History of the Tennessee State Flag: Three Stars, One Designer, and a Century of Mistakes

Most states got their flags early. Tennessee waited. When it finally admitted itself to the Union on June 1, 1796 — the 16th state, the first created from federal territory — it was in such a hurry that it did not even stop to create a state flag. A constitutional convention in Knoxville drafted what Thomas Jefferson called "the least imperfect and most republican" of any state constitution. Andrew Jackson became Tennessee's first congressman. John Sevier became its first governor. The state got a capital, a seal, and a nickname. But no flag.

It would stay that way for more than a century. Tennessee would fight in three major wars, send three men to the presidency, watch Nashville rise as one of the South's great cities, and survive the Civil War as the last Confederate state to secede and the first to be readmitted — all without a settled flag to call its own. The Volunteer State had the most celebrated military tradition in the country and nothing to hang from a pole.

When the flag finally came — in 1905, from the hand of a young Johnson City lawyer serving in the Tennessee National Guard — it was designed in two years and has lasted 120 years. It has been printed upside down by the federal government, misexplained by one of the most prestigious magazines in the world, and flown backward by Tennesseans who could not figure out which star goes on top. And it remains, by any serious measure of flag design, one of the finest state flags in the country. This is how it came to be.

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The 16th State and Its Three Regions

To understand the Tennessee flag, you have to understand Tennessee itself — and Tennessee is a state that was never simple. Before it was a state at all, it was three distinct territories that barely agreed to share a government. East Tennessee, anchored by the Smoky Mountains and Appalachian ridges, was settled by Scots-Irish frontiersmen who built the Watauga Association in 1772 — the first constitutional government west of the Appalachian Mountains. Middle Tennessee, the Nashville Basin and Highland Rim, was bluegrass country, flat and fertile, home to cotton planters and horse breeders. West Tennessee, between the Tennessee and Mississippi rivers, was Gulf lowland: flat, humid, and dominated by Memphis, the river city.

These three regions voted differently, farmed differently, and looked at each other with the mild suspicion of neighbors who happen to live in the same house. When the statehood referendum was held in 1795, East Tennessee voted overwhelmingly in favor while Middle Tennessee (then called the Cumberland Region) rejected it — fearing that the eastern majority would levy higher taxes on the west. The vote passed anyway, and on June 1, 1796, President Washington signed Tennessee into the Union. The 1835–1836 Acts of Tennessee formalized what everyone already knew: the state had three legally distinct Grand Divisions, each with its own identity and interests, legally entitled to representation in the state's institutions.

The Nickname That Defined Everything

Before Tennessee had a flag, it had a reputation. In September 1813, Tennessee Governor Willie Blount issued a call for 3,500 volunteers for the War of 1812. Tennesseans answered in numbers that stunned the country. By the end of the war in early 1815, some historians estimate nearly 28,000 Tennesseans served. Under General Andrew Jackson — himself a Tennessean, eventually the state's most famous son — they played a decisive role at the Battle of New Orleans on January 8, 1815. Newspapers began calling them "the Tennessee Volunteers." The name stuck.

The reputation grew stronger in 1846. When President James K. Polk of Tennessee — another Tennessean in the White House — called for 2,800 soldiers for the Mexican-American War, the state sent over 30,000 volunteers. The Nashville Daily Union ran a headline that made the nickname official: "The Volunteer State" — printed May 17, 1847. Tennessee had a nickname before it had a flag, and that nickname would appear, in gold letters, on its first official attempt at one.

The Flag That Was Never Voted On (1861)

Tennessee's first brush with a state flag came at the worst possible moment. On April 25, 1861, the Tennessee General Assembly convened in an emergency session in Nashville. The question before them was secession. The speaker of the Senate, Tazewell B. Newman, introduced Senate Resolution No. 2 on the first day of the session: a proposal for an official state flag.

Newman's design was blunt. It would take the Confederate national flag — the Stars and Bars — and replace its ring of stars with the Great Seal of Tennessee. The proposal went to committee and never returned to a vote. People were concerned about using the Confederate flag as a base, not least because Tennessee had not yet seceded. (The people had rejected secession in a February referendum; war had changed the calculation by April.) The resolution died in committee. Tennessee did secede in June 1861, making it the last of the Confederate states to formally leave the Union, and the first to be readmitted after the war ended. It entered the Confederacy without an official flag and left it the same way.

