Gilbert Baker was a 27-year-old gay Army veteran who taught himself to sew. In June 1978, he stood with friends on the roof of the Gay Community Center in San Francisco, hand-dyeing trash bags full of muslin in steel garbage cans. By the next morning, two flags with eight rainbow stripes were flying over United Nations Plaza. The world had its first pride flag. He never patented the design. He never made a dime off it. He wanted it to belong to everyone, and that is exactly what happened.
Who Was Gilbert Baker?
Born June 2, 1951 in Chanute, Kansas, Gilbert Baker grew up in a small town where being gay was not an option you spoke out loud. He was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1970 and stationed as a medic in San Francisco during the Vietnam era. After his honorable discharge in 1972, he stayed. The city was changing fast. The Castro was filling with gay men who had been pushed out of everywhere else, and Baker found his people in that crowd.
He picked up a sewing machine and taught himself how to use it. Drag queens needed costumes. Activists needed banners. By the mid-1970s, Baker was the guy people called when they needed something stitched together for a march, a protest, or a stage. He became close friends with Harvey Milk, the first openly gay man elected to public office in California. Milk asked him for a symbol the community could rally around. Something that was not the pink triangle the Nazis had used. Something that belonged to them.
Why a Rainbow?
Baker said the rainbow came to him in pieces. He was at a Winterland concert in San Francisco in 1977 watching the crowd. Disco was at its peak. Hippies and gays and freaks and artists were dancing together under colored lights, and he saw the whole spectrum of humanity in one room. The rainbow was already a symbol of hope. Judy Garland had sung about it. The hippies had used it. But nobody had given it to the gay community as their own.
The pink triangle had been the only widely known symbol for gay people, and it had been forced on them by Nazi concentration camps. Baker wanted something that came from joy, not from persecution. He wanted a flag that said we are here, we are many, we are beautiful, and we picked this for ourselves.
★ Gilbert Baker Fast Facts
| Born | June 2, 1951 in Chanute, Kansas |
| Died | March 31, 2017 in New York City, age 65 |
| Military service | U.S. Army medic, 1970 to 1972 |
| Flag debuted | June 25, 1978, Gay Freedom Day Parade, San Francisco |
| Original stripes | Eight colors, each with a meaning |
| Patent status | Never patented. Public domain by choice. |
The Original Eight Stripes and What Each Color Meant
Baker did not pick colors at random. Every stripe stood for something the gay community was claiming as part of itself. Read top to bottom, the original 1978 flag went like this.
| 1 | Hot pink for sex. Baker put this on top because he refused to let the community be ashamed of desire. Sex was part of the story. It went first. |
| 2 | Red for life. Blood, energy, the literal pulse of being alive. The first inherited color from the natural rainbow. |
| 3 | Orange for healing. A community already carrying loss, grief, and rejection from family. The flag had to hold space for the work of getting better. |
| 4 | Yellow for sunlight. The light. Visibility. Coming out of the dark and being seen for who you are. |
| 5 | Green for nature. Baker wanted to remind people that being gay was natural. Not a disorder. Not a sin. Part of the natural world. |
| 6 | Turquoise for art and magic. The creativity that has always run through queer culture, from cabaret to disco to fashion to film. The unexplainable spark. |
| 7 | Indigo for serenity. The deep calm of finding your people. The harmony you feel when you stop pretending. |
| 8 | Violet for spirit. The soul of the movement. The reason any of this work mattered. Baker put it on the bottom because spirit holds everything else up. |
The very first time Baker raised these flags, on June 25, 1978, at the United Nations Plaza for what was then called the Gay Freedom Day Parade, they were hand-stitched and hand-dyed by Baker and 30 volunteers. The dye crew worked in the attic of the Gay Community Center on Grove Street. They washed the fabric in trash cans because washing machines could not handle that much material. The two original flags were each 30 feet by 60 feet.
