Philadelphia Pride Flag

Overview

To foreground racial diversity, equality, and inclusion in LGBTQ community life, especially for Black and brown Queer and trans people, and to respond directly to documented racism in Philadelphia’s LGBTQ nightlife.

The flag emerged from a crisis of racial exclusion in Philadelphia’s Gayborhood, a roughly sixteen-block area around 13th Street between Walnut and Pine Streets in Center City, but the pattern it responded to stretched back decades. In December 1976, the Philadelphia Gay News exposed racist practices at Club Barracks baths, where management required all prospective members of color to fill out an application taking ‘up to a month to process’ after complaints the club was becoming ‘too dark.’

In 1984, a Coalition on Lesbian-Gay Bar Policies formed after community members observed racial segregation; their 1986 report, ‘Racial Discrimination in Lesbian and Gay Bars in Philadelphia,’ documented a ‘culture of exclusivity’ and found that bars complied with recommendations until the spotlight faded, then reverted. ^[1] By the 2010s, all eight owners of the eleven Gayborhood bars were white men, and discriminatory door policies had calcified: bans on Timberland boots, athletic gear, hooded sweatshirts, durags, and flat-brimmed caps, items predominantly associated with Black urban culture, were selectively enforced against people of color while white patrons wearing similar items were admitted. Black patrons reported being asked for two or three forms of ID, or being told venues were at capacity when they clearly were not. ^[2]

On May 7, 2015, Ernest Owens, a Black Queer journalist (University of Pennsylvania BA, USC Annenberg MA), published ‘Black Not Fetch Enough for Woody’s?’ in Metro Philadelphia, it became the publication’s most-read piece and established a public record of complaints that city officials had ignored. ^[2]

On September 23, 2016, the Black and Brown Workers Collective (BBWC), formed in February 2016 by Shani Akilah Robin, organized a march through the Gayborhood, tying Timberland boots to iCandy’s door and leaving pairs on the doormat. Four days later, a 21-second video surfaced showing iCandy owner Darryl DePiano repeatedly using the N-word while complaining that Black patrons were ‘the only ones’ who asked for free drink tickets. BBWC members staged a sit-in at the bar, joined by Philadelphia’s Black Lives Matter chapter, blocking the bar area and preventing patrons from ordering. Philadelphia Gay News barred iCandy from advertising; Stonewall Sports, Philly Pride, OutFest, and the City of Brotherly Love Softball League all severed ties. ^[3][2]

On October 25, 2016, close to 400 people attended a hearing by the Philadelphia Commission on Human Relations; owners of 11 bars were subpoenaed and more than 50 individuals testified. The Commission’s January 2017 report, ‘Inform, Monitor, Enforce,’ found discrimination ‘prevalent for decades,’ ordered 11 bars and two nonprofits (Mazzoni Center and Philadelphia FIGHT) to complete fair practices training within 90 days and implicit bias training within 120 days, though legal experts questioned whether the order would hold up in court. ^[4]

In February 2017, Director of LGBT Affairs Nellie Fitzpatrick was fired; AJ Hikes replaced her in March and partnered with Tierney, a Philadelphia-based advertising agency working pro bono, to create the More Color More Pride campaign. ^[5][6]

In June 2017, Mayor Jim Kenney signed a unanimously passed bill giving the Commission power to issue cease-operations orders to businesses that discriminate. ^[7] iCandy ultimately closed in September 2018; Tabu purchased the building at 254 S. 12th Street, with owner Jeff Sotland stating the goal was to ‘bring people back to the neighborhood who had left because they didn’t feel it was a safe space.’ ^[8]

Identity & Context

Represented Identity

LGBTQ community, LGBTQ people of color

Subcommunity

Black LGBTQ people, brown LGBTQ people

Movement

Pride movement, anti-racism within LGBTQ communities, intersectional inclusion

Diaspora Context

Later broader use beyond Philadelphia

Racial / Ethnic Context

People of color inclusion

National Context

United States

Strongly place-specific in origin, later broader in circulation. The campaign responded to documented racial discrimination in Philadelphia’s LGBTQ nightlife, including the iCandy controversy of September 2016 and a Philadelphia Commission on Human Relations investigation that ordered 11 bars to undergo implicit bias training.