The Unknown Flags (1883, 1890)

Two flags appear in the record before the official 1897 design, and almost nothing is known about either. In 1883, the citizens of Nashville donated a flag to a Colonel Allison — the design is completely unknown. In June 1890, a flag was produced in Cincinnati for $450 (roughly $16,000 today) and displayed at a banquet attended by Governor Taylor. Its design was never recorded. Both came and went without official status.

The Centennial Flag of 1897 — and Why It Failed

Tennessee's first real official flag arrived in 1897, just in time for the Tennessee Centennial Exposition in Nashville — the 100th anniversary of statehood. The legislature adopted it under House Joint Resolution 49 on April 30, 1897. The design was ambitious: three diagonal stripes of red, blue, and white, slanted to "represent the geological lines of the State." The words "The Volunteer State" ran in gold lettering diagonally across the center stripe. The number "16" appeared in the leftmost stripe, honoring Tennessee's status as the 16th state.

It was a flag that tried to say everything at once, and the people of Tennessee never particularly loved it. The diagonal tricolor appeared rarely at public events beyond the Centennial Exposition. It was busy, its diagonal stripes were unusual, and the combination of text, numbers, and stripes on a slanted field created something that looked more like a promotional banner than a state standard. When the Tennessee Centennial ended, so, more or less, did the 1897 flag. It existed for eight years on paper. Most Tennesseans barely noticed when it was replaced.

The Designer

Le Roy Reeves was born in Johnson City on June 23, 1876, the oldest of five children of Elbert Clay Reeves — a lawyer and early mayor of Johnson City — and Alice Robeson Reeves. He graduated from Johnson City High School in 1894, took courses at the short-lived Johnson City College and Normal Institute (where he studied French, German, Latin, logic, and mathematics), and taught in the Johnson City public schools from 1896 to 1898. He studied law, was admitted to the Tennessee bar in 1899, and practiced with his father until 1905.

He was, in short, precisely the kind of self-made East Tennessee professional that his region produced in quantity in the years after the Civil War: educated, civic-minded, and drawn to both law and military service. On June 30, 1903, Reeves organized Company F of the Third Infantry Regiment of the Tennessee National Guard in Johnson City and was commissioned its first captain. It was during those early Guard years — 1903 to 1905 — that he became interested in designing a state flag.

The Design Process

Reeves produced multiple experimental designs. The Archives of Appalachia at East Tennessee State University holds his original experimental drawings, dating to 1903. At least two other designs were tested alongside the final version — one featured the number "16" for Tennessee's place in the Union (echoing the failed 1897 flag), and another used the state seal instead of the three stars. Both were rejected.

The design Reeves settled on was deliberately simple. He wanted something that would work at any size, read clearly at a distance, and show all three of its colors — red, white, and blue — even when hanging completely still. The result: a crimson field. A blue circle with a white border, containing three white stars, positioned off-center so that no two star centers align parallel to either the sides or ends of the flag. A blue bar at the fly end, separated from the crimson field by a thin white stripe.

The blue circle represented the unity of the three Grand Divisions. The three stars — intentionally off-center, arranged so that no division sits above the others, no two aligned to the flag's edges — were equal in size and position, reflecting the legal equality of East, Middle, and West Tennessee. The asymmetric star placement was also, Reeves noted, a deliberate solution to a practical problem: with no obvious center star, no division could claim precedence, and the flag had a top and bottom that could be read correctly if you knew the law.

The Blue Bar: A Problem Solved

The blue bar at the fly end is the element most often misunderstood in Reeves's design, and the designer was refreshingly direct about it. When asked, he did not reach for symbolism. He said: "The final blue bar relieves the sameness of the crimson field and prevents the flag from showing too much crimson when hanging limp. The white edgings contrast more strongly the other colors."

It was, in other words, a designer's solution to a display problem. A flag on a windless day is a vertical rectangle. A solid crimson rectangle with a blue circle offers limited visual information. The blue bar and white border ensure that at any angle, in any wind, the flag shows all three of its colors. It is one of the most honest explanations any flag designer has ever given for any element of their work.

April 17, 1905

Reeves approached several Tennessee legislators with his design in late 1904 and early 1905 and asked them to sponsor legislation. The bill moved through the General Assembly quickly. On April 17, 1905, the Tennessee General Assembly passed Chapter 498 of the Public Acts of 1905, officially adopting Reeves's design as the state flag of Tennessee.

