Seven-Stripe Rainbow Flag (1978)

Overview

The seven-stripe form resulted from a production constraint: hot pink fabric was unavailable for commercial production.

The original 1978 rainbow flags were co-created by Gilbert Baker, Lynn Segerblom (then known as Faerie Argyle Rainbow), and James McNamara. Segerblom, an 18-year-old dye artist who specialized in rainbow tie-dye, performed all the fabric dyeing, cutting, ironing, and pinning for the original flags, while McNamara and Baker sewed them on two machines. Segerblom and Baker co-chaired the Decorating Committee for Gay Freedom Day. ^[1][2] Segerblom has been historically undercredited. Baker's posthumous memoir refers to her as 'Faerie Argyle,' without the 'Rainbow' in her chosen name.

After Baker's death in 2017, Segerblom began a public campaign for co-creator recognition. The Gilbert Baker Estate has disputed her claims, while West Hollywood honored her with a City Proclamation on July 16, 2018, for her 'enormous efforts for creating the flag.' ^[1][2]

When Baker approached the Paramount Flag Company for mass production after the success of the 1978 parade, hot pink fabric was unavailable commercially. The resulting production run omitted the hot pink stripe, creating a seven-stripe flag.

Demand for rainbow flags surged after Harvey Milk's assassination on November 27, 1978, and the historical record shows two distinct seven-stripe forms circulating in response. The San Francisco-based Paramount Flag Company began selling a version made from stock rainbow fabric with seven stripes: red, orange, yellow, green, turquoise, blue, and violet. Baker, ramping up production of his own version, dropped the hot pink stripe because that fabric was not readily available, yielding a seven-stripe form that retained the original's turquoise and indigo. Paramount also sold surplus stock of flags originally made for the International Order of the Rainbow for Girls, a Masonic youth organization, from its retail store at the southwest corner of Polk and Post streets, where Baker himself worked from 1979. ^[3][4][5] In FOTW's account, the hot-pink drop came when Baker approached Paramount to make flags for the 1979 Gay Freedom Day Parade and was told hot pink fabric was unavailable for mass production. ^[6] Jim Ferrigan, a Paramount employee in this period, recalled that before the design standardized 'customers bought almost anything striped,' and that Buddhist, Sufi, Tibetan, and cooperativist flags all served. ^[6]

Identity & Context

Represented Identity

Gay community, LGBTQ community

Movement

LGBTQ Pride Movement

National Context

United States

An intermediate production form within the Baker rainbow flag family.

Creators

The Creators

Gilbert Baker

Designer & Vexillographer

Gilbert Baker (June 2, 1951 -- March 31, 2017) was a self-taught vexillographer, artist, and gay rights activist who created the rainbow flag, which became one of the most widely recognized symbols of LGBTQ pride worldwide. Born in Chanute and raised in Parsons, Kansas, a Bible Belt town near the Oklahoma border, his grandmother owned a women's clothing store where he first discovered his love of fabric. In his posthumous memoir Rainbow Warrior, Baker wrote that in 1950s Kansas, it was 'not considered normal to imagine greatness and beauty. Being an artist was bad in the same way that homosexuality was bad.' ^[7] As a child, he secretly danced in his aunt's old prom dress; his parents gave him an Erector Set to channel his creativity into 'more masculine' areas. He described high school as 'horrible,' recalling 'I was always the gay kid... always an outcast,' with art as 'my escape and my high and my passion.' He came out to his parents officially at Christmas 1970/71, followed by five or six years of estrangement. He had two younger sisters. ^[8]

Drafted into the U.S. Army in 1970, Baker served as a medic stationed at the Presidio of San Francisco, associated with Letterman Army Medical Center, which trained a quarter of the Army's medical specialists and treated soldiers wounded in Vietnam. After his honorable discharge in 1972, he stayed in San Francisco, used the G.I. Bill to go back to school, and was taught to sew by fellow activist Mary Dunn. He entered the drag scene under the name 'Busty Ross' (alluding to Betsy Ross), joined the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence in 1981 as 'Sister Chanel 2001,' and began making banners for gay-rights and anti-war protest marches.

He met Harvey Milk in 1974 and later said Milk showed him 'how action could create change'; after Milk's election in November 1977, Milk challenged Baker to create a positive symbol of pride to replace the pink triangle.

