The original flag of the State of Alabama was very different to the current flag. It was designed by a group of Alabama women in 1861. It featured the words, “Independent Now and Forever” over the Goddess of Liberty on one side. The other side had a cotton plant and a rattlesnake with the Latin words “Noli Me Tangere,” meaning “Touch Me Not.”
Quote: States101: Alabama Images: Wikipedia
I stumbled onto this in a weird way, looking for info about car decals and Alabama, since I just did a road trip there and back from New York. I wasn’t aware that the phrase “noli me tangere” was ever used in Alabama for anything significant. My only exposure to it was the book by Jose Rizal:
Noli Me Tángere (Latin for “Touch Me Not”) is a novel by Filipino writer and activist José Rizal published during the Spanish colonial period of the Philippines. It explores perceived inequities in law and practice in terms of the treatment by the ruling government and the Spanish Catholic friars of the resident peoples in the late-19th century.
Wikipedia
The reasons for using the phrase are pretty similar for both the women in Alabama creating a State flag and for Jose Rizal, who both saw themselves as part of an oppressed group being trampled on by outside forces: the Union Army for Alabama and the Spanish colonizers for Jose Rizal.
The choice of the rattlesnake on the original Alabama flag makes me wonder if it was partially inspired by the Gadsden flag, which was created and used during the American Revolutionary War by US Continental forces fighting the British. It included the phrase “DONT TREAD ON ME”, which is pretty similar to “noli me tangere” / “touch me not”, though I wonder what they were thinking of exactly when they chose that phrase. For Jose Rizal, it seems more clear. Noli me tangere is a reference to John 20:17, and considering the use of Catholicism as a form of oppression in the Philippines, he was almost certainly making a religious appeal, though I haven’t read the book yet so I couldn’t say for sure.
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