The flag was first flown over the old National Guard Armory on West Market Street in Johnson City — Reeves's own city, where he had organized the company that had given him his captaincy. The first flag produced under the new law was presented to Captain Reeves himself. He kept it until his death in 1960, when he bequeathed it to the Tennessee State Museum. It remains there today, 120 years old, the original Tri-Star.

National Geographic Gets It Wrong (October 1917)

Twelve years after the flag was adopted, the most prestigious geography publication in the country published a colorful, detailed article about the flags of the world. In its October 1917 issue, National Geographic reached Tennessee and explained the three stars: they represented, the magazine told its millions of readers, Tennessee's status as the third state admitted to the Union after the original thirteen.

The math was simple and entirely plausible: Tennessee was the 16th state; 16 minus 13 equals 3. The theory had a certain logic. It was also completely false. The author apparently never consulted any Tennessee source, never looked at what Reeves had actually said in 1905, and invented a theory based on a coincidence. But National Geographic's reach was extraordinary in 1917. The article was widely reprinted and widely cited. The misinformation spread nationally.

Reeves Corrects the Record (1920)

By 1920, the National Geographic explanation had become so widely accepted that John Trotwood Moore — the director of the Tennessee Department of Library, Archives, and History — wrote directly to Reeves to ask him, officially, what the stars meant. Reeves's reply was unambiguous:

The stars meant what Reeves had always said they meant: East, Middle, and West Tennessee, bound together in an indissoluble trinity. Every official Tennessee publication since 1920 has stated this clearly. The misinterpretation — that the stars represent the "third state after thirteen" — continues to circulate, particularly outside Tennessee, more than a century after Reeves personally corrected it.

The Upside-Down Stamp (1976)

In 1976, to celebrate the United States Bicentennial, the U.S. Postal Service issued a sheet of 13-cent stamps featuring every state flag. Most states got their stamps right. Tennessee did not. The Tennessee flag stamp appeared with the three-star emblem upside down — violating the precise statutory requirement that "the highest star shall be the one nearest the upper confined corner of the flag" and that "the centers of no two stars shall be in a line parallel to either the side or the end of the flag."

Tennessee state officials protested. The Postal Service, applying the full stubbornness that only a federal bureaucracy can muster, insisted the stamp was correct and continued printing it upside down. The wrong orientation remained on U.S. postal stamps for over three decades. A corrected reissue was not produced until 2010.

NAVA Ranking: 14th Out of 72 (2001)

In 2001, the North American Vexillological Association — the professional organization dedicated to the study of flags — surveyed its members on the designs of all 72 U.S. state, territorial, and Canadian provincial flags. They ranked Tennessee's flag 14th out of 72. The ranking reflected what flag experts and designers have long recognized: Reeves's design is a genuinely well-executed piece of graphic work. Bold, simple, readable at distance, distinctive in silhouette, and effectively using all three of its colors through the blue bar solution. It scores highly on every criterion serious vexillology uses: simplicity, meaningful symbolism, distinctive design, limited color palette, and no writing or seals on the field.

Two Official Salutes (2006)

In 2006, the Tennessee General Assembly adopted two official salutes to the state flag — the only form of formal linguistic recognition the flag had never previously received. The first salute honors the design directly. The second speaks to the identity the flag represents.

What Every Element of the Tennessee Flag Means

Tennessee Flag History: A Complete Timeline

Le Roy Reeves: The Man Behind the Tri-Star

Le Roy Reeves lived 84 years and had a distinguished career that far outlasted the two years he spent designing a state flag. After the General Assembly adopted his design in April 1905, he resigned his captaincy in 1906. He served in the Mexican border campaign in 1916, volunteered for the regular U.S. Army in January 1918, was commissioned a major, and spent the postwar years in the Office of the Judge Advocate General in Washington. He was promoted to colonel before retiring in 1940.

He never left Johnson City entirely. His father had been an early mayor of the city; his formative years as teacher, lawyer, and Guard captain had all been spent there. When the original flag he had designed was finally taken from his possession — by death, in 1960 — he sent it back to Tennessee. It sits in the Tennessee State Museum today. Reeves's original experimental drawings, the working sketches that preceded the 1905 design, are held at the Archives of Appalachia at East Tennessee State University in Johnson City — the city where the flag was first flown.

The Tennessee Historical Society also holds a reproduction of the original flag in its collection. What is striking, after 120 years, is how little the design has needed to change. The 1905 specifications — crimson field, blue circle with white border, three offset white stars, blue bar at the fly end with white stripe — remain the statutory description of the flag today. Reeves got it right the first time.

Tennessee Flag History: Common Questions