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Fly the symbol Baker gave us LGBTQ+ Pride Flag (3x5 ft) The six stripe rainbow flag the world recognizes. Direct descendant of Baker's 1978 original. Heavy duty polyester, two brass grommets. Get the Flag → |
How Eight Stripes Became Six
The flag everyone knows today has six stripes, not eight. The reason is partly tragedy, partly economics.
On November 27, 1978, just five months after the flag debuted, Harvey Milk was assassinated inside San Francisco City Hall along with Mayor George Moscone. The community was wrecked. Demand for the flag exploded as people wanted a way to publicly mourn and stand together. Baker and the Paramount Flag Company tried to manufacture the eight stripe version commercially, and that is where the problems started.
Hot pink fabric was not available in the volume they needed. The dye was rare and expensive. So they dropped the pink stripe. The seven stripe version flew for less than a year. Then in 1979, when planners were preparing to drape the flag down both sides of Market Street for the parade route, they realized seven stripes did not split evenly into two equal halves. They cut turquoise too. That left six. Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet. The flag that has been the standard ever since.
Baker accepted the change. He said in interviews later that the flag belonged to the people who flew it, and if the people needed six stripes for practical reasons, that was the right call. He never tried to claw it back to eight, though he did sometimes raise the original eight stripe version at major events later in his life as a tribute to where it started.
Why Baker Never Patented the Flag
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$0 What Gilbert Baker earned in royalties from the rainbow flag in his lifetime. By choice. He said a symbol of liberation could not be owned. |
Baker could have made a fortune. Rights and licensing alone would have funded the rest of his life many times over. But every time someone asked him why he did not patent the flag, his answer was the same. A flag is a symbol of freedom. You do not put a symbol of freedom behind a paywall. He wanted it in classrooms, on porches, on flagpoles, on the back windows of cars driven by scared kids in towns like the one he grew up in. The point was visibility, not income.
He kept making art, kept making flags, and lived modestly. In 1994 he constructed a mile long rainbow flag for the 25th anniversary of Stonewall in New York City. In 2003 he made a 1.25 mile long version for the 25th anniversary of the original flag. He spent years working on banners and installations for World Pride, for AIDS memorials, for civic ceremonies. Money was never the motivation.
The Legacy: From One Roof in San Francisco to the Whole World
By the 1990s the six stripe rainbow flag was already showing up at pride events in London, Sydney, Berlin, Tokyo, and Cape Town. It crossed languages and borders without translation. People who could not read English knew what the flag meant on sight.
In 2015 the Museum of Modern Art added the rainbow flag to its permanent design collection. The wall placard at MoMA credits Baker by name and describes the flag as a piece of public design that changed the world. The original Castro Street flagpole in San Francisco still flies the rainbow at the corner of Market and Castro, where Baker first raised it. Cities from Tel Aviv to Toronto paint crosswalks in his colors every June.
In 2018 Daniel Quasar designed the Progress Pride Flag, adding a chevron of black, brown, light blue, pink, and white stripes to represent people of color, trans people, and the lives lost to AIDS. Quasar credits Baker directly. The chevron does not replace the rainbow. It builds on it. Baker himself said before he died that the flag was always meant to evolve, because the community was always going to evolve. He approved of the Philadelphia Pride Flag and would almost certainly have approved of the Progress Pride Flag too.
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Baker's flag, evolved Progress Pride Flag (3x5 ft) Daniel Quasar's 2018 redesign keeps Baker's rainbow at its heart and adds the chevron for trans people, people of color, and those lost to AIDS. The flag for who we are now. Get the Flag → |
Baker's Death and His Final Act of Generosity
Gilbert Baker died in his sleep on March 31, 2017, in his apartment in New York City. He was 65. The cause was hypertensive and atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease. He was alone when he died, but his work was already everywhere.
Friends found notes in his apartment indicating he had been planning to remake the original eight stripe flag at scale for that summer's pride season. He never got to finish. The team that handled his estate followed through. They donated his sewing machine, design archives, and personal effects to GLBT Historical Society in San Francisco, the National Museum of American History at the Smithsonian, and the New York Public Library. Anyone can go look at them. He wanted his tools to keep teaching after he was gone.
