Thousands of anarchists attended Kropotkin's 1921 funeral behind the black flag. According to the English language newspaper of the Chicago anarchists, it was 'the fearful symbol of hunger, misery and death'. The black flag was displayed in Chicago at an anarchist demonstration in November 1884. The black flag soon made its way to the United States. She wrote, 'the black flag is the flag of strikes and the flag of those who are hungry'. Public pressure soon forced the granting of an amnesty. Michel was arrested and sentenced to six years solitary confinement. With Michel at the front carrying a black flag and shouting 'Bread, work, or lead!,' the crowd of 500 protesters soon marched off towards the boulevard Saint-Germain and pillaged three baker's shops before the police arrested them.

Michel flew the black flag during a demonstration of the unemployed which took place in Paris on March 9, 1883. One of the first known anarchist uses of the black flag was by Louise Michel, participant in the Paris Commune in 1871. Black International was the name of a London anarchist group founded in July 1881. The French anarchist paper, Le Drapeau Noir ( The Black Flag), which existed until 1882, is one of the first published references to use black as an anarchist color. It was flown in the 1831 Canut revolt, in which the black represented the mourning of liberty lost. As anarchism became more and more distinct from socialism in the 1880s, it adopted the black flag in an attempt to differentiate itself. Modern anarchism has a shared ancestry with-amongst other ideologies- socialism, a movement strongly associated with the red flag. The origins of the black flag are uncertain. So black is negation, is anger, is outrage, is mourning, is beauty, is hope, is the fostering and sheltering of new forms of human life and relationship on and with this earth. It is a colour of determination, of resolve, of strength, a colour by which all others are clarified and defined. Black is a mood of anger and outrage at all the hideous crimes against humanity perpetrated in the name of allegiance to one state or another. The black flag is the negation of all flags. Ehrlich writes in Reinventing Anarchy, Again: The black flag has been associated with anarchism since the 1880s, when several anarchist organizations and journals adopted the name Black Flag. Use of the red flag by anarchists largely disappeared after the October Revolution, when red flags started to be associated only with Bolshevism and communist parties and authoritarian, bureaucratic and reformist social democracy, or authoritarian socialism. Peter Kropotkin wrote that he preferred the use of the red flag. The red flag was one of first anarchist symbols and it was widely used in late 19th century by anarchists worldwide. Those red and black banners wave over us mourning our dead and wave over our hopes for the dawn that is breaking. The red banner, which has always stood for liberty, frightens the executioners because it is so red with our blood.

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