Seven-Stripe Rainbow Flag (1978)

Overview

Hot pink fabric was unavailable for commercial production, resulting in the initial reduction to seven stripes. ^[1]

The original 1978 rainbow flags were co-created by Gilbert Baker, Lynn Segerblom (then known as Faerie Argyle Rainbow), and James McNamara. ^[2][3] Segerblom, a dye artist who had moved to San Francisco at eighteen and specialized in rainbow tie-dye, led the hand-dyeing and much of the cutting, ironing, and pinning. ^[2] McNamara brought formal sewing expertise, while Baker and Segerblom also sewed; surviving accounts differ on the exact division of labor and number of machines. ^[2][3][4] Segerblom and Baker co-chaired the Decorating Committee for Gay Freedom Day. ^[2][3]

Demand for rainbow flags surged after Harvey Milk's assassination on November 27, 1978. ^[5][6] Later accounts describe or imply more than one seven-stripe composition during the transition, although they disagree about the exact colors of Paramount's commercial stock. Wikipedia describes Paramount's version as red, orange, yellow, green, turquoise, blue, and violet. ^[7] Separately, Baker's own production dropped hot pink while retaining the original turquoise and indigo. ^[8] FOTW places Baker's hot-pink reduction when he approached Paramount about flags for the 1979 Gay Freedom Day Parade and was told that hot pink fabric was unavailable for mass production. ^[1] Paramount also sold surplus flags originally made for the International Order of the Rainbow for Girls, a Masonic youth organization, from its Polk-and-Post retail store ^[1][9], where Baker worked beginning in 1979. ^[5] Jim Ferrigan, also a Paramount employee, recalled that before the design standardized, 'customers bought almost anything striped,' including Buddhist, Sufi, Tibetan, and cooperativist flags. ^[1]

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.' ^[2][3]

Identity & Context

Represented Identity

Gay community, LGBTQ community

Movement

LGBTQ Pride Movement

National Context

United States

An intermediate production form within the Baker-Segerblom 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 known for creating the rainbow flag, which became one of the most widely recognized symbols of LGBTQ+ pride worldwide. Baker was born in Chanute, Kansas, 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.' ^[10] 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. ^[11]

Baker served in the U.S. Army from 1970 to 1972, stationed as a medic in San Francisco, and stayed in the city after his honorable discharge. He worked on California Proposition 19, the first marijuana legalization initiative, and was taught to sew by fellow activist Mary Dunn, using the skill to make banners for gay-rights and anti-war protest marches. ^[5] Accounts place him at the Presidio of San Francisco, associated with Letterman Army Medical Center, and describe him using the G.I. Bill to return to school. He entered the drag scene under the name 'Busty Ross,' alluding to Betsy Ross. ^[5][12] He joined the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, the drag-nun activist group, and was photographed as Sister Chanel 2001 at a Sisters softball game in 1981. ^[13] He later left, saying that 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,' so he stopped. ^[5]

He met Harvey Milk in 1974; one history of the flag says Milk showed him 'how action could create change,' though the phrase is that writer's rather than a quotation from Baker. ^[14] After Milk's election in November 1977, Baker set out to make a positive symbol of pride to replace the pink triangle, with Milk among those calling for one.

He was a co-chair of the Decorating Committee for the 1978 Gay Freedom Day parade alongside Lynn Segerblom. ^[2][15] They received $1,000 from the Gay Freedom Day Committee for the original flag design, and approximately 30 volunteers assisted with the hand-dyeing at the Gay Community Center. ^[16][2][6]

In 1979, Baker began working at Paramount Flag Company, creating window displays that drew the attention of Mayor Dianne Feinstein, who commissioned him to design flags and banners for her first elected inaugural ceremony. City commissions followed for visits by foreign heads of state and dignitaries, and then for the flags, banners and bunting of the 1984 Democratic National Convention at San Francisco's Moscone Center. Paramount closed in 1987. ^[17]

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 paraders smuggled them crosstown so the unpermitted Fifth Avenue march coming up from Stonewall could carry the rainbow anyway. ^[18] In 2003, for the flag's 25th anniversary, he created a 1.25-mile flag stretching sea to sea from the Gulf of Mexico to the Atlantic ^[17] along Key West's Duval Street, restored to its original eight colors and unfurled on June 15, 2003. ^[14] About 3,000 volunteers helped unfurl it. In 2015, MoMA acquired examples of the rainbow flag for its permanent design collection, where curators placed it alongside the Creative Commons logo and the recycling symbol. ^[17][19] On June 9, 2016, Baker was invited to the White House for a reception marking LGBT Pride Month, and personally presented President Obama with a hand-dyed cotton rainbow flag. ^[17] The flag is held by the Barack Obama Presidential Library, which records Baker as its maker and gifter and dates the object itself to 2013. ^[20]

Sources variously date Baker's move to New York City to late 1993 or 1994. From 2001 until his death in 2017, he lived at 546 West 150th Street in Harlem. ^[21]

For decades, Baker alone was credited with creating the flag. Many sources support that it was a three-person collaborative creation between Baker, textile artist Lynn Segerblom, and James McNamara. McNamara died of AIDS in 1999 and received no recognition. Segerblom was more widely acknowledged for her role after Baker's death brought a resurgence of attention to the flag's origin. ^[2][15][4]

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. ^[22] This is an important moment for the canon of pride flags, as many have rejected additions to the flags design over time. Baker, considered the author of the beloved original rainbow design, cosigned the practice of revision himself before passing.

