Sego Celebration Flag

Overview

Salt Lake City adopted the Sego Celebration Flag as one of four official city flags on 6 May 2025. It combines the sego lily emblem from the city's 2020 flag with the star, twelve-point nova, horizon, red-white-and-blue field, and vertical "June 19, 1865" date of the Juneteenth Flag designed by Ben Haith and illustrated by Lisa Jeanne Graf. The ordinance associates the design with Juneteenth and the city's Black and African American residents. ^{[1] [5]}

The adoption occurred one day before Utah House Bill 77 took effect, restricting government flag displays while exempting municipal flags. The council approved the ordinance 7-0. ^{[2] [6]} The reviewed city records do not identify the designer of this composite. The flag is included in Encycloflaggia as a documented companion to the two LGBTQIA-related Sego flags adopted with it, but it is a Juneteenth civic flag rather than an LGBTQIA identity flag. ^[1]

Identity & Context

Represented Identity

Juneteenth, and Salt Lake City's Black and African American residents

Racial / Ethnic Context

Black and African American

National Context

United States; Salt Lake City

The city describes the flag as representing "the history of Juneteenth, our City's Black and African American residents, and our pride in them", and its symbols together as "Salt Lake City's values of diversity, equity, and inclusion, and our celebration of Black excellence". ^[7] The ordinance puts it as a commitment to "the recognition, observance, education and historic preservation of Juneteenth as a federal, state, and City holiday". ^[1] Both are a city speaking about its residents rather than a community speaking for itself.

The Sego Celebration Flag is not specifically an LGBTQIA symbol. It is included here because Salt Lake City adopted it in the same ordinance as the Sego Belonging and Sego Visibility flags, and all three use the same municipal sego lily device. ^[1]

Creators

Origin

Country

United States

Region / state

Utah

City

Salt Lake City

Specific Place

Salt Lake City and County Building, 451 South State Street

Place Type

Municipal adoption

Salt Lake City stands on the traditional and ancestral homelands of the Shoshone, Paiute, Goshute, and Ute peoples. ^[9] This note identifies the location of municipal adoption and does not attribute the Sego designs to those nations.

Indigenous land context

Shoshone — traditional and ancestral homelands of the Salt Lake Valley. The University of Utah's land acknowledgment records that the Salt Lake Valley "is the traditional and ancestral homelands of the Shoshone, Paiute, Goshute, and Ute Tribes and is a crossroad for Indigenous peoples", and that the land is named for the Ute Tribe. ^[9]

Paiute

Goshute

Ute

Salt Lake City is the documented place of municipal adoption: the City Council passed Ordinance 25 of 2025 at the Salt Lake City and County Building, 451 South State Street. ^{[2] [1]} The reviewed sources do not identify where the composites were drawn.

Dates & Chronology

Year Created

2025

Adopted by ordinance

May 6, 2025

In use

2025 to the present, as one of four Salt Lake City flags

Creation Bounds

Official sources first document the Sego composite in 2025, when the Salt Lake City Council adopted it on 6 May in the meeting that passed Ordinance 25 of 2025. ^[2] The mayor's office states that versions of the three underlying flag traditions "have been consistently displayed at City Hall during Mayor Mendenhall's time in office"; that is evidence of prior display of Pride, transgender and Juneteenth flags, not a date for the lily-bearing composite. ^[8]

The council took the ordinance as new business, suspending the rules to consider motions, with no public hearing set. Chris Wharton moved to adopt, Alejandro Puy seconded, and it passed 7 to 0: Victoria Petro, Daniel Dugan, Chris Wharton, Alejandro Puy, Darin Mano, Sarah Young and Eva Lopez Chavez all voting aye. ^[2]

Associated Press photography published by KUER documents the newly adopted city flags displayed at the Salt Lake City and County Building on 7 May 2025. ^[10] KSL documents the inaugural raising of the Sego Celebration Flag at City Hall on 10 June 2025, at an early Juneteenth celebration that included a reading of General Order No. 3 and participation by Black community leaders. ^[11]

Juneteenth marks 19 June 1865, when Union General Gordon Granger issued General Order No. 3 at Galveston, Texas, more than two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation, and the last enslaved people in the rebel states were told of their freedom. Texas first recognised the day as a holiday in 1979. Ben Haith designed the Juneteenth Flag in 1997, first raised it at Roxbury Heritage State Park in Boston in 2000, and the date "June 19, 1865" was added seven years later. ^{[5] [3]}

