A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE PUERTO RICAN FLAG

In 1895, the Puerto Rican Revolutionary Committee called "Club Borinquen" composed of revolutionary exiles in New York adopted a new flag. It had the same design as the Cuban flag, but with the colors inverted. The flag tied the affiliation between the two country's revolutions,

After the United States took over Puerto Rico in 1898, the flag changed again. Due to a rise in support of Puerto Rican Independence, in 1948 Law 53, known as Ley de la Mordaza ("The Gag Law"), made it a felony act to own or display any Puerto Rican flag.

In 1952, the U.S. government officially adopted the Puerto Rican National Flag as the official flag with changes in its colors to distance it from it's revolutionary origins.

The official flag has remained in place since then, however, in 2016 a group called Artistas Solidarixs y en Resistencia (Artists in Solidarity and Resistance) created the mourining flag. The group stripped the flag of the colors of the United States, instead opting for black and white as a message against U.S. oversight.