“I looked at the flags flying on the various government buildings around the Civic Center. This message is best described by Baker himself:
camera icon © David Edelman/Dreamstimeīut the rainbow flag doesn’t just symbolize representation of LGBTQ people - it is also a message of power and rebellion. And this was a conversation that people were having, not just me and my friends, but all around the country, and I think around the world that we lacked that unifying emblem …”Ī small mural of Harvey Milk looks down from the window of his former home on Castro Street directly above the site of his camera shop, a community gathering place for LGBTQ activists in the 1970s. Milk and Baker wanted a symbol that represented everyone.Ĭleve Jones, a personal friend of Milk and Baker who played a prominent role in the gay rights movements of the ’70s and ’80s, said, “There were other symbols - there were the intertwined gender symbols that had their roots in the feminist movement, but we really didn’t have a symbol that united all of us. In his campaigns for the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, Milk advocated that to make progress for gay rights, it was also necessary to advocate for Black rights, Mexican rights, Asian American rights and those of other marginalized groups. The most popular queer symbol at the time was the pink triangle - previously used to mark gay people during the Holocaust - and was used most frequently by gay cisgender men. Milk asked Baker to create a symbol for LGBTQ people that had a positive meaning behind it. camera icon Gareth Watkins, CC BY 3.0īaker created the flag in 1978, at a time when there were few symbols available to represent LGBTQ communities. As Pride points out, a plethora of other flags were designed to represent different groups within the LGBTQIA+ community.Gilbert Baker in 2012. Today, there are even more pride flags out there. Here are the meanings behind the colors in the current pride flag: The blue that replaced the indigo now symbolizes harmony. Baker dropped yet another stripe, which resulted in the six-stripe version of the flag we use most often today-red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet. According to Baker's estate, that was because when it was hung vertically from the lamp posts of San Francisco's Market Street, the center stripe (turquoise) was obscured by the similarly-colored lamp post itself. As excerpted on the website for his estate, Gilbert's memoir, Rainbow Warrior, includes his memory of deciding to make the rainbow flag: The trio encouraged Baker to create a positive emblem for the LGBTQIA+ community.īaker agreed and he looked to his community for inspiration, specifically those dancing at San Francisco's music venue Winterland Ballroom one night. In the late '70s, Baker was living in San Francisco when he met writer Cleve Jones, filmmaker Artie Bressan, and rising activist Harvey Milk. The First Rainbow FlagĮnter: Gilbert Baker, the man who would create the first rainbow pride flag. Still, activists recognized the need for a more empowering symbol. "Gay people wear the pink triangle today as a reminder of the past and a pledge that history will not repeat itself," read one 1977 letter to the editor in Time. In the late 1970s, the pink triangle was somewhat reclaimed by the gay community. Throughout the Holocaust, the Nazis forced those whom they labeled as gay to wear inverted pink triangle badges, just as they forced Jewish people to wear a yellow Star of David.
This triangle, however, had a loaded, anti-gay history.
Before the rainbow pride flag was created, there was another symbol for the LGBTQIA+ community: a pink triangle.