Prior to Baker’s creation the rainbow Pride flag, which is now recognized globally as the top LGBT symbol, a pink triangle was used by to represent the LGBT community. “It was a time of incredible empowerment, political organizing, community building, and artistic expression,” Baker said.Īnother activist, Charley Beal, said that friends in San Francisco’s LGBT community would call up Baker when they needed a banner for a march or rally because he knew how to sew. Of course, I had no money to buy clothes so I thought, ‘I’ll make my own clothes.’”īaker’s talents for sewing gained traction among his activist friends and the LGBT community in San Francisco during the 1970s.
“I just had to dress like David Bowie every second of the day. “I got my first sewing machine in 1972, when I got out of the army,” he told In the Life Media in 2009. Little did he know how those skills would come in handy when he set out to create the iconic global LGBT rainbow Pride flag.
Gilbert Baker truly embodies the term “behind the scenes.” He taught himself to sew in order to dress like David Bowie in the 1970s. Most Americans learn about Betsy Ross, the woman credited with creating the US flag, but how many have heard of the legacy of Gilbert Baker, the “ Gay Betsy Ross?”