In 1979, Baker began working at Paramount Flag Company, creating flags for the mayoral inauguration, state receptions, and the 1984 Democratic National Convention in San Francisco.

In 1994, he created a mile-long rainbow flag for the 25th anniversary of Stonewall, carried by thousands through New York City. When the Giuliani administration refused a permit for the traditional Fifth Avenue route and a federal court upheld the denial, Baker cut sections from the flag after its First Avenue unfurling, and confederates smuggled them crosstown so the unpermitted Fifth Avenue march coming up from Stonewall could carry the rainbow anyway. ^[9] In 2003, he created a 1.25-mile flag stretching sea to sea along Key West's Duval Street, using the original eight colors; about 3,000 volunteers helped unfurl it. In 2015, MoMA acquired examples of the rainbow flag for its permanent design collection. In 2016, Baker was invited to the White House to personally present President Obama with a small hand-dyed rainbow flag. He moved to New York City in 1994 and lived near the Stonewall Inn for the rest of his life.

In March 2017, weeks before his death, he created a nine-stripe version adding a lavender stripe to symbolize diversity in response to Trump's election, producing 39 flags for the flag's 39th anniversary. ^[10] He was found dead at his New York home on March 31, 2017; the medical examiner attributed the death to hypertensive and atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease. He was 65. Cleve Jones, confirming the death, noted Baker had a stroke several years earlier but had not recently been ill. ^[10]

He deliberately chose not to trademark the flag. San Francisco renamed a portion of the intersection at Market and Castro as Gilbert Baker Way, and Google released a Doodle honoring him on June 2, 2017, the 66th anniversary of his birth. ^[4]

He received $1,000 from the Gay Freedom Day Committee, and approximately 30 volunteers assisted with the hand-dyeing at the Gay Community Center.

A flag is different from any other form of art. It’s not a painting, it’s not just cloth. It is the spirit of the movement.

We needed something that expressed us. The rainbow fit us. It’s from nature. It represents all the colors, all the races, all the genders. It’s the rainbow of humanity.

I’d give anything to have been there when they ran those flags up that flagpole. I felt so proud.

A flag translates into everything, from tacky souvenirs to the names of organizations and the way that flags function. I knew instantly when I saw the reaction that it was going to be something. I didn't know what or how or — but I knew. (2008 oral history, quoted in his NYT obituary) ^[10]

[On the pink triangle:] It was put on us by the Nazis and it really did function as a symbol for our movement and our 'liberation', but it wasn't from us. (2008 KU oral history) ^[8]

I was certainly keenly aware of flags because of the bicentennial in 1976 and this huge wave of American flags that just washed over the country... And I thought, Maybe we could have a flag too because we're a people. (2008 KU oral history) ^[8]

I don't have a patent or a copyright, so all those dollars slid away. But it belongs to everybody. (2008 KU oral history) ^[8]

I'm just this guy from Kansas that had the stroke of luck to be the one to make the flag, and as I say sort of pulled the sword from a stone. (2008 KU oral history) ^[8]

Motivations

• To replace the pink triangle, which was rooted in Nazi persecution, with a positive, self-created symbol ^[11][3]
• To create a universal symbol that belonged to the entire LGBTQ community, not any single organization ^[4]
• To honor Harvey Milk’s call for visible symbols of gay pride and political presence ^[12][11][4]

Stated inspirations

• The rainbow as a naturally occurring symbol of diversity and hope^[4][11]
• The Rolling Stones' 'She's a Rainbow' and 1960s counterculture, Baker's own stated frame of reference for the rainbow motif^[3]
• The 1976 American Bicentennial's 'huge wave of American flags,' which set him looking at flags 'with a new eye,' his own stated account, independently matching the Estate's Bicentennial narrative^[8][13]
• The American flag itself, Baker wanted to create something with the same power of belonging^[4]

Broader influences

• Judy Garland's 'Over the Rainbow' is widely speculated to have inspired the flag, but Baker himself deflected this: 'I come from the '60s, so [the flag's] more about the Rolling Stones and their song “She's a Rainbow” … But, I get the Garland thing, and being from Kansas, I double get it' (2008 New York Blade interview, carried by Wikipedia)^[3]
• The counterculture movement’s embrace of color, psychedelia, and visual spectacle
• San Francisco’s artistic and activist communities in the late 1970s

