in the Georgia Senate. In a statewide referendum in 2004, Georgia voters were given the opportunity to vote on the 2001 design or the new design. More than seventy-three percent of voters chose the new flag design. While this is Georgia 's eighth flag to fly over the capital it may not be the last.

Never has the power of symbols in society been so evident as in the contentious and continuous revisions to the designs of the Georgia flag. From the first flag to the current one, there have been eight different designs with some engendering significant controversy among factions in the state.