Anarchists have employed certain symbols for their cause since the 19th century, including most prominently the circle-A, the black flag or the black cat. Bisected flags, often using the black flag as a basis, are also frequent for various anarchist tendencies, such as the red and black or black and purple flags, respectively for anarcho-syndicalism and anarcha-feminism.
Since the latter half of the 20th century, the movement has been rejuvenated by the use of new symbols, easier to draw and more recognizable, the most famous of them being the circle-A.
Anarchist cultural symbols have become more prevalent in popular culture since around the turn of the 21st century, concurrent with the anti-globalization movement and with the punk subculture.
Flags
Red flag
thumb|upright|left|The red flag, one of the first anarchist symbols
The red flag was one of the first anarchist symbols; it was widely used in late 19th century by anarchists worldwide. Peter Kropotkin wrote that he preferred the use of the red flag. French anarchist Louise Michel wrote that the flag "frightens the executioners because it is so red with our blood. [...] Those red and black banners wave over us mourning our dead and wave over our hopes for the dawn that is breaking."
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.
For the black flag specifically, it was flown in the 1831 Canut revolt, in which black represented the mourning of liberty lost for those Lyonnese silk workers - although they weren't anarchist. The question of the black flag was debated in 1881 in Lyon's circles, when the anarchist Claude Bernard opposed the removal of the black flag during a meeting. He declared that keeping this flag was necessary to honour the Canut revolt, the Lyon revolts of 1848, and the Lyon Commune (1871).
The following year, the Black Band, a group or groups of insurrectionary anarchist miners connected to the anarchists of Lyon, published communiqués in the Lyonnese anarchist L'Étendard révolutionnaire ('The Revolutionary Standard') where they retook the black flag as a symbol - on the first such occurrence, they said : <blockquote>'The 'Black Band' is the 'Band of Misery', the black flag we have raised is the flag of hunger, of strike, of all-out struggle on the ground of the social revolution, of the annihilation of capital, of employers, of the exploitation of man by man'.</blockquote>thumb|Front page of [[Le Monde illustré depicting Louise Michel carrying the black flag and inciting demonstrators to loot a bakery during the demonstration of 9 March 1883. Her flag has the inscription 'Bread or Death' but it's not certain that something was written on it during the event.]]
However, this association of a specific black flag with anarchism did not occur on a big scale until the demonstration of 9 March 1883. During this demonstration, Louise Michel, a figure of anarchism - who was in Lyon in early 1883 while Kropotkin and 65 other anarchists were targeted for their alleged support to the Black Band activities, and who was herself always dressed in black, carried a black flag made from a rag and a broom, against hunger and poverty.<blockquote>Ah certainly, Mr. Attorney General, you find it strange that a woman dares to defend the black flag. Why did we shelter the demonstration under the black flag? Because this flag is the flag of strikes and it indicates that the worker has no bread. [...] The people are dying of hunger, and they do not even have the right to say that they are dying of hunger. Well, I took the black flag and went to say that the people were without work and without bread. That is my crime; judge it as you will.</blockquote>After this, the black flag started to be gradually associated with anarchism, when several anarchist organizations and journals adopted the name Black Flag and retook this legacy. Anarchism has a shared tradition with—among other ideologies—socialism, a movement strongly associated with the red flag. As anarchism became more and more distinct from socialism in the 1880s, the black flag was also a good way to differentiate itself. shortly after Michel's trial for the protest, is one of the first published references to use the black flag in its name. The black flag soon made its way to the United States. The black flag was displayed in Chicago at an anarchist demonstration in November 1884. According to the English-language newspaper of the Chicago anarchists, it was "the fearful symbol of hunger, misery and death". Thousands of anarchists attended Kropotkin's 1921 funeral behind the black flag.
The black flag has since been reinterpreted by various anarchists as signifying other meanings in addition to those noted by Michel; the researcher and anarchist Howard J. Ehrlich, for example, wrote in 1996 that: