Gilbert Baker Nine-Stripe Rainbow Flag

Overview

A San Francisco Bay Times article published on 9 March 2017 reported that Gilbert Baker was adding lavender to the eight-color rainbow design. Baker described the new stripe as representing diversity "in the age of Trump." The article says he had wanted to add lavender for some time and connected the timing to the 2016 presidential election. The nine equal bands run from lavender at the top through hot pink, red, orange, yellow, green, turquoise, indigo, and violet. ^[1]

A 31 March obituary reported that Baker had hand-sewn 39 examples for the rainbow flag's 39th anniversary and planned to display them in San Francisco that June. ^[2] The Gilbert Baker Foundation later recalled finding 60 freshly ironed nine-color flags in his Harlem apartment, so the records do not support one uncontested production total. ^[4] The design remains a historical variant rather than the standard rainbow flag, but Baker-made examples survive in institutional collections and commercial reproductions remain available. ^[5][3]

Identity & Context

Represented Identity

LGBTQ community

Movement

Inclusivity discourse within pride symbolism

Made in New York during the opening months of the Trump administration. Baker connected the new stripe to that moment, telling the Bay Times that another colour was needed "to represent diversity in the age of Trump". ^[1]

Creators

The Creator

Gilbert Baker

Designer and flag-maker

Gilbert Baker (1951–2017) was an American artist, activist, and flag-maker central to the history of the rainbow flag. He created the original eight-color design in San Francisco in 1978, and in March 2017, in New York, adapted it by adding a lavender stripe for diversity. ^[1][2]

The nine-color design was Baker's own late variation. Its attribution should not displace Lynn Segerblom, James McNamara and the volunteer team from the collaborative design and production history of the 1978 parent flag, which the original rainbow flag entry records in full.

Attribution notes

Baker made the original rainbow flag in San Francisco in 1978 and this design in New York in 2017, and refused to trademark either. ^[6][7] The Gilbert Baker Foundation states that "before his death, Gilbert Baker used the Pantone matching system to define the exact colors of the original eight-color Rainbow Flag", and has converted those values into other colour systems. ^[8] That specification covers the eight colours this flag inherits. It does not cover the lavender, and the Foundation's pages on the flag and its colours do not describe the nine-stripe design.

Origin

Country

United States

Region / state

New York

City

New York City

Place Type

city

Physical Origin Status

Recorded at city level. Baker's New York home is documented; the room and moment of the design's conception are not.

Created in New York City, on the ancestral homeland of the Lenape people, known as Lenapehoking. ^[9][10]

Indigenous land context

Lenape (Munsee-speaking) — ancestral homeland (Lenapehoking) (Indigenous name: Lenapehoking). The land now designated as New York City is part of Lenapehoking, the homeland of the Lenape people. The word "Manhattan" derives from the Munsee Lenape language. The Lenape were violently displaced through European settler colonialism. ^[9][10]

Colonial / settler context

New York City is part of Lenapehoking, the Lenape homeland. The Lenape were violently displaced through European settler colonialism. ^{[9][10] [9]}

Land status

Colonized

Indigenous engagement

None documented

Continuing presence

Lenape diaspora communities in Oklahoma, Wisconsin, Ontario, and New Jersey; NYC has one of the largest urban Indigenous populations in the United States

Baker lived in a garden apartment at 546 West 150th Street in Hamilton Heights from 2001 until his death. ^[11][12] After he died on 31 March 2017, Charley Beal of the Gilbert Baker Foundation described finding fabric scraps on the floor, scissors on the sewing machine and an ironing board draped with 60 freshly ironed nine-color flags in that apartment. ^[4] Those facts establish a New York home-workshop context. No inspected source states where Baker first conceived the design, and the address is recorded as his residence rather than as an attested place of creation. San Francisco is where the flags were to be displayed, not where they were made. ^[2]

Dates & Chronology

Year Created

2017

Exact date

March 2017

First documented public appearance

March 9, 2017

Period in Use

2017–present

Less widely flown than the six-stripe form. The design is manufactured and sold; the archive holds one retail listing. ^[3] No formal adoption by an organization has been located, and no evidence has been found that Baker's own flags were flown at the June 2017 San Francisco Pride they were intended for. A plan is recorded; the event is not. ^[2]

Baker moved from San Francisco to New York City in 1994 and lived at 546 West 150th Street from 2001 until his death. ^[11] The nine-stripe flag was his last. ^[2]

Two 2017 designs approached inclusion differently and are sometimes conflated. Baker added a single lavender stripe for broad diversity to his own eight-color design, documented on 9 March. ^[1] Philadelphia unveiled the More Color, More Pride flag on 8 June, adding black and brown stripes to the six-color flag to foreground Black and brown LGBTQ communities. ^[13] That unveiling followed Baker's death by more than two months and cannot be the context in which he worked. Baker's remarks to the Bay Times did address racism and sexism in the Queer community, but no located source describes lavender as a stripe for any single constituency. ^[1]

Lineage

Direct predecessors

Original Rainbow Flag (1978)

