This year, on the 31 March, we lost Gilbert Baker, gay artist and creator of the gay pride flag. Today we would celebrate his 66th birthday. Let’s remember him as the wonderful person he was.
i just want to add to this post that the last update made to the official pride flag by Glibert Baker before he passed away was THIS:
the new lavender stripe at the very top was added to represent DIVERSITY and as far as i am aware, was added in retaliation against trump’s presidency. i’ve not seen many people use this version, and it deserves to be known.
(Just for reference because Tumblr doesn’t make it easy to see timestamps and I see some confusion in the notes - this post was made in 2017, the year that Baker passed away. This coming week, on June 2, 2022, he would have been turning 71.)
source
[image: nine stripe updates Gilbert Baker flag, with colors in top to bottom order: lavender, pink, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple. credit: Tomislav Todorović, 23 December 2017
text: In March 2017, shortly before his death, Gilbert Baker created a new version of the Rainbow Flag, by adding the ninth stripe in lavender color, next to the stripe in hot pink. This color is meant to represent diversity, something Baker thought is endangered in present-day America. He had made 39 copies of this flag with the intention to have them displayed in San Francisco in June, for the 39th anniversary of the Rainbow Flag. A video showing the making of one of these flags can be currently seen at Gilbert Baker website: https://gilbertbaker.com/, and also at the YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ef5sXewQWbA. The last article, accompanied with even more illustrations, was published in the San Francisco Bay Times issue of 9 March 2017, which can be read online here: https://issuu.com/sfbt/docs/03.09.17_final.small.
Tomislav Todorović, 23 December 2017]
