The Colors of Pride

By WordyGrrl

The rainbow flag has become the most easily-recognized symbol of the worldwide gay and lesbian community. But as Pride month arrives, how many of us really know the meaning and history of the colors we wave around so happily at the parade?

The rainbow flag made its first appearance in the 1978 San Francisco Gay and Lesbian Freedom Day Parade. It was designed by San Francisco artist Gilbert Baker in response to a need for a logo or symbol that would encompass the entire community and could be used on an annual basis for pride-type events.

Baker and a team of thirty volunteers created two huge prototype flags for the parade, dyed and stitched by hand. These original flags featured eight stripes with each color representing a facet of a very diverse community: hot pink for sex, red for life, orange for healing, yellow for sun, green for nature, turquoise for art, indigo for harmony, and violet for spirit.

The next year Baker approached San Francisco Paramount Flag Company to mass-produce rainbow flags for the 1979 parade. Due to production constraints, hot pink was removed because the color was not commercially available, thus reducing the number of stripes to seven.

The November 1978 assassination of Harvey Milk, San Francisco's first openly gay supervisor, led to further changes in the flag. So that the gay community could display its sense of solidarity in the aftermath, the turquoise stripe was removed and indigo was replaced by royal blue. This enabled the colors to be divided equally along the parade route -- three on one side, three on the other.

This six-color version spread from San Francisco to other cities worldwide, and is now is officially recognized by the International Congress of Flag Makers. In 1994, a huge 30-foot-wide by one-mile-long rainbow flag was carried by 10,000 people in New York's Stonewall 25th Anniversary Parade.

But regardless of size or variations on the rainbow theme, the Pride flag serves as both a celebration of unity and the diversity that our community represents. Let it also serve as a reminder of past struggles for acceptance and inclusion and the work that remains to be done, not only during Pride Month but all year 'round.