Baker’s artistic proclivities did, however, play a central role in turquoise being dropped, obliged to cut the colour by his preference for an even number of stripes on the flags to adorn the streetlamps of Market Street. When he sat down to redesign the flag for the following year’s parade, this time with the mind to “festoon the route with hundreds of flags”, Koskovich says, a lawsuit over funding nearly halted the project. In the wake of Gay Freedom Day, Baker wanted to arrange commercial fabrication, the first hitch being that flag fabric was unavailable in hot pink. The enduring rainbow flag design incorporates only six colours, broadly the result of logistical limitations as opposed to artistic choice. Last week, however, the GLBT Historical Society announced that a segment of one flag, measuring at around 28 by 12 feet, was exhumed, authenticated and delivered to the society by the Gilbert Baker Foundation, to be the centrepiece of a new exhibition celebrating Baker’s life and work. The original flags were thought lost for decades. “One also featured a corner square of tie-dyed white stars on a blue field, a suggestion from Segerblom as a response to the United States flag.” While little attention is generally paid to the semiotic meanings of each colour in the present, Baker himself attributed pink for sex, red for life, orange for healing, yellow for the sun, turquoise for magic, blue for serenity and violet for spirit. “Each had eight stripes in rainbow colours,” he continues. The flags, sizing in at around thirty feet high by sixty feet wide, were the brainchildren of the Gay Freedom Day Decorations Committee, cochaired by Gilbert Baker and Lynn Segerblom – “self-proclaimed hippies”, Koskovich says. “At the Plaza entrance, marchers were welcomed by an exceptional sight: in place of the United States and United Nations flags usually flown from a towering pair of flagpoles, two enormous rainbow banners billowed overhead.” Their contemporary symbolism had yet to be established, of course, but as Koskovich asserts, “They created a beautifully paradoxical impression, at once festive and awe-inspiring.” “To reach Civic Center, the route turned just once, veering to the right at United Nations Plaza,” says Koskovich. The 1978 parade began on Market Street and ended with a festival in front of San Francisco City Hall. By 1978, the event boasted almost a quarter of a million revellers from across the United States and, indeed, the globe. The first had occurred eight years prior, attracting just a handful of marchers. On 25 June 1978, San Franciscans across the city celebrated Gay Freedom Day, as the annual Pride celebration was then known.
Queer British writer, Jake Hall, author of "The Art of Drag," will further explain each detail you need to know about the different Pride flags and the communities they represent - including the Bisexual Pride flag and Trans Pride flag, while the artist Rigel Gemini’ shares his reflection about what it means to be a non-binary mixed artist in the music industry.When it comes to the rainbow flag, we know, for sure, how and when things began. For example Red represents Life, Orange means Healing, and Pink represents Sex.
You will learn how, created in 1978 by Gilbert Baker with a team of artists under the impulsion of Harvey Milk’s iconic speech, the original flag displayed 8 colors and for each, a specific meaning.
#History of the gay flag full
Today, 43 years after the flag was first raised, we are partnering with Google Arts & Culture - along with 12 other cultural institutions - to make stories about this iconic rainbow flag available to anyone, anywhere in the world.Īs part of the “ Beyond the Rainbow'' hub, everyone can dive back into the history of the LGBTQIA+ movement through the colors of the iconic Pride flag whose design and many iterations led it to become a symbol that would represent the full spectrum of the LGBTQIA+ community and carry the memory of the fights for LGBTQIA+ rights and a better representation of all the LGBTQIA+ identities around the world, until today. The Gilbert Baker Foundation uncovered this priceless artifact in 2019 and donated it to the GLBT Historical Society of San Francisco to make it accessible to all. On June 4th 2021, a piece of LGBTQIA+ history that we thought was long lost resurfaced: the original rainbow pride flag that was first raised on Jin San Francisco’s United Nations Plaza.