06/16/2019
Gilbert Baker, an openly gay activist, friend of Harvey Milk, and a U.S. Army Veteran, who served as a medic, taught himself how to sew and created the original 8-color Pride flag in 1978.
Baker drew inspiration from the U.S. national flag, which had celebrated its bicentennial in 1976, and an actual rainbow, which displays the colors of the light spectrum in roughly the same sequence as the flag. He assigned a meaning to each of the colors: hot pink for s*x, red for life, orange for healing, yellow for sunlight, green for nature, turquoise for magic, indigo for harmony and violet for spirit. Later, the flag was changed to 6 colors so that it could be mass produced.
Baker passed away in 2017, but his legacy lives on.