Lynn Segerblom

Contributor — Dye Artist of the 1978 Original

Lynn Segerblom (known in the late 1970s as Faerie Argyle Rainbow) is a textile and dye artist, originally from the North Shore of Hawaii, who co-created the original 1978 eight-stripe rainbow flags from which this seven-stripe variant derives. Working from the Gay Community Center at 330 Grove Street, she developed the hand-dyeing process and color formulas for the original flags and, by her own account, proposed the rainbow-flag concept at a 1978 decorating-committee meeting, testimony corroborated by 330 Grove's Lee Mentley and rejected by the Gilbert Baker Estate, which maintains Baker as sole creator. West Hollywood honored her with a City Proclamation on July 16, 2018, for her role in creating the flag. ^[1][14]

Her connection to this seven-stripe variant is inherited rather than direct: the reduction from eight stripes was a commercial production decision, made when hot pink fabric proved unavailable after Baker took the design to the Paramount Flag Company, but every stripe of this flag descends from the palette she first hand-dyed. The full authorship dispute, her biography, and her firsthand quotations are documented on the Original Rainbow Flag (1978) entry. ^[1]

Origin

Country

United States

Region / state

California

City

San Francisco

Place Type

production transition

Created in San Francisco, California, on the unceded ancestral homeland of the Ramaytush Ohlone people. ^[15][16]

Indigenous land context

Ramaytush Ohlone — unceded ancestral homeland (Indigenous name: Ramaytush). The Ramaytush Ohlone are the original peoples of Yelamu, the San Francisco Peninsula. ^{[17] [18]} The area now comprising the City and County of San Francisco was inhabited by the Yelamu, an independent tribe of the Ramaytush Ohlone peoples. ^[19] Before the Spanish arrived in 1769 the Ramaytush Ohlone numbered roughly 1,500 to 2,000 people living in ten small tribal groups; by the end of the Mission Period only a few families had survived. ^{[17] [18]} The Association of Ramaytush Ohlone records that one lineage is known to have produced living descendants today, and the American Indian Cultural District documents four family lineages all descending from a single survivor of the colonization of San Francisco, named Leandra. Those descendants comprise the membership of the Ramaytush Tribe and the staff of the Association. ^{[17] [18]} The land was never ceded, and in the words adopted by San Francisco's own commissions, the Ramaytush Ohlone 'have never ceded, lost, nor forgotten their responsibilities as the caretakers of this place.' ^{[20] [19]} The Commission on the Environment states that the Ramaytush Ohlone 'are not a mythical population of the past, but an integral and active community in the present San Francisco Bay Area region.' ^{[19] [15][16][17][20][19][18]}

Colonial / settler context

This flag variant was produced on unceded Ramaytush Ohlone land. No treaty of cession exists for the San Francisco Peninsula. ^{[16][17][20][19][18]}

Land status

Unceded (no treaty of cession exists)

Indigenous engagement

None documented

Continuing presence

The Ramaytush Tribe and the Association of Ramaytush Ohlone are active in the region today: the Farming is Medicine initiative on 34 acres in San Gregorio, a National Park Service curriculum, youth and stewardship partnerships, land-return advocacy, and the campaign to rename half of Mission Dolores Park to Chutchui. The Tribe's own website went online in 2026, with membership applications opening that April. ^{[17] [18]}

Sparsely documented, drawn mainly from Library.LGBT ^[21] and Baker's own archive.

Dates & Chronology

Year Created

1978

Period in Use

1978–1979 (transitional)

The seven-stripe flag was a transitional step between the eight-stripe original and the six-stripe standard. Paramount Flag Company sold stock-fabric seven-stripe flags in the period after Milk's assassination, and Baker's own production dropped hot pink in the same window, so seven-stripe flags circulated commercially in 1978–79 in at least two color compositions before the further reduction to six stripes for the 1979 parade. ^[3] No photograph of a seven-stripe flag in independent use has been located.

Most histories describe the reduction from eight to six stripes as a single process, but the available evidence documents intervening seven-stripe forms in commercial circulation in 1978–79.