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. ^[22]

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. ^[5]

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) ^[22]

[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) ^[11]

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) ^[11]

I don't have a patent or a copyright, so all those dollars slid away. But it belongs to everybody. (2008 KU oral history) ^[11]

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) ^[11]

We were all in a swirl of color and light. It was like a rainbow. A rainbow. That's the moment when I knew exactly what kind of flag I would make. (Rainbow Warrior, ch. 5, via the Gilbert Baker Foundation) ^[23]

I thought a gay nation should have a flag too, to proclaim its own idea of power. (Rainbow Warrior, ch. 5, via the Gilbert Baker Foundation) ^[23]

All sexes, all genders, all races, all ages. It's the Rainbow of Humanity. (via the Gilbert Baker Foundation) ^[24]

Motivations

• To replace the pink triangle, which was rooted in Nazi persecution, with a positive, self-created symbol ^[25][7]
• To create a universal symbol that belonged to the entire LGBTQ community, not any single organization ^[5]
• To honor Harvey Milk’s call for visible symbols of gay pride and political presence ^[26][25][5]

Stated inspirations

• The rainbow as a naturally occurring symbol of diversity and hope^[5][25]
• The Rolling Stones' 'She's a Rainbow' and 1960s counterculture, Baker's own stated frame of reference for the rainbow motif^[7]
• 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^[11][23][16]
• The American flag and the French revolutionary tricolor, flags born of riot, rebellion, and revolution, with 'the same power of belonging'^[23][5]

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)^[7]
• 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. ^[2][4]

Her connection to this seven-stripe variant is inherited from the palette she first hand-dyed for the original flag. The full authorship dispute, her biography, and her firsthand quotations are documented on the Original Rainbow Flag (1978) entry. ^[2]

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. ^[27][28]

Indigenous land context

Ramaytush Ohlone — unceded ancestral homeland. The Ramaytush Ohlone are the original peoples of the San Francisco Peninsula, the land now comprising San Francisco. ^{[29] [30]}

Colonial / settler context

The seven-stripe forms were San Francisco products: Baker's own production and the Paramount Flag Company's stock-fabric flags both circulated there in 1978 and 1979. ^[1] The city stands on unceded Ramaytush Ohlone land; no treaty of cession exists for the San Francisco Peninsula. ^{[31] [32]} Spanish colonization and the mission system, beginning in 1769, dispossessed the Ramaytush Ohlone of this land. ^{[29] [30]}

Land status

Unceded (no treaty of cession exists)

Indigenous engagement

None documented

Continuing presence

The Ramaytush Ohlone remain present and active in the San Francisco Bay Area today. ^[29]

Sparsely documented, drawn mainly from the now defunct Library.LGBT ^[33] 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 Harvey Milk's assassination. ^[7] FOTW places Baker's own drop of hot pink in the same window, when he approached Paramount about flags for the 1979 Gay Freedom Day Parade. ^[1] Seven-stripe flags were therefore in commercial circulation across 1978–79, before the further reduction to six stripes for that parade. How many compositions were sold, and whether the differences among the accounts reflect distinct flags or conflicting recollections, is not settled. ^[7][1][8]

Lineage

Evolved from

Original Rainbow Flag (1978)

Direct children

Rainbow Pride Flag

Related flags

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

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: 76 records across 7 generations.

Ancestor

Original Rainbow Flag (1978)

This record

Seven-Stripe Rainbow Flag (1978)

