profeminist:

profeminist:

Photo: The 1 ¼-mile-long rainbow flag designed by Mr. Baker in Key West, Fla., in 2003. (Andy Newman/European Pressphoto Agency 

 “He designed and sewed the first rainbow flag for a San Francisco gay rights rally in 1978. Mr. Baker, who playfully called himself the Betsy Ross of gay liberation, was found dead March 31 at his apartment in New York City. He was 65.

After serving as an Army medic and nurse, Mr. Baker settled in San Francisco in 1972 and soon became active in the city’s gay rights movement. 

“Because I loved to sew, my role in the movement became to make banners,” Mr. Baker told the Refinery29 website in 2015. “That’s really how I ended up making the first flag - I was the guy who could sew it.”

He became friends with Harvey Milk, a member of San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors and one of the country’s first openly gay elected officials. Milk suggested to Mr. Baker that the gay community needed some kind of recognizable emblem of empowerment.

“I decided that we should have a flag,” Mr. Baker said in a 2015 interview with the Museum of Modern Art, “that we are a people, a tribe if you will. And flags are about proclaiming power, so it’s very appropriate.”

“The rainbow is so perfect because it really fits our diversity in terms of race, gender, ages, all of those things,” he said in the interview with MoMA, which has included his flag in its design collection. “Plus, it’s a natural flag — it’s from the sky!”

With a team of 30 volunteers, Mr. Baker soaked strips of cotton muslin in trash cans filled with dye. He then stitched the pieces together to create the first rainbow flag, which measured 30-by-60 feet. It was raised on June 25, 1978.”

Read the full piece here <– Read it, it’s an important story in the LGBTQIA+ Equality movement!

R.I.P. and THANK YOU Gilbert Baker!!!

Reblogging in honor of Gilbert Baker and in celebration of Pride Month 2017!