Gilbert Baker

Gilbert Baker studied at Parsons Senior High School. The recorded working language is English. The field of work recorded is design. Works named in the authority record are LGBTQ pride flag. Work by Gilbert Baker is recorded in the collections of Museum of Modern Art.

• Name — Gilbert Baker • Born — 2 June 1951 • Birthplace — Chanute, Kansas, U.S. • Died — 31 March 2017 • Place of death — New York City, U.S. • Other Names — Busty Ross • Occupation — Gay rights activist • Known for — Designing the rainbow flag • Website — gilbertbaker.com

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. He was baptized a Methodist. Baker served in the United States Army from 1970 to 1972. He was stationed as a medic in San Francisco at the beginning of the gay rights movement and lived there as an openly gay man. After his honorable discharge from the military, he worked on the first marijuana legalization initiative, California Proposition 19 (1972), and was taught to sew by his fellow activist, Mary Dunn. 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, it 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 LGBTQ 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", alluding 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".

• Illustration — The six-color version of the pride flag is most common. The original version from 1978 featured two additional stripes—hot pink and turquoise—which were removed for manufacturing and practical reasons. The colors on the Rainbow Flag reflect the diversity of the LGBTQ community. When Baker raised the first rainbow flags at San Francisco Pride (his group raised two flags at the Civic Center) on June 25, 1978, it comprised eight symbolic colors: • Hot pink — Sex • Red — Life • Orange — Healing • Yellow — Sunlight • Green — Nature • Turquoise — Magic/Art • Indigo — Serenity • Violet — Spirit Thirty volunteers had helped Baker hand-dye and stitch the first two flags in the top-floor attic gallery of the Gay Community Center at 330 Grove Street in San Francisco. Because using dye in public washing machines was not allowed, they waited until late at night to rinse the dye from their clothes, running a cycle with bleach in the washing machines after leaving. The design has undergone several revisions to remove two colors for expediency and later re-add those colors when they became more widely available. As of 2021, the most common variant consists of six stripes, with the colors red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet. Baker referred to this version of the flag as the "commercial version", because it came about due to practical considerations of mass production. Specifically, the rainbow flag lost its hot pink stripe when Baker approached the Paramount Flag Company to begin mass-producing them, and the hot pink fabric was too rare and expensive to include. The rainbow flag lost its turquoise stripe before the 1979 Gay Freedom Day Parade, as the committee organizing the parade wanted to fly the flag in two-halves, from the light poles along both sides of Market Street, so it became a six-striped flag with equal halves. In March 2017, just a few weeks before his death, Baker created a nine-stripe version of his original 1977 flag, with lavender, pink, turquoise and indigo stripes along with the red, orange, yellow, green and violet. According to Baker, the lavender stripe symbolizes diversity. Baker stated that he created the Rainbow Flag as an alternative to the pink triangle, which had originated as a Nazi concentration camp badge. He noted the community needed "something beautiful, something from us" to replace a symbol of oppression with one of pride.

Gilbert Baker is recorded with the occupation LGBTQ rights activist. Recorded as lgbtq rights activist, designer and artist.