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Black is a mood of anger and outrage at all the hideous crimes against humanity perpetrated in the name of allegiance to one state or another.

It is a colour of determination, of resolve, of strength, a colour by which all others are clarified and defined.

So black is negation, is anger, is outrage, is mourning, is beauty, is hope, is the fostering and sheltering of new forms of human life and relationship on and with this earth.

As anarchism became more and more distinct from socialism in the 1880s, it adopted the black flag in an attempt to differentiate itself.

The French anarchist paper, Le Drapeau Noir ( The Black Flag ), which existed until 1882, is one of the first published references to use black as an anarchist color.

One of the first known anarchist uses of the black flag was by Louise Michel, participant in the Paris Commune in 1871.

Michel flew the black flag during a demonstration of the unemployed which took place in Paris on March 9, 1883.

With Michel at the front carrying a black flag and shouting Bread, work, or lead, the crowd of 500 protesters soon marched off towards the boulevard Saint-Germain and pillaged three bakers shops before the police arrested them.

Michel was arrested and sentenced to six years solitary confinement.

Public pressure soon forced the granting of an amnesty.

She wrote, the black flag is the flag of strikes and the flag of those who are hungry.

The black flag was displayed in Chicago at an anarchist demonstration in November 1884.

According to the English language newspaper of the Chicago anarchists, it was the fearful symbol of hunger, misery and death.

Thousands of anarchists attended Kropotkins 1921 funeral behind the black flag.

The colors black and red have been used by anarchists since at least the late 1800s when they were used on cockades by Italian anarchists in the 1874 Bologna insurrection and in 1877 when anarchists entered the Italian town Letino carrying red and black flags to promote the First International.

Diagonally divided red and black flags were used by anarcho-syndicalists in Spain 14 such as the labor union CNT during the Spanish Civil War.

George Woodcock writes that the bisected black-and-red flag symbolized a uniting of the spirit of later anarchism with the mass appeal of the First International.

Similar flags yet with different colors are commonly used to represent specific anarchist ideologies such as black and purple for anarcha-feminism, black and green for green anarchism and black and orange for mutualism.

Crass founder Penny Rimbaud would later say that the band probably first saw the symbol while traveling through France.

N With Circle Around It Trial Workers Of

It was designed by Ralph Chaplin, who was a prominent figure in the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW).

As its stance suggests, the cat is meant to suggest wildcat strikes and radical unionism.

N With Circle Around It Free Speech Fights

The IWW was an important industrial union and was the first American labor union to recruit and organize women and people of color, playing a critical role in the fight for the eight-hour day and in free speech fights all over the country in the early 20th century.

Their most famous and influential years were from 1905 until they were largely suppressed by the Palmer Raids in 19191920.

Several members had been beaten up and were put in a hospital.

At that time a skinny, black cat walked into the strikers camp.

The cat was fed by the striking workers and as the cat regained its health the strike took a turn for the better.

Eventually the striking workers got some of their demands and they adopted the cat as their mascot.

Order Without Power: An Introduction to Anarchism: History and Current Challenges.

OCLC 182529204. Archived from the original on October 5, 2020.

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