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Eventually, the indigo was replaced by royal blue, giving us the six-striped flag (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple) we know today. Baker also removed the turquoise to maintain an even number of colours. Initially, Baker’s had eight coloured stripes: pink for sexual liberation, red for life, orange for healing, yellow for the sun, green for serenity and nature, turquoise for art, blue for harmony and violet for the human spirit.īut in November 1978, when a march was organized to protest the assassination of Harvey Milk, Baker’s friend and the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in California, Baker worked with the Paramount Flag Company to produce a seven-striped version because the pink was not commercially available. Baker used the symbolism of the rainbow because, he said, “We are all of the colours. It began during the Pride Parade in San Francisco in 1978 when Gilbert Baker, American graphic artist and LGBTQ+ political activist, designed what is thought to be the first gay pride flag that would become a key symbol of Gay Pride for years to come. Today the rainbow flag is, for many cultures, a symbol of peace, diversity and harmony, but the flag with six stripes is specific to the LGBTQ+ community. As Pride points out, a plethora of other flags were designed to represent different groups within the LGBTQIA+ community.Gilbert Baker (Photo : Spencer Platt -Getty Images)
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The rainbow flag has become widely known as a symbol for the LGBT community. Today, there are even more pride flags out there. What is the Gay Pride flag What do the rainbow colours mean. 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 rainbow flag has been the most widely recognized symbol of LGBTQ+. The First Rainbow FlagĮnter: Gilbert Baker, the man who would create the first rainbow pride flag. June has been international pride month where rainbow flags are raised in unity, including at PCK Intellectual Property. Still, activists recognized the need for a more empowering symbol. The rainbow flag has been the most widely recognized symbol of LGBTQ+ rights and acceptance since 1978, when Gilbert Baker’s design first appeared in the San Francisco Gay Freedom Day Parade. "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.