Related flags

Disability-Inclusive Pride Flag, Intersex-Inclusive Pride Flag, Philadelphia Pride Flag, Progress+ Flag (Disabled Queer Transmasc Variant), Progress Pride Flag, Rainbow Pride Flag, Inclusive Diversity Pride Flag (TransIphis, 2022)

Sibling flags

Seven-Stripe Rainbow Flag (1978)

Branches directly from the original eight-stripe record rather than from the six-stripe commercial form: the 2017 design restores the complete eight-color parent sequence and adds one new lavender band above it. ^[1]

The parent record credits Gilbert Baker, Lynn Segerblom, James McNamara and the volunteer production team. This derivative is Baker's alone. The Philadelphia, Progress and Intersex-Inclusive Progress flags are contextual comparisons of the same period, not ancestors of this design. ^[13]

Lineage tree

Every record reachable from this one through documented parent and child relationships: 2 records across 2 generations.

Ancestor

Original Rainbow Flag (1978)

This record

Gilbert Baker Nine-Stripe Rainbow Flag

Colors & Symbolism

Eight colours Baker assigned to shared human experience, with a ninth added in 2017 for diversity. ^[8][1]

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

The eight inherited readings are the Gilbert Baker Foundation's, in its words. It describes Baker as having treated colour "as a symbolic language rather than mere decoration", and states that the stripes "did not correspond to any L, G, B, T, or Q identity": Baker saw the community "as something larger and more unified: a 'Rainbow of Humanity,' representing all races, genders, and sexualities". It quotes him: "All sexes, all genders, all races, all ages. It's the Rainbow of Humanity." ^[8]

The lavender is the exception. Its meaning comes from Baker himself as reported in March 2017, not from the Foundation, whose pages on the flag, its history and its colours do not mention a ninth stripe, a lavender stripe, the year 2017 or the flags he was sewing. ^[1][8] That silence is not evidence against the design, which contemporaneous reporting describes; it is a gap in the source a reader would most expect to carry it.

The hex values shown are the archive reconstruction palette. For the eight inherited stripes they are the Wikimedia Commons digital convention, which is what the archive also displays for the 1978 original, so the same eight stripes render identically on both entries. They are not a specification for Baker's hand-sewn 2017 textiles.

A second palette exists for those eight, and it descends from the designer: the Gilbert Baker Foundation states that "before his death, Gilbert Baker used the Pantone matching system to define the exact colors of the original eight-color Rainbow Flag", and has converted those selections into RGB, CMYK and hex. ^[8] It is shown here as an inherited reference for the eight older colours. It is not evidence that any particular 2017 flag was made to those values.

The two sets are not close. The Foundation's red is a crimson, #E4002B, rather than a pure primary; its yellow a gold, #FFCD00; its indigo a strong blue, #003DA5, which its own sentence for that stripe calls "Blue". Two of its rows are internally inconsistent as published: hot pink and yellow each list an RGB triplet that does not match the hex printed beside it. ^[8]

The lavender has neither. No creator-issued digital or Pantone value for it has been located, and none has been sampled from a photograph, which would turn a JPEG artefact into a specification.

Design

Aspect Ratio

3:5 · standard

Ratio Notes

The 3:5 figure is the archive's production specification for its reconstruction. No creator-issued aspect ratio for the 2017 design has been located; the photographed textile and the commercial reproductions vary in proportion. ^[2][3]

Orientation

horizontal

Stripe Count

9

Layout

horizontal stripes

Stripes (Top → Bottom)

Lavender, Hot Pink, Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Turquoise, Indigo, Violet

Nine horizontal stripes of equal depth, each a ninth of the flag, with no charge and no additional device. The order from the top is lavender, hot pink, red, orange, yellow, green, turquoise, indigo and violet: the eight-stripe 1978 sequence with lavender placed above it rather than inserted into it. ^[1][2]

The flags Baker made were sewn, not printed. A Gilbert Baker Foundation video shows him sewing the 39th-anniversary nine-color flags. ^[14] Charley Beal described the apartment after Baker's death: fabric scraps on the floor, scissors on the sewing machine, an ironing board draped with sixty freshly ironed nine-color flags. ^[4]

Nine horizontal stripes of equal depth: lavender, hot pink, red, orange, yellow, green, turquoise, indigo and violet.

Usage & Adoption

Current Status

niche / historical variant

Less widely flown than the six-stripe form. The design is manufactured and sold, and the archive holds one retail listing for it. ^[3] No documented flying of one of Baker's own 39 flags has been located, including at the San Francisco Pride of June 2017 they were intended for. ^[2]

Discourse & Debates

• Often mentioned in relation to debates around inclusion and whether the rainbow flag needed revision

Common misidentifications

• Often overlooked entirely in simplified pride-flag guides
• Confused with the Philadelphia and Progress flags, which are separate designs by other people and postdate this one. ^[13]

The archive files this as the Gilbert Baker Nine-Stripe Rainbow Flag. It also circulates as the 9 Color Diversity Flag and the Diversity Flag, and the current commercial reproduction is sold as the 2017 9 Stripe Gilbert Baker Rainbow Pride Flag. ^[3]

Footnotes & Citations

Image Sources

Rendering

Archive reconstruction

• Credit: Design by Gilbert Baker; reconstruction drawn by Encycloflaggia