Children

Rainbow Pride Flag

Generation 3

Heterosexual / Straight Pride Flag, Alberta Gay Flag, Argentina Gay Flag, Australia Gay Flag, Brazil Gay Flag, British Columbia Gay Flag, Chile Gay Flag, Dominican Republic Gay Flag, Egypt Gay Flag, European Union Gay Flag, France Gay Flag, India Gay Flag, Italy Gay Flag, Japan Gay Flag, Manitoba Gay Flag, Mexico Gay Flag, Netherlands Gay Flag, New Brunswick Gay Flag, Newfoundland Gay Flag, Northwest Territories Gay Flag, Nova Scotia Gay Flag, Nunavut Gay Flag, Ontario Gay Flag, Panama Gay Flag, Prince Edward Island Gay Flag, Quebec Gay Flag, Russia Gay Flag, Saskatchewan Gay Flag, Switzerland Gay Flag, Tanzania Gay Flag, Texas Rainbow Flag, Yukon Territory Gay Flag, South African Gay Pride Flag, Rainbow Polish Flag (2014, Angela Getler), Heteroflexible Pride Flag, Homoflexible Pride Flag, Philadelphia Pride Flag, Social Justice Pride Flag, Anarcha-Queer Flag (rainbow variant), Canadian Pride Flag, Chicago Pride Flag (Rainbow Stripes, Purple Stars), Gay Pride Flag of Pakistan, Jewish Gay Pride Flag, Palestinian Gay Pride Flag, Rainbow Flag with White Triangle (Sapporo), Rainbow Israel Flag, Turkish Gay Pride Flag, Two-Spirit Pride Flag (2016 Tumblr documentation), Victory Over AIDS Flag (1980s, designer unknown)

Generation 4

Two-Spirit Pride Flag (2005, Zoccole), Orange-Pink Lesbian Precursor (2017), Progress Pride Flag, Straight Ally Pride Flag, Two-Spirit Transgender Pride Flag

Generation 5

Asexual Ally Flag, Bisexual Ally Flag, Indigiqueer / Two-Spirit Flag (cedar-maw), Intersex-Inclusive Pride Flag, Inclusive Diversity Pride Flag (TransIphis, 2022), Two-Spirit Progress Pride Flag, Utopian Pride Flag #6 (2040 Progress Flag), Gay Mspec Gay Ally Flag, Gay Turigirl Ally Flag, Lesbian Lesboy Ally Flag, Lesbian Mspec Lesbian Ally Flag, Sego Belonging Flag, Jewish Progress Pride Flag (Keshet), Straight Ally Flag (vaultausir), Trans Ally Flag

Generation 6

Disability-Inclusive Pride Flag, Progress+ Flag (Disabled Queer Transmasc Variant), 5790/2029 Pride Flag, Two-Spirit Intersex-Inclusive Progress Pride Flag

Colors & Symbolism

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

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

Two seven-stripe colorways are reconstructed here from conflicting later accounts. The Baker form follows the eight-stripe original minus hot pink. ^[8] The Paramount column visualizes the turquoise-and-blue composition reported by Wikipedia ^[7], but the company's actual fabric shades are undocumented, and FOTW ^[1][9] and the Commons description ^[8] give different stripe lists. The Paramount swatches are therefore illustrative rather than a manufacturer-issued palette.

Library.LGBT's seven-stripe page mixed blue into its prose while its hexes preserved turquoise and indigo. ^[33]

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.

Later accounts describe or imply more than one seven-stripe composition in 1978–79, although it remains uncertain whether the differences represent multiple physical forms, conflicting recollections, or both. (1) The Baker-Segerblom-lineage form is the eight-stripe original minus hot pink: red, orange, yellow, green, turquoise, indigo, and violet. The Baker-Segerblom-lineage reconstruction and the standard Wikimedia Commons seven-stripe file show this form. ^[8] (2) Three accounts differ over the commercial seven-stripe sold by the Paramount Flag Company: Wikipedia describes stock rainbow fabric with red, orange, yellow, green, turquoise, blue, and violet ^[7]; FOTW's vexillological history, citing Steve Kramer in 1998, lists the Polk Street surplus Rainbow Girls flags as red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet ^[1][9]; and the Commons file description states that Paramount produced the turquoise-and-indigo form for the November 1978 Milk memorial march. ^[8]

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-Segerblom-lineage composition. ^[35]

Image Archive

Flag Products

The Documented Compositions

The Rainbow Girls Connection

Discourse & Debates

• 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) ^[7][1][8]

Common misidentifications

• Simplified pride-flag histories usually skip this form entirely, moving straight from the eight-stripe original to the six-stripe standard ^[1]
• 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 ^[7][1]
• 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 ^[9]

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. ^[1]

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-Segerblom-lineage composition. ^[35] · Credit: 1000 Flags UK product photograph, via eBay listing 389008025571 · eBay listing
• The Baker-Segerblom-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. ^[8] · Credit: Encycloflaggia reconstruction · Reconstruction
• The commercial Paramount form as described by Wikipedia: red, orange, yellow, green, turquoise, blue, violet, with blue where the Baker-Segerblom lineage kept indigo. ^[7] 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. ^[1][9] 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. ^[36] An assembly banner of unknown date rather than one of the surplus flags, but physical corroboration of the composition FOTW attributes to them. ^[1][9] · Credit: Photographer unrecorded; via Wikipedia · File:OronoAssemblyBanner.jpg