BY SYLVESTER RIVERS

CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Ten years ago when Maria Landry Ross was looking for a flag to display on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, she was surprised to find out that a “King Flag” didn’t exist.

“By nature I’m just a person who likes to have flags and show my awareness through pictorial art,” Ross said.

That started her journey to get an official flag portraying King.

“I had flags for every holiday, and when it came around to January for Martin Luther King’s birthday, I wanted one,” she said.

After searching several discount and department stores, it became clear to her that not only did the stores not have a flag, but the merchants also looked at her as if she was crazy.

“They had them for everything else, so why wouldn’t you have a flag to pay tribute to Dr. King?” she recalled, reflecting back on her initial search for a flag. “I went on my own little mission to create my own flag.”

Ross took an old picture her mother had of King, resized it, gave it a background, stitched and sewed, and created her own King flag, which she raised on a flag pole every January for King Day. 

Ross began thinking about producing the flag in quantities after her mother borrowed the flag for a MLK event at an elementary school in Louisiana and school officials requested their own flag. The Ross family contacted the King Center, the organization founded by King’s late wife, Coretta Scott King, to obtain the rights to market the flag but were refused permission.

The idea took a two-year hiatus but was revisited after a hate crime changed the Ross’s lives.

In 2000, while living in Katy, Texas, a 7-foot cross with flames reaching more than 20 feet high was burned in the Ross’ front yard. Ross said the very thing that King was fighting against happened to her. The family moved from the Houston suburb fearing for their safety, but the incident made her more determined to create and market an official King Flag.

After contacting the King family for the second time, they were once again denied licensing rights.  

Another turning point in her quest to get a flag came in 2003 while visiting her son’s elementary school.

“I asked one of the students why school would be out on the Monday that happened to be King Day,” Ross said. “He didn’t know why he was out of school on Monday. The school didn’t tell him why he was out of school; it was just that it was a holiday.

Ross said she considers the flag a pictorial educational tool.

“I want … for it to be up in their library and put it up year round,” she said.

After resubmitting a revised business plan, which included details of the cross burning, the Intellectual Property Management group for the King estate in May 2008 granted the Ross family exclusive rights to market Ross’ Martin Luther King Commemorative Flag.

The entire Ross family is involved in “Ross Flags and Designs” in Chino Hills. Maria Ross is founder and president, and her husband, Dwayne Ross, is vice president.

“Because of our story and how compelling it was, and what happened to us in the hate crime,” she said, “it totally aligned with his dream in that I was trying to take something that was so negative and turn it into something that was so positive.”