Utah House Bill 77, Flag Display Amendments, bars a government entity from displaying a flag on government property outside an exempt list, and bars displaying an exempt flag "with alterations in color, symbols, or appearance". Among the exemptions is "a flag that represents a city, municipality, county, or political subdivision of the state". The state auditor investigates complaints and may fine an entity $500 per violation per day if it does not cure within 30 days. The bill takes effect on 7 May 2025. ^[6] The enacted law does not name Pride, transgender or Juneteenth flags; news coverage and the bill's opponents described it in those terms, and Salt Lake City adopted its designs as city flags the day before it took effect. ^{[8] [1]}

The ordinance enacts a new chapter 1.09 of the Salt Lake City Code, City Flags, and states that the four city flags "equally represent the City". ^[1]

The sego lily in the upper hoist canton is the emblem of Salt Lake City's 2020 flag. The city opened a public call for submissions in spring 2020, received more than 600 entries, and narrowed them to eight for public rating and then to two finalists: a honeybee over a honeycomb, and a sego lily on a deep blue triangle under sky blue. The adopted flag merged the two, pairing the blue and white field with the lily. Its designers were Arianna Meinking, then 18 and recently graduated from West High School, and Elio Kennedy-Yoon, then 17 and a senior there. The mayor's letter announcing the flag is dated October 2020. ^[7]

Lineage

Companion flags

Sego Belonging Flag, Sego Visibility Flag

The composition is the Juneteenth Flag's: a horizon arc dividing blue above from red below, a white five-pointed star at the centre, and a white bursting nova around it. Ben Haith designed that flag in 1997. Its illustrator, Lisa Jeanne Graf, records the contributions separately: "The Juneteenth Flag was designed by Boston Ben (Ben Haith). People who contributed to the process were Verlene Hines, Azim, and Eliot Design. As an illustrator I fine tuned their vision." ^{[5] [3]} No Salt Lake City document names Haith, Graf or the Juneteenth Flag; the city's flag page calls the device "the iconic bursting star representing freedom", which acknowledges an existing emblem without saying whose. ^[7]

The sego lily is the emblem of Salt Lake City's own 2020 flag. ^[7] The Juneteenth Flag and the 2020 Sego Flag are source works without Encycloflaggia entries of their own. Ordinance 25 of 2025 adopted this design alongside the Sego Belonging and Sego Visibility flags: companions adopted in one instrument, not siblings, which the archive reserves for flags sharing a documented parent. ^[1]

Colors & Symbolism

The ordinance states that the flag "represents the City's commitment to bringing all Americans together to celebrate our common bond of freedom through the recognition, observance, education and historic preservation of Juneteenth as a federal, state, and City holiday", and assigns a meaning to each element. ^[1]

Sampled from the city's published artwork. ^[4]

The red, white and blue

Colours "the same as the American flag, representing the City's ethos that freedom belongs to all Americans". ^[1]

The horizontal arc

"A new horizon and promise of better things to come for Black Americans, including Black Americans in the City." ^[1]

The white star

"The state of Texas where Juneteenth originated", and "the recognition of freedom of Black Americans in all 50 states". ^[1]

The white nova around the star

"A new beginning and freedom for Black Americans across the nation, including Black Americans in the City." ^[1]

The sego lily

A flower that "has grown in the Salt Lake Valley for millennia", representing "the resilience, acceptance, and belonging that exemplifies Salt Lake City and its residents". The ordinance gives the same sentence to all four city flags. ^[1]

The golden stamen

"The future growth that comes with each succeeding generation." ^[1]

Three accounts sit behind this design and should not be merged. The ordinance reads the red, white and blue together as the American flag's colours, and gives the arc, star and nova the meanings quoted above. ^[1] The city's flag page adds a reading the ordinance does not carry: that red symbolises "the blood shed by those who were enslaved". ^[7] Lisa Jeanne Graf, who illustrated the original Juneteenth Flag, states its symbolism as "a bursting 'new star', on the horizon. The star represents A NEW FREEDOM, A NEW PEOPLE, A NEW STAR. The red, white, and blue colors communicate that the American Slaves, and their descendants were all Americans." ^[5]

The ordinance names the colours in words and publishes no numeric values, saying only that the red, white and blue are "the same as the American flag". ^[1] The values above are measurements from the city's published artwork, which is a JPEG, not an official digital specification. ^[4] The stamen samples #FEB415 in all three 2025 artworks, drawn at the same size in the Belonging and Visibility files and smaller in the Celebration file.

