The History of Pride Month
On a hot summer’s night in New York on June 28, 1969, police raided the Stonewall Inn, a gay club in Greenwich Village, which resulted in bar patrons, staff, and neighborhood residents rioting onto Christopher Street outside. Among the many leaders of the riots was a black, trans, bisexual woman, Marsha P. Johnson, leading the movement to continue over six days with protests and clashes. The message was clear — protestors demanded the establishment of places where LGBT+ people could go and be open about their sexual orientation without fear of arrest.
Pride Month is largely credited as being started by bisexual activist Brenda Howard. Known as ‘The Mother of Pride,’ Brenda organized Gay Pride Week and the Christopher Street Liberation Day Parade a year after the Stonewall Riots. This eventually morphed into what we now know as the New York City Pride March and was the catalyst for the formation of similar parades and marches across the world.
Speaking of the rainbow flag, it was actually gay politician Harvey Milk who asked a talented designer friend, Gilbert Baker, to design an all-encompassing symbol to take to San Francisco’s Pride March in 1978.
Sadly, Harvey Milk was assassinated along with Mayor George Moscone on November 23, 1978, in San Francisco City Hall by Dan White, a disgruntled former supervisor who was angry at Milk for lobbying against having him reappointed on the Board of Supervisors.
Bill Clinton was the first U.S. President to officially recognize Pride Month in 1999 and 2000. Then, from 2009 to 2016, Barack Obama declared June LGBT Pride Month. In May 2019, Donald Trump recognized Pride Month with a tweet announcing that his administration had launched a global campaign to decriminalize homosexuality, although critics have noted that actions speak louder than words.
The New York Pride Parade is one of the largest and most well-known parades to take place, with over 2 million people estimated to have taken part in 2019.
One of the most difficult parts of being gay is ‘coming out’ to those who may not take the news with a smile. In a column for GRAND, Loren A. Olson, M.D., a psychiatrist in Des Moines, author of Finally Out: Letting Go of Living Straight discusses the challenge of coming out to your grandchildren.
The three most important questions to answer before coming out to grandchildren are:
• Do you have the parents’ permission?
• What is the appropriate information for their ages?
• What information do the grandchildren want?
In the early 1990s, Black Prides emerged as a powerful force and now take place in more than 30 major cities nationwide. Black Pride events, which include New York’s “Pride in the City” and Detroit’s “Hotter Than July”, offer a unique opportunity for LGBT communities of African descent to celebrate their myriad of experiences and identities with their allies, friends and families. Black Pride celebrations originated from the dissatisfaction of Black LGBT people who did not identify with the entertainment or cultural programming at other Pride events. For a list of more Black Pride events, please visit the International Federation of Black Prides. In recent years, other Pride events targeting specific communities of color, such as the Latino/a community, have also occurred in some cities.
Baker’s iteration of the flag gives a unique meaning to each color: “hot pink for sex, red for life, orange for healing, yellow for sunlight, green for nature, turquoise for magic, blue for harmony, and violet for spirit,” he explained.
“We needed something to express our joy, our beauty, our power. And the rainbow did that,” Baker told CNN in 2015. “We’re an ancient, wonderful tribe of people. We picked something from nature. We picked something beautiful.”
The late artist Gilbert Baker is credited with creating the first Pride flag, which he designed in 1978 for the San Francisco Gay Pride Day, according to CNN.
