Jeannette Muhammad adapted this interview for the web. Mark Navin produced this interview and edited it for broadcast with Tinku Ray. “It has meaning, and it gives people hope all around the globe.” It’s an example that shows the significance of the flag. In reaction, LGBTQ activists waved pride flags through the streets of Iran in protest. Last month, an Iranian man was beheaded by his family for coming out. To this day, the symbol continues to be used in protest. “They’re saying take that first step from darkness out into the light.” “That flag is a beacon and it’s shining,” Beal says. The flag served as a beacon of hope, which is what Milk had tasked Baker with designing. National flags are patriotic symbols with widely varied interpretations that often include strong military associations because of their original and ongoing.
The following year, Baker asked the committee for the 1979 Gay Parade to hang 400 pride flags on the light posts along the parade’s route on Market Street. But there were some like Jones and Baker who continued to work and fight for equal rights. Milk had been in office for less than a year.įollowing Milk’s death, Beal says many people had a hard time coping with the loss. “And he said, ‘Our flag should be a rainbow.’ ”Ī few months later, Milk and San Francisco Mayor George Moscone were assassinated. “He just was so impressed by the diversity of the crowd that this idea of this rainbow of humanity hit him like a brick,” Beal says. Later, Baker was out dancing at the Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco when he became inspired for how the flag should look. It was Baker, Beal says, who proposed that the symbol actually take the shape of a flag. Milk, along with friend Cleve Jones, approached Baker to get his thoughts on creating a potential symbol. Among them was Harvey Milk, city supervisor of San Francisco and the first openly gay official in the U.S. And now, 43 years later, a fragment has been discovered and is coming home to San Francisco.Ĭharles Beal, president of the Gilbert Baker Foundation and friend of Baker’s, recalls how Baker came up with the idea.Īt the time, there wasn’t a strong symbol within the LGBTQ community, leading many to express the desire to create one. In 1978, the original pride flag was created by artist, activist and drag queen Gilbert Baker.