In the past decade, the gay rights movement has made monumental progress in the United States, as well as many other countries across the world. Given how much support same-sex marriage has found, it’s almost unbelievable that it became legal nationwide only a few years ago. But the march for gay rights has been a long one, nearly a century in the making. What today seems self-evident—that marriage should be an institution enjoyed equally by all—is the result of many fights that weren’t as victorious.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the history of the now familiar LGBTQIA pride flag. Though today the flag is an internationally recognized symbol, it once served as a subversive, rebellious icon—one that wasn’t so easily adapted and applauded by the mainstream.

Hitting the reset button on history

Before there was the LGBTQIA pride flag (it made its introduction in 1978, but more on that later), there was a different symbol, which had been adapted from one the darkest eras in history. During the Holocaust, concentration camp prisoners were given a badge with a pink triangle on it, signifying that they were gay, bisexual, or transgender. (Really the badge signified that they were sexually deviant; it was also used for pedophiles and rapists.) Decades later, starting in the 1970s, the symbol was reappropriated by the LGBTQIA community themselves, taking what was once a badge of shame and reinterpreting it as a badge of honor. (Like the pink triangle, the Star of David was used to label Jews in the Holocaust. But unlike the pink triangle, the Star of David predated the Holocaust and is thus still used today.)

Then came Harvey Milk. The gay rights leader (and first openly gay public official) once used the pink triangle himself, but in the mid-’70s, he decided it was time to shed the past and start over. Soon after, Milk met Gilbert Baker, an artist who had recently completed two years of service in the United States Army and was posted in San Francisco as a medic. Back in the States, he found a new calling in activism. First came marijuana legalization, and then gay rights and the anti-war protests, which were sweeping America. Baker had learned to sew from another activist in a different campaign, and Milk, seeing an opportunity to put craft to cause, challenged Baker to create a new flag for the gay rights movement.

His flag would depart from the pink triangle in every possible way: The pink triangle was steeped in history, while his rainbow was a fresh start; the pink triangle tried to represent a variety of people with just one color, while his rainbow symbolized the many shades of the movement; the pink triangle was made for a badge and could not easily be adapted to other mediums, while his rainbow is easily lifted and used in a variety of ways. Baker also made sure that the flag meant something. Actually, it meant eight separate things, with each color assigned to represent a different facet of gay identity: Hot pink was for sex, red for life, orange for healing, yellow for sunlight, green for nature, turquoise for magic/art, indigo for serenity, and violet for spirit.

When it made its debut in the 1978 “Gay Freedom Day,” it was an instant hit. “It completely astounded me that people just got it, in an instant like a bolt of lightning—that this was their flag,” said Baker. “It belonged to all of us. It was the most thrilling moment of my life. Because I knew right then that this was the most important thing I would ever do—that my whole life was going to be about the Rainbow Flag.” Like Betsy Ross had forged a new identity for America with her creation of the American flag, so Gilbert Baker gave the gay rights movement a symbolic face. (Throughout the years, Baker has been referred to as “the Gay Betsy Ross.”)

Some practical adjustments, and then symbolic ones

The parade may have put the flag in the spotlight, but demand for reproduction didn’t really come until November of that year, when Milk was assassinated (along with the Mayor, George Moscone) by a disgruntled former member of the city’s Board of Supervisors. It became urgent for Baker to mass-produce the flags, but he found that the hot-pink fabric wasn’t readily available, so a new, seven-striped version became the movement’s symbol. (The company, Paramount Flag Co., had a surplus stock of these, left over from a production run for the Rainbow Girls, a Masonic youth service organization.)

Then again, for the 1979 parade, a year after the flag was released, the organizers removed a color. They needed an even number of stripes in order to split the flag in two (for the two sides of the parade route), so they combined indigo and turquoise into one color, royal blue.

In the following decades, the gay rights movement has evolved—like any dynamic, inclusive movement—bringing more people in. What was once “gay rights” has now become LGBTQIA, or lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer or questioning, intersex, and asexual or allied. And so to match the growing movement, the flag has refracted through the many sub-movements and intersectionalities that have come into existence. Recent versions have included black and brown stripes (to show support for people of color); white stripes (to represent the full gender and sexual spectrum); pink, indigo, and turquoise stripes (to bring back the original flag); and lavender stripes (for diversity) among others. Perhaps none of this would have been possible if Baker hadn’t been so willing to let his work be adapted by others; he always refused to trademark it.

Postscripts

Though the flag would be, as Baker predicted, “the most important thing I would ever do,” he would have a long and flourishing career up until his death in 2017. As the Advocate’s obituary of Baker reports, “Following the creation of the rainbow flag, Baker took a job with the Paramount Flag Company in San Francisco. His outrageous designs caught the eye of then-Mayor Dianne Feinstein, who commissioned him to create work for her inauguration. From there he designed works for luminaries including the premier of China, the president of France, the president of Venezuela, the president of the Philippines, and the king of Spain. He also designed the flags for the 1984 Democratic National Convention.” He also continued to dedicate himself to updating his original design and seeing it flourish in many permutations. In 1994, he produced a mile-long version of the flag for the 25th anniversary of the Stonewall riots—a record-breaking feat.

As the flag continues to act as the face of the LGBTQIA movement, it has become something of a totem, over which the fight for (and against) gay rights continues to be waged. Recently, US President Donald Trump has instructed U.S. embassies not to fly the LGBTQIA pride flag for Pride Month. It says something of the symbol (and the movement) that its very appearance can invoke an entire generation of change.