Lineage

Evolved from

Original Rainbow Flag (1978)

Direct children

Rainbow Pride Flag

Related flags

Disability-Inclusive Pride Flag, Intersex-Inclusive Progress Pride Flag, Philadelphia Pride Flag, Progress+ Flag (Disabled Queer Transmasc Variant), Progress Pride Flag, Gilbert Baker Nine-Stripe Rainbow Flag, "Ultimate" Inclusive Diversity Pride Flag

Sibling flags

Gilbert Baker Nine-Stripe Rainbow Flag

An intermediate form between the original eight-stripe flag and the current six-stripe standard.

Lineage tree

Every record reachable from this one through documented parent and child relationships: 25 records across 7 generations.

Ancestor

Original Rainbow Flag (1978)

This record

Seven-Stripe Rainbow Flag (1978)

Children

Rainbow Pride Flag

Generation 3

Two-Spirit Pride Flag (2005, Zoccole), South African Gay Pride Flag, Philadelphia Pride Flag, Rainbow Polish Flag, Social Justice Pride Flag, Chicago Pride Flag (Rainbow Stripes, Purple Stars), PRIDE USA Flag, Straight Ally Pride Flag, Victory Over AIDS Flag (1980s, designer unknown)

Generation 4

Gay USA Pride Flag (Campbell), Two-Spirit Pride Flag (2Sanon), Progress Pride Flag, Chicago Pride Flag

Generation 5

Two-Spirit Nonbinary Pride Flag (2Sanon), Indigiqueer Pride Flag (cedar-maw), Intersex-Inclusive Progress Pride Flag, Two-Spirit Pride Flag (2021, sirieko), Utopian Pride Flag #6 (2040 Progress Flag)

Generation 6

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

Colors & Symbolism

Inherits the original rainbow meanings minus the hot pink stripe representing sexuality.

Wikimedia Commons File:Gay flag 7.svg ^[22]

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

The stripe meanings apply to the Baker-lineage form, inheriting the original's symbolism minus hot pink (sex/sexuality). The Paramount stock-fabric form carried no assigned meanings, since it was existing commercial rainbow fabric pressed into service to meet demand. ^[3] Library.LGBT's prose/hex mismatch (blue versus turquoise) may reflect the two documented seven-stripe compositions rather than a simple error.

The palette table records the Baker-lineage form (the eight-stripe original's hexes minus hot pink), matching the standard Wikimedia Commons reconstruction. ^[22] The commercial Paramount seven-stripe's composition is disputed across the available accounts: turquoise and blue (Wikipedia ^[3]), blue and indigo (FOTW/Kramer ^[6][5]), or turquoise and indigo (Commons file description ^[22]). Its actual fabric colors are undocumented, and the inferred Paramount rendering follows the Wikipedia account, using the six-stripe standard's blue as a stand-in. Library.LGBT's seven-stripe page mixed blue into its prose while its hexes preserved turquoise and indigo ^[21], a mismatch that the two documented seven-stripe forms explain more readily than a simple error.

Design

Aspect Ratio

3:5

Orientation

horizontal

Stripe Count

7

Layout

horizontal stripes

Stripes (Top → Bottom)

Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Turquoise, Indigo, Violet

No creator- or manufacturer-issued specification for either seven-stripe form has been documented. The displayed 3:5 ratio is a reconstruction convention drawn from standard vexillological practice, not a creator-issued ratio. The Paramount form was made from pre-existing stock fabric, so its exact dye colors are undocumented, and the reconstruction uses the six-stripe standard's blue as an inferred stand-in.

Seven horizontal stripes of equal width, ordered top-to-bottom: red, orange, yellow, green, turquoise, indigo, violet. No emblems or additional markings. Derived by removing the hot pink stripe from the eight-stripe original design.

