Anarchists have employed certain symbols for their cause since the 19th century, including most prominently the circle-A, black flag or the black cat. Bisected flags, often using the black flag as a basis, are also frequent for various anarchist tendencies, such as the black and red or black and purple flags, respectively for anarcho-syndicalism and anarcha-feminism.

Anarchist cultural symbols have become more prevalent in popular culture since around the turn of the 21st century, concurrent with the anti-globalization movement and with the punk subculture.

The red flag was one of first anarchist symbols; it was widely used in late 19th century by anarchists worldwide. Peter Kropotkin wrote that he preferred the use of the red flag. French anarchist Louise Michel wrote that the flag "frightens the executioners because it is so red with our blood. [...] Those red and black banners wave over us mourning our dead and wave over our hopes for the dawn that is breaking."

Use of the red flag by anarchists largely disappeared after the October Revolution, when red flags started to be associated only with Bolshevism and communist parties and authoritarian, bureaucratic and reformist social democracy, or authoritarian socialism.

The origins of the black flag as an anarchist symbol are uncertain. In any case, by the early 1880, Black was already an anarchist color, for example Black International was the name of a London-based British anarchist group founded in July 1881, the Mano Negra ('Black Hand'), an alleged anarchist organization in Spain were strongly associated with anarchism.

For the black flag specifically, it was flown in the 1831 Canut revolt, in which black represented the mourning of liberty lost for those Lyonnese silk workers - although they weren't anarchist.

In September 1882, the Black Band ('Bande Noire'), autonomous groups of anarchist or anarchist influenced miners in Saône-et-Loire - an area close to Lyon where the Canuts had flown the black flag - published a communiqué in the Lyonnese anarchist L'Étendard révolutionnaire ('The Revolutionary Standard') where they said : 'the 'Black Band' is the 'Band of Misery', the black flag we have raised is the flag of hunger, of strike, of all-out struggle on the ground of the social revolution, of the annihilation of capital, of employers, of the exploitation of man by man'.

However, this association of a specific black flag with anarchism did not occur on a big scale until the demonstration of 9 March 1883. During this demonstration, Louise Michel, a figure of anarchism - who was in Lyon in early 1883 while Kropotkin and 65 other anarchists were targeted for their alleged support to the Black Band activities, and who was herself always dressed in black, carried a black flag made from a rag and a broom, against hunger and poverty.