Creators

The Creator

AJ Hikes

Campaign leader / Executive Director, Office of LGBT Affairs

AJ Hikes (formerly Amber Hikes; they/them) is a Black, Queer, nonbinary activist born in Okinawa, Japan, to a military family. They grew up across Japan, Hawaii, Georgia, Louisiana, and Delaware before earning a BA in English from the University of Delaware in 2006 and an MSW from the University of Pennsylvania in 2008. Before entering city government, they served as the youngest Upward Bound director in the country at UPenn.

In March 2017, Hikes was appointed Executive Director of Philadelphia's Office of LGBT Affairs, replacing Nellie Fitzpatrick, who had been dismissed amid complaints of slow responses to discrimination complaints. The Office of LGBT Affairs partnered with Tierney, a Philadelphia-based advertising agency, on a pro bono basis to design the new flag; official municipal design credit goes to Tierney. ^[6][5] Hikes led the campaign and served as its public face, reportedly tearing up the first time they saw Tierney's flag design, saying: 'Seeing an image like this flag instills so much pride in me as a queer black woman.' They received racist death threats after the flag's public launch. Philadelphia Gay News named them Person of the Year in 2017, and both Philadelphia Magazine and Out Magazine listed them among their 100 Most Influential People in 2018. Hikes left city government in July 2019 to become the ACLU's first-ever Chief Equity and Inclusion Officer, later serving as Deputy Executive Director for Strategy and Culture. ^[5][9]

Seeing an image like this flag instills so much pride in me as a queer black woman.

Motivations

• To make racial inclusion visually explicit within the pride flag
• To respond to documented racism in Philadelphia's LGBTQ nightlife

Attribution notes

Official City of Philadelphia material states the Office of LGBT Affairs partnered with Tierney, a Philadelphia-based advertising agency, on a pro bono basis to design the new flag. Key creatives at Tierney included Teri Terbec (Creative Director), Diane DiCicco, and Patrick Hardy (EVP). ^[10] AJ Hikes (formerly Amber Hikes), newly appointed Executive Director of the Office of LGBT Affairs, was the commissioner and public champion of the campaign, not the graphic designer. Hikes has clarified that Tierney 'came to me' and 'had already been working on plans for a flag', Tierney approached Hikes with the concept. ^[10][11] The design credit in official municipal records goes to Tierney. ^[6][5] The flag was not patented or trademarked. ^[10]

Origin

Country

United States

Region / state

Pennsylvania

City

Philadelphia

Specific Place

City Hall launch context

Place Type

municipal inclusivity campaign

Created in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on the ancestral homeland of the Lenni Lenape people, part of Lenapehoking. ^[12][13]

Indigenous land context

Lenni Lenape — ancestral homeland (Lenapehoking) (Indigenous name: Lenapehoking). The land now known as Philadelphia is part of Lenapehoking, the ancestral homeland of the Lenni Lenape people. Archaeological and oral-history evidence dates occupation to roughly 10,000 years ago. The Lenape were displaced by Quaker and other colonial settlers beginning in the late 17th century. The fraudulent Walking Purchase of 1737 was a pivotal dispossession event. Today, Lenape communities are found in Oklahoma, Kansas, Wisconsin, Ontario, and New Jersey. Pennsylvania, despite once being a center of Lenape culture, is one of a handful of U.S. states that neither contains a reservation nor officially recognizes any Native group within its borders. ^[12][13][14]

Colonial / settler context

The More Color More Pride campaign was launched at City Hall on Lenapehoking, the stolen homeland of the Lenni Lenape people. The Lenape were dispossessed through colonial settlement and the fraudulent Walking Purchase of 1737. The campaign addressed racial exclusion within LGBTQ+ spaces without engaging the Indigenous land dispossession on which it operated. ^[13][14]

Land status

Colonized (dispossessed through colonial settlement and treaty fraud)

Indigenous engagement

None documented

Continuing presence

Lenape communities in Oklahoma, New Jersey, Wisconsin, and Ontario; Pennsylvania has no state-recognized tribes and contains no reservations

