The Pride Flag – Learn about its amazing history

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You see pride flags everywhere, especially around June. They’re a collective symbol for the LGBTQ+ community, and a symbol of other fun things (more on that later). But have you ever wondered why/how this particular color came to be?

Today, we’re going to look at the history of the rainbow flag and some other interesting tidbits surrounding its years of existence.

riot, pride, flag

The month-long celebration commemorates the Stonewall Riots of June 1969.

If you don’t know the history of human rights, the Stonewall Inn was a bar in the gay district of New York City where the police raided the bar and dragged dozens of gays (I just used the word “en masse”) into the street and arrested them for being… uh… gay.

But they didn’t give up. They fought back. hardBut unlike other cases where police were able to subdue protesters, the LGBT crowd had grown so large that officers were forced to retreat to the Stonewall Inn. They even had to set up barricades inside. However, that did not stop the crowd from prying off street meters and using them as battering rams.

Since then, June has become a month of open celebration. That doesn’t mean there hasn’t been resistance. But the rainbow crowd is no longer bullied. They are now loud and proud.

Who asks whom?

The pride flag is credited to Gilbert BakerBorn in 1951 and raised in Parsons, Kansas, Baker taught herself to sew after being honorably discharged from the Army.

He probably didn’t tell anyone he was gay and a drag queen during his tenure. But afterward, everyone knew. It even reached the ears of Harvey Milk, the first openly gay elected official in the United States.

A big problem

Milk wanted the logo Baker designed to be not just for gay pride, but for pride for all non-heterosexual groups who suffered discrimination.

What was the biggest problem at the time?

The only “gay symbol” at the time was the pink triangle.

If this sounds familiar, you’d be right. Even as the gay community tries to reclaim the symbol used by the Nazis in their death crusade, it’s been soaked in too much horrific history to preserve it in any form.

“We need something beautiful. Something that comes from ourselves,” Baker argued.

Finally, he decided to make the symbol into a flag, mainly because he believed that a flag was the most powerful symbol of pride. “orMy job as a gay man is to come out, to be myself, to be authentic, and like I said, to be free of lies. The flag really fits into that mission because it’s a way to say who you are, or to say, ‘This is who I am! ’”

Draw from inspiration

Some of the details about the inspiration for the flag come from Baker himself. The rest is rumor, and it’s pretty cool either way…

• Baker was inspired by the American flag and its stacked lines, and was also inspired by Pop Art of the time.
• It also has a lot of connections to the hippie movement of the sixties.
• He also noted that the use of this design dates back to ancient Egypt.

Some say the flag was inspired by Judy Garland’s song “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” and the actress’s status as a gay icon (sometimes referred to as “Dorothy’s Friend”). But Baker refuted the rumors, saying the rainbow was “A natural flag. It comes from the sky.”

Original colors and variations

Baker and a team of volunteers handcrafted the flags, and the first version flew at the San Francisco Gay and Lesbian Freedom Day Parade on June 25, 1978. Each stripe has a color that has a meaning.

• Sexy Hot Pink
• Red represents life
• Orange represents healing
• Yellow represents sunshine
• Green for nature
• Turquoise Art
• Indigo represents harmony
• Purple represents spirit

However, the pink was removed from the original Pride flag due to the difficulty in finding fabric and dye in that color. The turquoise was removed to make the flag look more symmetrical when hung vertically.

The flag was changed again in 1979. The original plan was to decorate the streetlights along the parade route with hundreds of rainbow flags, but Baker decided to split the flag in two, with an equal number of stripes on each lamppost.

To achieve this, he dropped the turquoise stripe, and the flag eventually became a six-strip version that would become the standard for future national flags – red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple.

Interesting Facts About the Pride Flag

• In 1988, a man named John Stout and the LGBT pride flag gained national attention when he sued his West Hollywood landlord for the right to display the flag on his balcony.

• In June 2004, LGBT activists sailed to Australia’s uninhabited Coral Sea Islands Territory They declared this a separate territory from Australia, calling it Coral Sea Islands Gay Kingdom The rainbow flag is the official flag of the kingdom.

• For more than four decades it was thought to be lost, but part of the original eight-color rainbow flag from 1978 has finally been rediscovered. In April 2021 it was donated to LGBT History Societythis section is the only known remnant of the two inaugural rainbow flags.

• The rainbow flag didn’t truly become a symbol of LGBTQ pride until 1994, when Baker created a mile-long rainbow flag to mark the 25th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots.

Are there any other facts about the Pride flag you’d like to add? Please share them in the comments!