In early 1955, Atlanta attorney John Sammons Bell (who later served as a judge on the Georgia Court of Appeals) suggested a new state flag for Georgia that would incorporate the Confederate Battle Flag. At the 1956 session of the General Assembly, state senators Jefferson Lee Davis and Willis Harden introduced Senate Bill 98 to change the state flag. Signed into law on February 13, 1956, the bill became effective the following July 1.

A copy of the new flag displayed at the 1956 signing ceremony shows slight differences from the state flag commonly produced (and shown above). In the 1956 version, the stars are larger, and only the center point of the central star points straight up. Also, the first copies of the 1956 flag used a different version of the state seal. In the summer of 1954, a new redrawn state seal began to appear on state government documents. By the end of the decade, flag makers were using the new seal on Georgia's official state flags.

Computer generated flag image and text from Edwin L. Jackson, Flags That Have Flown Over Georgia (Atlanta: Secretary of State, 1995). © Carl Vinson Institute of Government, The University of Georgia

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