The flag is tied directly to Philadelphia’s More Color More Pride campaign and to a local response to documented racism within LGBTQ spaces. ^[7] On September 29, 2016, a video surfaced of iCandy nightclub owner Darryl DePiano repeatedly using a racial slur to describe Black customers; protesters from the Black and Brown Workers Collective staged a sit-in hours later. ^[2] In January 2017, the Philadelphia Commission on Human Relations released its report ‘Inform, Monitor, Enforce,’ which found racial discrimination in the Gayborhood had been ‘prevalent for decades’ based on testimony from 49 people, and ordered 11 bars to undergo implicit bias training. ^[4]

Dates & Chronology

Year Created

2017

First public use

June 8, 2017

Period in Use

2017–present

The flag was raised over Philadelphia City Hall during Pride Month in June 2017. ^[7] The campaign generated over 272 million earned media impressions from 38 or more media placements, including coverage in CNN, NBC News, Out, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the New York Post, and Vox; on social media, it reached 6.8 million people with 2,480 hashtag mentions. ^[9] The campaign was formally recognized by the Shorty Awards in the Social Good category. ^[9] The flag subsequently appeared on Nike and Converse sneakers, in the second season finale of FX’s Pose, and in LEGO’s ‘Everyone Is Awesome’ Pride set. ^[10][6][15]

In June 2018, Portland-based designer Daniel Quasar used the Philadelphia flag as direct inspiration for the Progress Pride Flag. ^[6][15]

Major revisions

1. 2018

   Served as a direct conceptual basis for the Progress Pride Flag by Daniel Quasar.

A city-origin inclusive variant that introduced the practice of adding identity-specific stripes to the rainbow flag. Its influence is directly visible in the Progress Pride Flag, which incorporated the black and brown stripes alongside transgender flag colors. The black stripe's meaning shifted as it migrated from this flag to the Progress flag: in the Philadelphia context it represents racial inclusion only; in Quasar's Progress flag the same element acquired a second meaning, HIV/AIDS remembrance, drawn from a separate genealogy (Leonard Matlovich's 'Victory Over AIDS' flag, as documented by the V&A). In popular understanding, the later dual reading has largely overwritten the earlier race-only reading.

Lineage

Direct predecessors

Rainbow Pride Flag

Indirect influences

Original Rainbow Flag (1978)

Direct children

Progress Pride Flag

Related flags

Disability-Inclusive Pride Flag, Progress+ Flag (Disabled Queer Transmasc Variant), Gilbert Baker Nine-Stripe Rainbow Flag, Seven-Stripe Rainbow Flag (1978)

Sibling flags

Straight Ally Pride Flag, Chicago Pride Flag (Rainbow Stripes, Purple Stars), Two-Spirit Pride Flag (2005, Zoccole)

Situated between the traditional six-stripe rainbow flag and the Progress Pride Flag in the Baker-rainbow lineage.

Lineage tree

Every record reachable from this one through documented parent and child relationships: 12 records across 7 generations.

Ancestors -3

Original Rainbow Flag (1978)

Ancestors -2

Seven-Stripe Rainbow Flag (1978)

Ancestor

Rainbow Pride Flag

This record

Philadelphia Pride Flag

Children

Progress Pride Flag

Generation 3

Indigiqueer Pride Flag (cedar-maw), Intersex-Inclusive Progress Pride Flag, Utopian Pride Flag #6 (2040 Progress Flag)

Generation 4

"Ultimate" Inclusive Diversity Pride Flag, Disability-Inclusive Pride Flag, Progress+ Flag (Disabled Queer Transmasc Variant), 5790/2029 Pride Flag

Colors & Symbolism

A revised rainbow pride flag that makes racial inclusion visually explicit and responds to racism within LGBTQ communities. The black and brown stripes represent the presence and contributions of people of color who have always been part of the LGBTQ community but whose visibility the standard rainbow flag did not guarantee.

flagcolorcodes.com

This flag has no official digital palette. Color values shown are approximate.

The black and brown stripes represent people of color inclusion broadly. Some sources collapse the two stripes into a single description; precise per-source wording is preserved in the claims section.

Library.LGBT provides a hex sequence, but no official campaign design asset has been sourced to confirm canonical palette values.

Design

Aspect Ratio

3:5 · standard

Orientation

horizontal

Stripe Count

8

Layout

horizontal stripes

Stripes (Top → Bottom)

Black, Brown, Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Violet

An eight-stripe pride flag adding black and brown above the traditional six-stripe rainbow. No emblems or additional markings. Eight equal-width horizontal stripes.

