[2] 2012 competition finalists After 1,500 votes were cast by members of the public, a design by 11-year old Gracie Sheppard of Redhill School, Stourbridge was announced as the winning entry at the museum's Festival of Steam, celebrating 300 years of the Newcomen atmospheric engine.

[5] The flag was flown at Eland House, the headquarters of the Department for Communities and Local Government on 14 July 2013 to celebrate 'Black Country Day' and also Britain's role in leading the Industrial Revolution.

[9] Vernon later said that the reaction to his comments on the Express & Star website and harassment on his Twitter account reflected "a degree of scepticism and criticism of 'political correctness gone mad' in suggesting that the Black Country ever had some involvement in the slave trade.

[16] Writing in The Guardian in July 2017, activist Matthew Stallard, a former University of Manchester student, claimed that it was "a historical fact that the Black Country was a key provider of metalworked goods to the slave trade and plantation economies of the Americas and throughout the British Empire.

[17] In July 2020, against the backdrop of the George Floyd protests, West Midlands Fire Service pre-emptively denied permission to local fire stations to fly the Black Country flag on Black Country Day "until we have a clear understanding of the meaning of the chains [on the flag]" due to the potential link to slavery.