A Wabbaseka teacher designed the Arkansas state flag to adorn a U.S. battleship. Willie K. Hocker, a Kentucky native who moved to Arkansas in 1870, had a thirty-four-year teaching career in which she stressed the state’s history. She was also a poet, writing poems titled “Arkansas” and “Ozark Mountaineer.”
When the Daughters of the American Revolution sought to present a flag for the new USS Arkansas in 1912, they learned there was no state flag. Hocker entered a design contest to create one, submitting one that included a red field with a large white diamond with a blue band adorned with twenty-five white stars, since Arkansas was the twenty-fifth state, with the word Arkansas below three blue stars representing France, Spain and the U.S., whose flags had flown over the state.
Hocker’s design was adopted as the state flag in February 1913; the General Assembly changed it ten years later, moving the three stars below the state’s name and adding a single star above denoting the Confederacy.
To learn more, visit encyclopediaofarkansas.net.
Read the Encyclopedia entry at Hocker, Willie Kavanaugh - Encyclopedia of Arkansas.
