Will Montgomery

Historical and Early Pride Flags

Flags created before 2000 or recognized as historically significant markers in the development of LGBTQ+ symbolism. This category includes the earliest rainbow flag designs, the leather and bear flags of the 1980s and 1990s, and early identity flags that established the visual grammar later designs would build on.

Entries in this category (10)

  • Original Rainbow Flag (1978) The eight-stripe original, made by Gilbert Baker and Lynn Segerblom in 1978 and sewn with James McNamara, first flown at the San Francisco Gay Freedom Day Parade on 25 June 1978.
  • Seven-Stripe Rainbow Flag (1978) A seven-stripe rainbow flag produced in the transition between Baker's 1978 eight-stripe original and the six-stripe standard adopted for the 1979 parade.
  • Rainbow Pride Flag The six-stripe rainbow flag, the most widely recognized Pride flag, standardized around the 1979 San Francisco Gay Freedom Day Parade.
  • Leather Pride Flag A nine-stripe horizontal flag alternating black and royal blue around a central white stripe, with a tilted red heart in the canton.
  • International Bear Brotherhood Flag A seven-stripe horizontal flag in bear-fur tones with a black bear paw print in the canton.
  • Bisexual Pride Flag A three-stripe flag, a wide magenta band over a narrow lavender-purple band over a wide royal-blue band in 40:20:40 proportions, unveiled by Michael Page on 5 December 1998.
  • Transgender Pride Flag Five stripes of light blue, pink and white, made by Monica Helms on 19 August 1999, a date she now calls Transgender Flag Day, and first flown at Phoenix Pride in 2000.
  • Labrys Lesbian Flag A violet flag bearing a white labrys over an inverted black triangle, designed by Sean Patrick Campbell in 1999 and first published in the June 2000 Pride edition of Gay and Lesbian Times (Greater Palm Springs Edition).
  • Victory Over AIDS Flag (1980s, designer unknown) A six-stripe rainbow flag with a single black stripe added at the bottom, used during the AIDS pandemic to mourn those lost to AIDS and to stand with people living with HIV.
  • Transgender Nation Flag A pink downward-pointing triangle on white charged with a device of interlocked circles, made for Transgender Nation, the transgender focus group of Queer Nation, in about October 1991 in San Francisco.