Fourth-Grade Students Design Alamance County Flags for America 250 Celebration

One Alamance County fourth-grader now holds a distinction that will outlast any school year: their flag design is the county's official entry in North Carolina's statewide America 250 commemoration of the nation's 250th anniversary.

The County Flag Challenge showcase filled Alamance Community College's main campus commons and student activities center on March 26, where fourth-grade entries from schools across the county were posted throughout campus for public viewing. Families, teachers, and community members worked through the displays, aided by maps organizers distributed to help attendees locate each flag before the 6:30 p.m. awards ceremony closed out the two-hour event. Light refreshments were available throughout.

Alamance Community College and the Scott Family Collection organized the challenge around two requirements: a visual flag design and a written essay explaining what makes Alamance County distinctive. The pairing asked students to articulate local identity rather than simply illustrate it, connecting visual arts to historical thinking and civic reflection within a single assignment.

The project sits within North Carolina's America 250 NC initiative, the statewide program marking the 250th anniversary of the nation's founding. Each of the state's counties was invited to submit a fourth-grade-designed flag, meaning the entries displayed at ACC on March 26 represented Alamance's answer to a question being posed simultaneously in every county across North Carolina.

By staging the showcase at ACC, organizers brought K-12 classrooms, a community college, and local cultural sponsors together on a single campus for a civic-education experience anchored in a national anniversary, and gave families a public venue to see that work displayed outside a gymnasium.

The selected design will be forwarded to the statewide program as Alamance's official county entry, giving the student designer a permanent place in the county's America 250 record.

The flag showcase was the first of several 250th-themed events planned across Alamance County for 2026. Organizers have also scheduled Battle of Alamance anniversary observances and a July 4 parade in Mebane, extending public engagement with the county's history through the summer months.