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 |
 The
first Rainbow Flag was designed in 1978 by Gilbert Baker, a
San Francisco artist, who created the rainbow flag in response
to a local activist's call for the need of a community symbol.
(This was before the pink triangle was popularly used as a
symbol of pride.) Using the five-striped "Flag of the Race" as
his inspiration, Baker designed a rainbow flag with eight
stripes: pink, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and
violet. According to Baker, those colors represented,
respectively: sexuality, life, healing, sun, nature, art,
harmony, and spirit. Baker dyed and sewed the material for the
first rainbow flag himself - in the true spirit of Betsy Ross.
Baker soon approached San Francisco's Paramount Flag Company
about mass producing and selling his "rainbow flag".
Unfortunately, Baker had hand-dyed all the colors, and since
the color "hot pink" was not commercially available, mass
production of his eight-striped Rainbow Flag became impossible. The
rainbow flag was thus reduced to seven stripes.
In November 1978, San Francisco's gay community was stunned
when the city's first openly gay supervisor, Harvey Milk, was
assassinated. Wishing to demonstrate the gay community's
strength and solidarity in the aftermath of this tragedy, the
1979 Pride Parade Committee decided to use Baker's rainbow
flag. The committee eliminated the indigo stripe so they could
divide the Rainbow Flag colors evenly along the parade route - three colors
on one side of the street and three on the other. Soon the six
colors were incorporated into a six-striped Rainbow Flag that
became popularized and that, today, is recognized by the
International Congress of Flag Makers.
In San Francisco, the Rainbow Flag is everywhere: it can be
seen hanging from apartment windows throughout the city (most
notably in the Castro district), local bars frequently display
the Rainbow Flag, and Rainbow Flag banners are hung from
lampposts on Market Street (San Francisco's main avenue)
throughout Pride Month.
Although the Rainbow Flag was initially used as a symbol of
pride only in San Francisco, it has received increased
visibility in recent years. Today, the Rainbow Flag is a frequent sight in a
number of other cities as well - New York, West Hollywood, and
Amsterdam, among them. Even in the Twin Cities, the rainbow
flag seems to be gaining in popularity. Indeed, the Rainbow
Flag reminds us that ours is a diverse community - composed of
people with a variety of individual tastes of which we should
all be proud. The Rainbow Flag is highly recognizable.
The Rainbow Flag is also one of the more colorful flags.
The spectrum of colors on the Rainbow Flag truly reminds us of
our nation's diversity. |
