Charleston's flag features a white field with the municipal seal at the center. Charleston is the capital and largest city of West Virginia – the state that seceded from secession.
The story is strange: when Virginia joined the Confederacy in 1861, the western counties (mountainous, with few enslaved people, culturally different) refused to follow. They seceded from Virginia and joined the Union as a new state in 1863. West Virginia was literally born of the Civil War.
Charleston became the capital in 1885. The West Virginia Capitol, completed in 1932, has a gold dome taller than that of the U.S. Capitol – a source of local pride.
The coal mines in the Appalachians powered America for a century. Union Carbide, DuPont, and other chemical companies built massive plants along the Kanawha River. The Institute area of Charleston (now an industrial zone) produced nylon, neoprene, polyethylene.
But the decline was brutal. The coal mines are closing. The chemical plants are shrinking. The opioid crisis hits West Virginia harder than almost any other state. Charleston has seen its population fall.
Small for a state capital. The city struggles to reinvent itself around tourism, healthcare, education.
The simple white flag shows nothing of these struggles – just an official seal for a capital born in division.