With sewing skills learned from crafting his own drag costumes, he was often asked to make political banners for street demonstrations. Gilbert Baker arrived in San Francisco in 1972 during the early years of the gay liberation movement. And the rainbow flag, introduced nearly forty years earlier at San Francisco’s Gay Freedom Day Parade, was unfurled from apartment balconies, attached to car windows, and appeared in the background for tens of millions of newly changed profile photos on social media accounts as a universally recognized symbol of pride and solidarity. From San Francisco’s City Hall and New York’s Empire State Building, and from Puerto Rico’s Capitol Building to the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, the vivid display was a clear indication of widespread support for the landmark decision. Shortly after the United States Supreme Court ruling on June 26, 2015, that guaranteed same-sex couples the right to marry, civic buildings across the country and around the world were illuminated in the colors of the rainbow. Gilbert Baker and the 40 th Anniversary of the Rainbow Flag Gilbert Baker (1951–2017) A Legacy of Pride I thought, ‘It’s better than I ever dreamed.’ When it went up and the wind finally took it out of my hands, it blew my mind…I saw immediately how everyone around me owned the flag.
