They stitch the American flag. What it means to them is complicated

In South Boston, Virginia, the nearly Civil War–era company Annin Flagmakers turns out the Stars and Stripes through long shifts and a strict rule: keep politics, money and religion off the factory floor. For the workers sewing hundreds of thousands of handhel

Inside a cavernous warehouse off U.S. Route 58 in South Boston, Virginia, thin strips of red and white cotton cascade over nearly every surface. They’re piled high in plastic bins, sprawled over tables, and fed underneath bobbing needles. Dozens of sewing machines whirr at once. filling a stark. concrete room where seamstresses work eight and sometimes 12 hours a day—stitching the American flag.

The company is Annin Flagmakers. which bills itself as the oldest and largest manufacturer of the Star-Spangled Banner in the United States. Founded in 1847, Annin says it is one of the few companies still making the flag in America. Its flags have marked both celebratory and brutal chapters of U.S. history: they hung at President Abraham Lincoln’s inauguration and draped his coffin; they flew atop Mount Suribachi after the Battle of Iwo Jima; and an Annin flag rocketed to the moon aboard Apollo 11.

In recent years, though, the meaning of the flag has fractured as political disagreements sharpened. Americans have raised it to show pride or protest. brandished it at campaign rallies. burned it in dissent. and laid it next to the graves of fallen soldiers. Rioters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, waved “Old Glory” as they broke windows and busted doors to prevent the transition of power. Demonstrators protesting President Donald Trump at “No Kings” rallies have sought to reclaim the emblem to show their allegiance to the country’s founding principles.

Yet on the factory floor, the workers say they don’t spend much energy worrying about what the flag might become once it leaves their hands.

There’s one rule, said 31-year-old Amber Davis: “Leave politics, money and religion at the door.”

Davis and three other young women—wearing jeans. pajama pants. and T-shirts—push blue handheld flags through the sewing machines as part of an order for America250. the nonpartisan group tasked by Congress with planning this year’s milestone commemoration. America250 is distributing hundreds of thousands of handheld flags at sporting events and community celebrations through an initiative called “America Waves.” Employees at Annin will touch every single one.

For them, the run-up to the Fourth of July is a dizzying sprint. Davis has worked at the factory for about a decade. and she said she has sewn flags with symbols that reflect other places and conflicts as well—Ukrainian. Iranian. and Confederate flags. Annin ceased production of the Confederate flag in 2015, citing its representation of hatred and division.

But the American flag has never been among those Davis said she shudders to make. “No matter what’s going on in the world, this is our job,” Davis said. “We’ve seen them all.”

Melonie Bullock, 32, started at Annin a few months ago. She said the first time she sewed together the blue and red edges of the country’s flag. she felt “a strange sense of connection.” The Waynesboro. North Carolina. native described it as complicated but intimate: “The flag has a different meaning for everyone. ” she said. “For her, it’s a reminder of her mother, a military veteran.”.

Bullock said, “It goes back to family; it goes back to her strength.” Sewing the flag, she said, “I feel like I still get to pay respect to my mom.”

Marilisa Nunez, 26, said she considers something else meaningful every time the stars and stripes cross her desk. “A better life,” Nunez said. Her parents emigrated to the United States from Mexico. She said she has spent her days gabbing with colleagues and evenings playing Minecraft with her boyfriend.

For Sandy Doss, the flag was tied to a different kind of change. The mother of two said that a year earlier she had been in prison, and that the job at Annin was a second chance. Gazing at the flag in front of her, she smiled and described a wave of pride.

“You’re driving down the road, and you see a flag, and you’re like, ‘Oh, I probably made that,’” Doss said. “You feel accomplished ’cause you had a hand in that.”

Across Annin’s long history. the flags have turned up in surprising places. from highway service stations and high schools to the White House and outer space. An Annin flag was aboard the Artemis II mission in April. Annin says that Artemis II took astronauts the farthest distance from Earth humans have traveled.

Sales have also moved with America’s political calendar and national mood. The company said demand dipped during the Great Depression and Vietnam War and rose amid the patriotic fervor of World War II and the bicentennial. Presidential elections are almost always met with a spike in new orders.

Joan Snead, 62, said she doesn’t care much whether people are buying the flag, as long as she is still able to stitch it. Being patriotic, she said, means she’s “not picky.”

“I don’t want nobody telling me when I can cook, when I can’t cook, when I can go somewhere, when I can’t go somewhere,” Snead said.

Talika Chappell, 55, sang gospel songs as she maneuvered long stripes of red and white stripes onto her desk. She said that in all her years working at Annin. she hadn’t thought much about what the flag meant to her. She said she cared only that the women who worked under her didn’t drag it on the floor.

When she thought about being American, Chappell pictured herself sitting on the couch and eating a large pot of crab legs as her seven grandchildren played on the floor. Recently, she said, she gifted an Annin flag to a neighbor who owns a restaurant.

“I want to give you a flag that I put my hands all over,” she remembered telling him.

Near the front of the warehouse, the work turns mechanical and exact. Workers man an ink-splattered machine that stamps 13 crisp stripes and a field of stars onto 3-feet by 5-feet pieces of white fabric. After each print. the machine washes the leftover pigment from its gears. turning the once distinctly red and blue dyes into an oozing purple liquid. Workers said the scent from the chemicals can make you lightheaded if you watch the rhythm of the churn too long.

For Mark Layne, the experience is still sentimental. Annin’s operations director has strode past this scene every workday for more than two decades. He said that on one spring morning. as he watched the machine spool the finished flags. he reflected on a trip he’d recently taken with his grandchildren to the 9/11 Memorial & Museum in New York City.

Layne said he stared for a long time at the reflection pools there. As they walked away, his grandson spotted a handheld American flag stuck in a crevice next to one of the 2,983 names etched in bronze. Layne said the flag was an Annin flag.

“Tears welled in Layne’s eyes,” he said, adding that the moment moved him because his work helped someone remember a person they loved and lost. His voice cracked as he described it.

“We come to work because we have to eat. We need to have a roof over our heads,” Layne said. “But what a glorious thing to be able to make.”

The sequence is stark: even as Americans use the flag in ways that can signal everything from loyalty to alienation, the people who sew it describe keeping that noise out of the building—and placing their own meanings in the stitches instead.

For now. Annin and its workers are preparing for the biggest stretch of the year. when the factory’s output heads toward sporting events and community celebrations as part of America250’s America Waves initiative. The flag’s political arguments may continue far beyond the warehouse walls—but for Davis. Bullock. Nunez. Doss. Snead. Chappell. and Layne. the work itself remains stubbornly personal.

At this scale, the stars and stripes become more than a national symbol. In South Boston, they’re something workers can point to with their own hands—each one holding a different answer to what freedom is, and what it costs to keep making it.

Annin Flagmakers American flag production America250 America Waves South Boston Virginia Fourth of July flags United States economy manufacturing jobs 9/11 Memorial Apollo 11 flag