Today is the 70th birthday of the activist Gilbert Baker. I first learned of his exceptional contributions to the world through Randy Shilts’ book and was happy to see him get more exposure through Dustin Lance Black’s miniseries. You have done the world a great service if Google makes a doodle to celebrate your birthday. The world is a better place because he is in it and still feels the loss that he has left.
NAME: Gilbert Baker
DATEOF BIRTH: June 2, 1951
PLACE OF BIRTH: Chanute, Kansas, U.S.
DATE OF DEATH: March 31, 2017
PLACE OF DEATH: New York City, New York, U.S.
OCCUPATION: Gay rights activist
BEST KNOWN FOR: American artist, gay rights activist and designer of the rainbow flag (1978). Baker’s flag became widely associated with LGBT rights causes, a symbol of gay pride that became ubiquitous in the decades since its debut. California state senator Scott Wiener said Baker “helped define the modern LGBT movement”. In 2015, the Museum of Modern Art ranked the rainbow flag as an internationally recognized symbol as important as the recycling symbol.
Baker was born on June 2, 1951, in Chanute, Kansas. He grew up in Parsons, Kansas, where his grandmother owned a women’s clothing store. His father was a judge and his mother was a teacher.
Baker served in the United States Army from 1970 to 1972. He was stationed in San Francisco at the beginning of the gay rights movement. After his honorable discharge from the military, he taught himself to sew. He used his skill to create banners for gay-rights and anti-war protest marches. It was during this time that he met and became friends with Harvey Milk. He also joined the gay drag activist group Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence stating, “At first it was glamorous and political, but when the Sisters became more organized, I became a tool of the right wing and raised money for Jerry Falwell”, referring to video and images of the group that were used for right-wing Christian efforts, “so I stopped.”
Baker first created the Rainbow Flag with a collective in 1978. He refused to trademark it seeing it as a symbol that was for the LGBT community. In 1979, Baker began work at Paramount Flag Company in San Francisco, then located on the southwest corner of Polk Street and Post Street in the Polk Gulch neighborhood. Baker designed displays for Dianne Feinstein, the Premier of China, the presidents of France, Venezuela, and the Philippines, the King of Spain, and many others. He also designed creations for numerous civic events and San Francisco Gay Pride. In 1984, he designed flags for the Democratic National Convention.
In 1994, Baker moved to New York City, where he lived for the rest of his life. Here, he continued his creative work and activism. That year he created the world’s largest flag (at that time) in celebration of the 25th anniversary of the 1969 Stonewall Riots.
In 2003, to commemorate the Rainbow Flag’s 25th anniversary, Baker created a Rainbow Flag that stretched from the Gulf of Mexico to the Atlantic Ocean in Key West. After the commemoration, he sent sections of this flag to more than 100 cities around the world. Due to his creation of the rainbow flag, Baker often used the drag queen name “Busty Ross” in reference to Betsy Ross.
Baker died at home in his sleep on March 31, 2017 at age 65, in New York City. The New York City medical examiner’s office determined cause of death was hypertensive and atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease. Upon Baker’s death, California state senator Scott Wiener said Baker “helped define the modern LGBT movement”. In Baker’s memory, NewFest and NYC Pride partnered with a design team to create ‘Gilbert’, a rainbow font inspired by the Rainbow Flag.
In 2003, Baker and his Key West project were the subject of Rainbow Pride, a feature-length documentary by Marie Jo Ferron, bought by PBS National and debuting in New York on WNET. Baker recreated his original Rainbow Flag for the Academy-award winning 2008 film Milk, and is shown being interviewed on one of the featurettes of the DVD release.
In 2017, Baker was portrayed in Dustin Lance Black’s When We Rise. In the second part of the miniseries Baker’s character is shown sewing the flag and, later on, explaining to Ken Jones the reasoning for the colors he had chosen.
Baker’s work and related historical artifacts are represented in several major museum and archival collections. The GLBT Historical Society in San Francisco owns one of the sewing machines Baker used to produce the original rainbow flags in 1978, along with one of the limited-edition recreations of the eight-stripe design he produced to mark the 25th anniversary of the flag. In 2012, the society displayed both objects in an exhibition on the history of the flag at the GLBT History Museum which it sponsors in San Francisco’s Castro District. In 2015, the Museum of Modern Art in New York City acquired examples of the rainbow flag for its design collection, where curators ranked it as an internationally recognized symbol similar in importance to the Creative Commons logo and the recycling symbol.
Waldina 