What is the history of the Black Flag?
There are ample accounts of the use of black flags by anarchists. Probably the most famous was Nestor Makhno’s partisans during the Russia Revolution. Under the black banner, his army routed a dozen armies and kept a large portion of the Ukraine free from concentrated power for a good couple of years (see Peter Arshinov’s History of the Makhnovist Movement for details of this important movement). On the black flag was embroidered “Liberty or Death” and “The Land to the Peasant, The Factories to the Workers.” In 1925, the Japanese anarchists formed the Black Youth League and, in 1945, when the anarchist federation reformed, their journal was named Kurohata (Black Flag). [Peter Marshall, Demanding the Impossible, p. 475 and pp. 525-6] In 1968, students carried black (and red) flags during the massive General Strike in France, bringing the resurgence of anarchism in the 1960s into the view of the general public. The same year saw the Black Flag being raised at the American Students for a
