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Sir Harry Johnston's proposal for national flag, Liberia

image by António Martins-Tuválkin, 29 September 2026

Description of the flag

See also:

Liberia

Description of the flag

On page 12 of the proceedings of the 27th I.C.V., ed. by Ian Sumner and Margaret Sumner and published in 2022 [icv17], a Liberian national flag proposal is shown, as part of "Flags and the anniversaries of 2017: myths, mistakes, misconceptions", by Kevin Harrington [hrg22]. The photo shows an actual flag, laid flat, and the text about it reads, in full:

Liberia's flag turned 170 on 26 July 2017. Its red, white and blue colours, patterned after those of the USA, were assailed by Sir Harry Johnston as un-African. He offered a flag of green, black, gold and white—an unusual and unsuccessful move then, not at all like today’s internet where proposals for changing national flag colours and designs appear daily.

This excellent proposal for a flag was sadly overlooked in the short account about it in [hrg22]. There is no description of this flag other than its colors, as quoted above.

It is a ~1:2 flag with eleven horizontal stripes, alternating black and yellow (seemingly amber / golden yellow) except for the middle one, which is white; green square canton at the upper hoist taking up five stripes in height and containing a centered white eight-pointed star of apparent density = 1 and standing on a single point. (Image above drawn from the photo.)

The date of this proposal is not given in [hrg22] nor any explicit source is mentioned, but two of the article’s Bibliography entries might have more data on this particular flag:

- Harry Johnston, Liberia (London: Hutchinson, 1906)
- 'Liberia', Ifulegi, 1, no. 1 (1998)

The latter will be soon in our Bibliography as [ifu98b]; the former seems to imply a publication date for this proposal.

Please compare similarities with the 1830-1857 Republic of Maryland); there seems to be a connection, although it's left unmentioned in [hrg22].

António Martins-Tuválkin, 29 September 2026