Colors of the gay rainbow

At OprahMag. Pride Month celebrations in are particularly special as they commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots , a series of incidents in New York City that launched the gay liberation movement of the '70s and '80s—and forged a path for LGBTQ acceptance. Not to be forgotten? It was initially created by the late artist and activist Gilbert Baker in following the election of Harvey Milk, the first-ever gay person to be elected to office as San Francisco city supervisor in California. And though the first flag featured eight stripes, Baker eventually dropped pink and turquoise since it was difficult to mass produce a version featuring those two colors.

A rainbow flag is a multicolored flag consisting of the colors of the rainbow. The designs differ, but many of the colors are based on the seven spectral colors of red , orange , yellow , green , blue , indigo , and violet that compose the visible light spectrum. The actual color attributed as "blue" is cyan. There are several independent rainbow flags in use today.

It goes back to , when the artist Gilbert Baker, an openly gay man and a drag queen, designed the first rainbow flag. Baker later revealed that he was urged by Harvey Milk , one of the first openly gay elected officials in the U. Baker decided to make that symbol a flag because he saw flags as the most powerful symbol of pride. Baker and a team of volunteers had made them by hand, and now he wanted to mass-produce the flag for consumption by all. However, because of production issues, the pink and turquoise stripes were removed and indigo was replaced by basic blue, which resulted in the contemporary six-striped flag red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet.

After an honorable discharge from the military, he decided to remain in the City by the Bay to pursue a design career. Milk, of course, would go on to win a seat as a San Francisco city supervisor in , becoming the first openly gay man elected to public office in California in the process. Along with writer Cleve Jones and filmmaker Artie Bressan, Milk pressed Baker to create a recognizable emblem of empowerment for the queer community.