How Chattanooga got its flag

1990s politics and marketing the ‘Sustainable City’ defined the flag’s two-decade path to adoption

By William Newlin

The City of Chattanooga’s new logo is future-focused — hence the rightward arrow at the center of the design. It’s set to appear on signage and city vehicles in place of the city seal, which Chattanoogans adopted by public vote in 1975. In contrast to the logo, the seal points to the past, depicting a Civil War cannon looming above the city on Lookout Mountain.

While the city seal may retreat from public view, it won’t disappear entirely. It’s enshrined in city code and included on official documents. Plus, the seal will remain the centerpiece of another city emblem — Chattanooga’s official flag.

Chattanooga's official city flag from 2012-present.

Yes, Chattanooga has a city flag. Adopted in 2012, its green and blue stripes, like the colors of the city’s fresh branding, represent Chattanooga’s natural resources. Over its 12-year tenure, the flag hasn’t achieved a warm embrace by either the city or public.

It’s not waving outside government buildings, at iconic landmarks, or off neighborhood porches. There is one, however, tucked in the corner of Mayor Tim Kelly’s third-floor lobby at City Hall.

Fred Kaye, secretary of the flag-focused North American Vexillological Association (NAVA), said the flag’s design — particularly the use of the seal — might have something to do with its anonymity.

“The best city flags in terms of people's embrace of them and widespread use are those flags that represent the city as a whole, not the government,” he said.

But a flag’s design should relate to its function, Kaye said. To the man who designed Chattanooga’s flag, it does.

A sustainable symbol

In 1990, David Crockett landed a seat on the first-ever Chattanooga City Council, which replaced the former City Commission. A longtime IBM employee and fervent community organizer from Hixson, he would serve 10 years on the Council before an unsuccessful run for mayor.

Today, Crockett still speaks passionately about his travails in local government. He remembers pushing the city to buy Greenway Farms, consolidating the city and county school systems, and coming up short on connecting Atlanta and Chattanooga via high-speed rail.

“This was a full contact sport in the early 90s and everything was hard,” he said of governing on the nascent nine-member Council.

Amid the legislative scrum, Crockett’s main focus was on sustainability, then an emerging trend he described as a “phase-change disruption” in business and government.

Chattanooga had already drawn attention for its post-industrial environmental cleanup, and Crockett wanted to use that momentum to not simply jump on the sustainability bandwagon, but to lead the whole parade.

“We were trying to brand our city so when you heard the word Chattanooga it was instantly connected to sustainability,” Crockett said. “Which was the biggest hot button in the world at that time.”

He sought a greener Chattanooga, yes, but also a city that attracted businesses and kept talented young people in the local workforce.

To lead the charge in sustainability, Chattanooga needed a banner, a symbol of its new strategic focus. So, Crockett designed one.

Replacing the 1920s design

Chattanooga already had a city flag. Drawn up in 1923 by representatives of local women’s clubs, it was modeled after the Tennessee standard: a red field, a central blue circle, and a single white star in the middle to represent East Tennessee.

White dogwood blossoms wreathed the star, a nod to the city flower adopted by Chattanooga’s garden club, according to a Chattanooga Daily Times report at the time.

Chattanooga's official city flag from 1923-1912.

Shared imagery to celebrate relationships is an element of good flag design, according to the guidebook, “‘Good’ Flag, ‘Bad’ Flag,” published by Kaye from NAVA.

However, Kaye said strong flags possess discernibility and memorability. When it flew next to the Tennessee flag, Chattanooga’s 1923 flag failed to meet those standards.

“Chattanooga's old flag was absolutely showing its relationship to Tennessee,” Kaye said. “But in my mind, design-wise, it's a little bit too much, because it's too hard to separate at a distance.”

As a councilman, Crockett felt the same way, saying “people in Chattanooga didn't know what it was if they did see it.”

He poured over photos of city, state, and national flags to make sure his replacement, the flag of the sustainable city, stood alone. His proposal featured kelly green stripes for the mountains, a central blue streak for the river and the city seal in the center.

Using the publicly chosen seal added legitimacy, Crockett said, and Chattanoogans would instantly recognize it as a governmental emblem.

“So we thought, ‘Well, this would be easy,’” he said, “‘We'll just put this symbol on the flag and we'll adopt the flag.’”

Chattanoogans didn’t make it easy. Crockett’s flag appeared in the paper, and a flood of opinions and suggestions followed. The City Councilman said he knew without broad public support, he couldn’t get his colleagues on the council to approve the banner.

So, his design stayed shelved for about 20 more years.

Approved, at last

Ron Littlefield, another alumnus of the 1990 City Council, became mayor in 2005. He chuckled through a big smile at the mention of Crockett’s name:

“Yeah, David.”

In the Littlefield administration, Crockett was back in familiar territory as marketer-in-chief of Chattanooga and head of the Office of Sustainability. Chattanooga’s sustainable image became an important selling point as the city courted Volkswagen to open a plant here.

A Volkswagen document from 2009 cited “Chattanooga’s continued focus on sustainability” as a reason for selecting the city for its $1 billion facility. Littlefield and Crockett felt the time was right to bring Crockett’s flag design back into public discussion.

But the public pushback was still there, “from the same people over and over again,” Littflefield said. Not until 2012, when Crockett was out of government and Littfield’s second term neared its end, did Crockett’s flag have its day.

“You had a mayor who had been part of the initial discussions around the flag, number one. Number two, he supported the idea. And number three, he had the power of the mayors,” Crockett said.

“And so frankly, I just pushed it through the Council,” Littfiled said. “I said, ‘Let's get this doggone thing done and quit debating it.’”

Despite calls for more public input, City Council adopted the flag by a 6-3 vote in August 2012.

The future of the flag

By incorporating the seal, Crockett’s design makes a major faux pas, according to “‘Good’ Flag, ‘Bad’ Flag.”

Aside from representing the government, not the city more broadly, the seal is also hard to register from afar, running into the same discernibility and memorability issues as the old 1923 standard. It’s also redundant.

“Putting a logo on a flag is sort of doubling up,” Kaye said. “No, the flag is the logo.”

Despite critiques, past and present, Crockett stands by his design as a marketing tool, not a work of art. He said it still has a place alongside Chattanooga’s new branding. And for now it does, as a city spokesperson said there are no current plans to update the flag.

Littlefield shared some advice if the current administration, a future mayor, or another intrepid Council member does look for five more votes to change the flag.

“Don't expect to make everybody happy, including me and Dave Crockett,” he said. “But that's not going to be important.”