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Francophiles Sans Frontières (U.S.)

Southeast Florida

image by Cristina Falcone-McKevitt and Luc Baronian, 27 April 2005

Development of the flag

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Development of the flag

I received an email from Cristina Falcone-McKevitt, Executive Director of Francophiles sans Frontières (FSF), an association of Francophones and francophiles in Florida, who enquired about whether there existed a flag for Francophones of the South-East USA, and if not, what would be a good way to go about creating and adopting one.

I replied that there existed no such flag to the best of my knowledge (apart from Cajun and Creole flags of Louisiana), made some recommendations and gave Peter Orenski (who wrote a book about the process of adopting a flag) as a reference.

Later that month, I received an email from Sophie Rault of Britanny, who, having heard about the project from Orenski, had already come up with a design:

image by Sophie Rault and Luc Baronian, 27 April 2005

The flag is based on that of the "State of Muskogee" (1799-1803), which according to Dov Gutterman (12 October 1998) was "designed by Augustus Bowels after a congress of Crees and Seminoles elected him as director general of the State of Muskogee. Bowels was captured by the Spanish in 1803 and died shortly later in Havana prison." Sophie Rault added three fleur de lys symbolizing France.

I forwarded the suggestion to Cristina Falcone-McKevitt, but I don't know whether they considered it or not, though it seems to have influenced their own first stab at a flag. Indeed, in December 2001, I received an email from Nicole Frétigny, another member of the association, asking me my opinion about a flag design for their association.

image by Nicole Frétigny and Luc Baronian, 27 April 2005

Nicole Frétigny's description: "The sun represents Florida, the fleur de lys represents Quebec and the red Canada, the palm tree represents the Antilles and Guadeloupe [sic], the moon and stars are for Europe. The cross is for the commonwealth. The spirit behind the Sun, the Moon and the Stars is that FSF is looking after you day and night."

I suggested to replace the moon by a gold star to represent Europe (since the European flag has twelve gold stars) and Acadians, and to make the fleur de lys and palm tree plain gold to reduce the number of colors (and cost):

image by Luc Baronian, 27 April 2005

In June 2002, I heard back from Cristina Falcone-McKevitt. They had contacted a "designer" who sent them two versions, both entirely different from the original design:

image by Luc Baronian, 27 April 2005

image by Cristina Falcone-McKevitt and Luc Baronian, 27 April 2005

Ms. Falcone-McKevitt told me they preferred the one with the gold fleur de lys, but that it would need to be "more defined", though they already had a text explaining the meaning (which I didn't have a chance to read).

At this point, I suggested to remove the complex motives behind the fleur de lys and instead to counter-change the field inside the sun, thus simplifying the design as follows:

image by Luc Baronian, 27 April 2005

Later that same month, I received two more versions from Ms. Falcone-McKevitt, who informed me they were still leaning towards a gold fleur de lys. At this point, the previous designs had been simplified a lot and the sun had been replaced by a ring.

image by Cristina Falcone-McKevitt and Luc Baronian, 27 April 2005

image by Cristina Falcone-McKevitt and Luc Baronian, 27 April 2005

Finally, in August 2002, Cristina Falcone-McKevitt forwarded two new designs, where the ring had been removed and the fleur de lys made taller, and she announced that they had chosen the one with a white fleur de lys, and that the flag was to be presented at the MusicFest in Miami.

image by Cristina Falcone-McKevitt and Luc Baronian, 27 April 2005
(both images forwarded by Cristina Falcone-McKevitt, edited by Luc Baronian)

The symbolism, according to Ms. Falcone-McKevitt's email, is as follows: "The flag represents the Francophiles living in the South East United States. The red, blue and white recall the colors of the French flag and the colors of the American flag. The fleur de lys is the symbol of Francophony in the world."

However, it seems that in the end, the flag was first unveiled on November 1st 2002, celebrating the first anniversary of the Fort Lauderdale-based Francophiles Sans Frontières, founded in September 2001. The flag was hand-sown by Nicole Frétigny.

I don't know whether the designer was conscious of this, but the flag looks like a combination of Haitian colors (albeit vertical) with Quebec's fleur de lys, which is not a bad idea or coincidence, since Haitians and Quebecers are probably the two largest Francophone minorities of Florida.

Luc Baronian