Usage & Adoption

First Users

Philadelphia Office of LGBT Affairs / City Hall launch

Geographic Usage

Philadelphia, Broader United States, International circulation

Online Usage

Widespread

Event Usage

City Hall flag raising (2017), Pride events

Current Status

active

Initially a local municipal initiative, the design was adopted broadly and directly influenced the Progress Pride Flag. The campaign generated over 272 million earned media impressions and was recognized by the Shorty Awards in the Social Good category. ^[9] At the 2018 Met Gala, themed 'Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination', Lena Waithe wore a Carolina Herrera cape incorporating black and brown stripes alongside the rainbow, a direct reference to the Philadelphia flag; she told the New York Times: 'The theme to me is, like, be yourself. You were made in God's image, right?' In the Season 2 finale of FX's Pose (August 2019), the character Damon waves a Philadelphia flag with black and brown stripes during Blanca's lip sync to Whitney Houston's 'The Star-Spangled Banner', a deliberate anachronism, since the show is set in 1991. Director Janet Mock explained: 'I made the choice to include this flag because it is an under-seen symbol, and I want more people to see its existence on such a wide platform.' LEGO's 'Everyone Is Awesome' set (#40516, 2021), its first LGBTQIA+ product, designed by VP of Design Matthew Ashton, features 11 monochrome figures mirroring the Philadelphia flag's color scheme. Nike's 2020 BeTrue collection and Converse Pride sneakers incorporated the flag's palette. Philadelphia itself painted rainbow crosswalks in the Gayborhood incorporating the black and brown stripes.

Image Archive

Street crosswalk mural, 12th/13th and Locust Streets, daytime

Street crosswalk mural, 12th/13th and Locust Streets, nighttime

Discourse & Debates

• Whether explicit racial marking was needed in the pride flag
• Whether symbolism can or should address institutional exclusion
• Whether the Philadelphia flag should be classified as a variant of the rainbow, a standalone political symbol, or a design predecessor

Common misidentifications

• Often confused with the original Baker eight-stripe flag because both use eight stripes

Common confusions

• Original Baker 8-stripe versus Philadelphia 8-stripe
• Local city campaign symbol versus universal pride flag
• The black and brown stripes here represent racial inclusion, distinct from the later black-stripe HIV/AIDS reading in some Progress Pride Flag interpretations

Criticisms

• The flag was raised at City Hall on a Thursday; by Friday, Hikes had death threats. The threats came from across the country, 'often from LGBTQ people themselves who identified as white, and more often white gay men.' Hikes received messages like 'How dare you desecrate our flag this way!' and 'How dare you take this conversation and make it about race.' They later reflected: 'I cannot forget that I received hate mail and death threats for two stripes on a flag.' ^[5] When Manchester, England adopted the flag for its 2019 Pride celebration, it reignited the same debate internationally; a 2018 Stonewall report had shown that 51% of BAME LGBT people in the UK experienced racism within the gay community.
• Some critics questioned whether the flag's symbolic gesture substituted for material change, whether a new flag could address the structural racism documented in the Commission's report, or whether it risked satisfying the demand for action with an image. Supporters countered that the flag's virality drew national attention to racism in Queer spaces that quieter advocacy had not.

Also known as the More Color More Pride flag. The Philadelphia qualifier distinguishes it from the original eight-stripe Baker design.

Footnotes & Citations

Image Sources

Rendering

philadelphia-2017

• Campaign imagery from the More Color More Pride initiative, a collaboration between the Philadelphia Office of LGBT Affairs and Tierney, a Philadelphia-based advertising agency working pro bono. The campaign generated over 272 million earned media impressions. ^[6][9] · Tierney / Philadelphia Office of LGBT Affairs
• The Philadelphia Pride Flag raised over City Hall on June 8, 2017, marking the first institutional display of the eight-stripe design as part of the More Color More Pride campaign. ^[7][6] · City of Philadelphia
• The Pride flag crosswalk at 13th and Locust, in the heart of Philly's Gayborhood. Shot in daytime. · Credit: Will Montgomery · Photographed by Will Montgomery
• The same crosswalk after dark, its stripes catching the streetlight. · Credit: Will Montgomery · Photographed by Will Montgomery