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Wear the rainbow he gave us Love is Love Rainbow Tee Soft cotton tee with a clean rainbow lockup. Three little words Baker would have loved, in the colors he chose for the rest of us. Shop the Tee → |
Mistakes People Make About the Rainbow Flag
MISTAKE 01
Thinking the rainbow flag has always had six stripes.
It started with eight in 1978. Hot pink and turquoise were the two that got cut, mostly for manufacturing reasons in the year after Harvey Milk was killed. The six stripe version is what everyone knows, but it is not the original.
MISTAKE 02
Thinking the order of the stripes is just the natural rainbow.
Baker chose the order on purpose. Red on top, violet on bottom. Each color stood for something the community was claiming. The order is fixed. Putting purple on top is a printing error, not a stylistic choice.
MISTAKE 03
Calling the Progress Pride Flag a replacement.
The Progress Pride Flag was designed to build on Baker's rainbow, not retire it. Both flags are valid. You can fly either one. Most pride parades fly both at the same time, side by side.
MISTAKE 04
Assuming Baker got rich off the design.
He chose not to patent it. He never collected royalties. He lived in a one bedroom apartment in New York and made his money from commissioned art and odd jobs. The flag was always meant to be free.
MISTAKE 05
Forgetting Baker was an Army veteran.
He was drafted in 1970 and served honorably as a medic in San Francisco. The man who designed the most famous symbol of gay liberation was also a veteran who wore the uniform. Both things are true at once.
If you want to keep going, the rainbow flag did not appear in a vacuum. The community had already lived through the Lavender Scare federal purge, Stormé DeLarverie throwing the first punch at Stonewall, Brenda Howard organizing the first pride march, Frank Kameny picketing the White House for the right to a federal job, and the Mattachine Society meeting in secret for two decades before any of it was public. Baker's flag was the symbol the movement had been waiting for.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who designed the original pride flag?
Gilbert Baker, a self taught artist, drag performer, and Army veteran living in San Francisco. He created it in 1978 at the request of Harvey Milk, who wanted a positive community symbol to replace the Nazi pink triangle.
When was the rainbow pride flag first flown?
June 25, 1978, at the Gay Freedom Day Parade in United Nations Plaza, San Francisco. Two flags were raised, each 30 feet by 60 feet, hand stitched and hand dyed by Baker and roughly 30 volunteers.
Why does the original flag have eight stripes instead of six?
Baker designed it with eight colors, each representing one part of the community. Hot pink for sex, red for life, orange for healing, yellow for sunlight, green for nature, turquoise for art and magic, indigo for serenity, and violet for spirit. Hot pink and turquoise were dropped between 1978 and 1979 for manufacturing and display reasons.
Did Gilbert Baker patent the rainbow flag?
No. He refused to patent it on principle. He believed a symbol of liberation should belong to the community, not to a single owner. He never earned royalties from the design in his entire life.
When did Gilbert Baker die?
March 31, 2017, in his New York City apartment. He was 65. The cause was hypertensive and atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease. His sewing machine and design archives are now held by the GLBT Historical Society, the Smithsonian, and the New York Public Library.
Is the Progress Pride Flag a replacement for the rainbow flag?
No. The Progress Pride Flag, designed by Daniel Quasar in 2018, builds on Baker's six stripe rainbow by adding a chevron for trans people, people of color, and those lost to AIDS. Both flags are valid and most pride celebrations fly them side by side.
What military service did Gilbert Baker have?
Baker was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1970 and served as a medic stationed in San Francisco. He was honorably discharged in 1972 and remained in the city, where he eventually taught himself to sew and built the rainbow flag.
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Pride Month starts in four days. Fly the symbol he gave us. Gilbert Baker built the rainbow flag for everyone. Free for anyone who wants it. Carry it forward. |
