The flag of

Madison, Wisconsin Madison is the county seat of Dane County and the capital city of the U.S. state of Wisconsin. As of the 2020 census the population was 269,840, making it the second-largest city in Wisconsin by population, after Milwaukee, and the 80th-lar ...

, includes a sky blue background with a diagonal white stripe that goes from the bottom left corner to the top right which symbolizes

Lake Mendota Lake Mendota is a freshwater eutrophic lake that is the northernmost and largest of the four lakes in Madison, Wisconsin. The lake borders Madison on the north, east, and south, Middleton on the west, Shorewood Hills on the southwest, Maple Bl ...

Lake Monona Lake Monona is a freshwater drainage lake in Dane County, Wisconsin, surrounded on three sides by the city of Madison, Wisconsin, and on the south east side by the city of Monona, Wisconsin. It is the second-largest of a chain of four lakes along ...

and the

isthmus An isthmus (; ; ) is a narrow piece of land connecting two larger areas across an expanse of water by which they are otherwise separated. A tombolo is an isthmus that consists of a spit or bar, and a strait is the sea counterpart of an isthmus ...

between them. At the center of the flag is a black cross, which symbolizes the four lakes (Mendota, Monona, Kegonsa, and Waubesa), as well as the cross shape of the

Wisconsin State Capitol The Wisconsin State Capitol, located in Madison, Wisconsin, houses both chambers of the Wisconsin legislature along with the Wisconsin Supreme Court and the Office of the Governor. Completed in 1917, the building is the fifth to serve as the Wi ...

. The gold circle in the middle represents the Wisconsin State Capitol's dome.

History

Rick and Dennis Stone who were members of the

Madison Scouts Drum and Bugle Corps The Madison Scouts Drum and Bugle Corps is a World Class competitive junior drum and bugle corps based in Madison, Wisconsin. The Madison Scouts were one of the thirteen founding member corps of Drum Corps International (DCI), and are a two-time ...

designed the flag with their color guard instructor John Price. In the original design, adopted by the municipal government on April 12, 1962, the shape overlaid on the cross was a Zia sun symbol, sacred to the Native American Zia people of

New Mexico ) , population_demonym = New Mexican ( es, Neomexicano, Neomejicano, Nuevo Mexicano) , seat = Santa Fe , LargestCity = Albuquerque , LargestMetro = Tiguex , OfficialLang = None , Languages = English, Spanish ( New Mexican), Navajo, Ke ...

. While Madison's flag designers intended to represent an "Indian sun symbol", it is not used by any of the Native American groups in the Wisconsin area, and the flag designers were unaware that it was specifically

Puebloan The Puebloans or Pueblo peoples, are Native Americans in the Southwestern United States who share common agricultural, material, and religious practices. Currently 100 pueblos are actively inhabited, among which Taos, San Ildefonso, Acoma, Zu ...

or New Mexican. In a 2004 poll conducted by the

North American Vexillological Association The North American Vexillological Association (NAVA) is a membership organization devoted to vexillology, the scientific and scholarly study of flags. It was founded in 1967 by American vexillologist Whitney Smith (1940–2016), and others. It ...

, the flag of Madison was rated 11th best of 150 major cities in the United States. Madison's flag experienced a resurgence beginning in 2015, when Madison

Alder Alders are trees comprising the genus ''Alnus'' in the birch family Betulaceae. The genus comprises about 35 species of monoecious trees and shrubs, a few reaching a large size, distributed throughout the north temperate zone with a few sp ...

Maurice Cheeks authored and passed a resolution to require the flag to be flown on city property as part of a campaign to increase awareness of the symbol of local pride. That increased exposure led to concerns about the "cultural appropriation" of a symbol sacred to the Zia, as well as other

Pueblo In the Southwestern United States, Pueblo (capitalized) refers to the Native tribes of Puebloans having fixed-location communities with permanent buildings which also are called pueblos (lowercased). The Spanish explorers of northern New Spain ...

, mestizo Hispano, and many other native affiliated New Mexican people, so in 2017 Cheeks joined with fellow Alder Arvina Martin in spearheading an effort to modify the design of the flag. Original designer Rick Stone was publicly supportive of the efforts, "as long as it doesn’t significantly change the flag’s design or (make) it look completely different." The Common Council settled on a design that replaced the sacred Zia sun symbol with a

gold Gold is a chemical element with the symbol Au (from la, aurum) and atomic number 79. This makes it one of the higher atomic number elements that occur naturally. It is a bright, slightly orange-yellow, dense, soft, malleable, and ductile me ...

disc. Their bill was supported by Mayor

Paul Soglin Paul R. Soglin (born April 22, 1945) is an American politician and former three-time Mayor of Madison, Wisconsin, having served a total of 22 years in that office between 1973 and 2019. A member of the Democratic Party, he was a candidate for Gov ...

and was unanimously passed by the council on July 24, 2018. After the vote passed, Martin presented the Stone brothers with the first copy of the new flag.

Use

The city's professional soccer team,

Forward Madison FC Forward Madison FC is an American professional soccer team based in Madison, Wisconsin. The team was founded in 2018, and played its inaugural season in 2019. The team competes in the third division of the US soccer league system and plays thei ...

, incorporates the city flag into its main logo, and its home jersey is sky blue with a white diagonal sash to mimic Madison's flag.

Notes

External links

Resolution 4408
of the City of Madison, making the flag official * {{DEFAULTSORT:Madison, Wisconsin Flag Flags of cities in Wisconsin Flags introduced in 1962 Flags introduced in 2018