Two seven-stripe forms are documented for 1978–79, and the exact composition of the commercial one is itself disputed. (1) The Baker-lineage form, the eight-stripe original minus hot pink: red, orange, yellow, green, turquoise, indigo, violet. The Baker-lineage reconstruction, the palette table, and the standard Wikimedia Commons seven-stripe file all show this form. ^[22] (2) The commercial seven-stripe sold by the Paramount Flag Company, for which three accounts differ: Wikipedia describes stock rainbow fabric with red, orange, yellow, green, turquoise, blue, violet ^[3]; FOTW's vexillological history (Steve Kramer, 1998) lists the Polk Street surplus Rainbow Girls flags as red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet ^[6][5]; and the Commons file description states Paramount produced the turquoise-and-indigo form for the November 1978 Milk memorial march. ^[22] The Order of the Rainbow for Girls' own colour sequence runs red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet, and a photographed assembly banner shows seven stripes with two blues and no turquoise; that is the organization's scheme rather than a record of what Paramount's surplus flags looked like, and the banner is undated. ^[23] No production records or photographs have been located to settle the composition. Most simplified histories collapse all of this into a single 'seven-stripe flag.'

Usage & Adoption

Current Status

historical transitional form

The seven-stripe design remains commercially available, though it is less commonly cataloged than the eight-stripe original or the six-stripe standard. A UK flag maker offered a made-to-order seven-stripe coffin drape in 2026, in the Baker-lineage composition. ^[24]

Image Archive

Flag Products

The Documented Compositions

The Rainbow Girls Connection

Discourse & Debates

• Whether the reduction from eight to six stripes was a single production process or two distinct steps, a sequence further complicated by evidence that more than one seven-stripe composition circulated at once ^[3][6]
• What Paramount's commercial seven-stripe actually looked like: the available accounts give three different stripe listings, turquoise and blue (Wikipedia), blue and indigo (FOTW, matching the Rainbow Girls surplus), and turquoise and indigo (the Commons file description) ^[3][6][22]
• Whether the seven-stripe form represents a discrete design stage or a temporary result of fabric availability and commercial stock, with hot-pink scarcity on one side and Masonic surplus stock on the other ^[6][5]

Common misidentifications

• Simplified pride-flag histories usually skip this form entirely, moving straight from the eight-stripe original to the six-stripe standard ^[6]

Common confusions

• Confused with the eight-stripe original or the six-stripe standard on either side of it
• The different seven-stripe compositions, Baker's turquoise-and-indigo lineage and the Paramount commercial stock in its variously reported forms, are collapsed into a single 'seven-stripe flag' in most accounts ^[3][6]
• The surplus flags Paramount sold were the organizational flag of the International Order of the Rainbow for Girls, a Masonic youth group, so the same design carried a different meaning in each context ^[5]

In period sources, 'the seven-stripe flag' can denote either Baker's own reduced design or the commercial stock Paramount sold. The record rarely distinguishes them, and Jim Ferrigan's recollection that 'customers bought almost anything striped' in 1978–79 suggests the distinction mattered little at the time. ^[6]

Footnotes & Citations

Image Sources

Rendering

seven-stripe transitional design

• A made-to-order seven-stripe coffin drape sold by a UK flag maker in 2026, in the Baker-lineage composition. ^[24] · Credit: 1000 Flags UK product photograph, via eBay listing 389008025571 · eBay listing
• The Baker-lineage seven-stripe form: the eight-stripe design minus hot pink, keeping turquoise and indigo. This is the composition of the standard Wikimedia Commons reconstruction, dated in its file description to November 1978, and the one the palette table records. ^[22] · Credit: Encycloflaggia reconstruction · Reconstruction
• The commercial Paramount form as described by Wikipedia: red, orange, yellow, green, turquoise, blue, violet, with blue where the Baker lineage kept indigo. ^[3] Inferred rendering. The stock fabric's actual colors are undocumented. · Credit: Encycloflaggia reconstruction (inferred colors) · Reconstruction
• The commercial Paramount form as described by FOTW's vexillological history (Steve Kramer, 1998): red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet, with no turquoise, matching the surplus stock made for the International Order of the Rainbow for Girls that Paramount sold from its Polk Street store. ^[6][5] Inferred rendering. No photograph or production record settles the composition. · Credit: Encycloflaggia reconstruction (inferred colors) · Reconstruction
• Assembly banner of Orono Assembly No. 38, Order of the Rainbow for Girls: seven stripes, two blues, no turquoise, matching IORG's seven Bow Station colors. ^[23] An assembly banner of unknown date rather than one of the surplus flags, but physical corroboration of the composition FOTW attributes to them. ^[6][5] · Credit: Photographer unrecorded; via Wikipedia · File:OronoAssemblyBanner.jpg