Design

Aspect Ratio

3:5 · standard

Ratio Notes

The ordinance specifies no proportion. Salt Lake City's published artwork is 1500 by 903 pixels, which is close to 3:5 without being exactly it. The archive records 3:5 as a standardized production ratio rather than an ordinance-specified measurement; Project Rainbow Utah manufactures the Sego flags at 3 by 5 feet. ^[4]

Orientation

horizontal

Stripe Count

0

Layout

a field divided by an arc, with a central device and a canton emblem

Center Symbol

A white five-pointed star within a white twelve-point nova

Additional Symbols

A horizontal arc dividing blue above from red below, A white three-petal sego lily with a six-prong golden stamen in the upper hoist canton, The words "June 19, 1865" running vertically at the fly

The ordinance specifies "a horizontal arc dividing the flag into two parts, with the top portion being blue and the bottom portion being red", "a white five pointed star in the center of the flag", "a white twelve point nova surrounding the central star", and "a white three petal sego lily with a six prong golden stamen in the upper hoist canton". ^[1]

Measurement of the city's artwork gives the arc's shape: it is symmetrical and shallow, crossing at about 66 per cent of the depth at both the hoist and the fly and rising to about 55 per cent across the middle third. The lily sits in the upper hoist, its stamen spanning 13 to 18 per cent of the width and 20 to 31 per cent of the depth. ^[4]

The city's published artwork carries the words "June 19, 1865" set vertically down the fly. Although the ordinance's written appearance clause does not enumerate the date, the incorporated design image includes "June 19, 1865" vertically at the fly. ^{[1] [4]} The Juneteenth Flag itself gained the date in 2007. ^[3]

A blue field over red, divided by a shallow arc, with a white five-pointed star inside a white twelve-point nova at the centre, a white sego lily with a golden stamen in the upper hoist canton, and the words "June 19, 1865" down the fly.

Usage & Adoption

Organizations

Salt Lake City

Geographic Usage

Salt Lake City, Utah

Event Usage

Early Juneteenth celebration and inaugural flag raising, Salt Lake City Hall, 10 June 2025 ^[11]

Current Status

In use as one of four Salt Lake City flags

The ordinance leaves the choice of which flag to fly to the mayor: "The Mayor or their designee shall determine which City Flag or Flags to display at a given time." When more than one flag flies on a pole the order from the top is the United States flag, the Utah state flag, then a city flag. ^[1]

KSL documents the inaugural raising at City Hall on 10 June 2025, at an early Juneteenth celebration that included a reading of General Order No. 3, remarks by Mayor Erin Mendenhall and participation by Black community leaders. ^[11] Associated Press photography documents the newly adopted city flags displayed at the Salt Lake City and County Building on 7 May 2025. ^[10]

Image Archive

Official City Artwork

Discourse & Debates

Criticisms

• Utah Governor Spencer Cox criticised the city's flags at a press conference on the day of the Juneteenth raising: "They're dumb flags, and it was a dumb bill," he said, noting that other racial and ethnic groups are left out, "I'm sure they feel great that they got around this dumb law, and they did it with dumb flags. The whole thing is dumb." ^[11]

Community reception

Betty Sawyer, director of the Utah Juneteenth Freedom & Heritage Festival, spoke in support of this flag in the meeting's public comment period. The minutes record that she "spoke in support of the proposed city flag design that honored the Juneteenth Holiday and described looking forward to honoring the history and heritage of the event". Randell Hoffman spoke in support of the flag designs as a group. No comment against the flags is recorded. The council's remarks are summarised in the minutes rather than quoted. ^[2]

Footnotes & Citations

Image Sources

Rendering

The city's published artwork

• The city's own published rendering of the flag it adopted. ^[4] · Credit: Salt Lake City Corporation · SLC.gov · 1500 × 903Rights Published by Salt Lake City for download. The city states no licence beyond saying the design "is approved for creating flags and designs".
• Salt Lake City's published artwork for the Sego Celebration Flag, 1500 by 903 pixels, the file the city offers for download and the source of this entry's colour and geometry measurements. The vertical date at the fly also appears in the design image incorporated in the ordinance. ^[4] · Credit: Salt Lake City Corporation · SLC.govRights Published by Salt Lake City for download; the city states no licence beyond saying the design is approved for creating flags and designs. The archive's WebP is a conversion of that file.