Extra new, the artist who colored the gay pride flag

Gilbert Baker is the creator of the rainbow flag, symbol of the LGBT community (lesbians, gays, transsexuals and bisexuals), he was born in 1951 in the American town of Chanute (Kansas). Baker joined the Army at age 19 and was assigned to San Francisco (California) in full swing of the civil rights movement, for women, as well as claiming homosexuality.
Two years later, Gilbert Baker decides to leave the Army and they license it with honors. In San Francisco was where he learns to sew in a self-taught way and begins designing banners for anti-war demonstrations and pro-homosexual rights. It was at this stage that he met and formed a close friendship with the political and activist Harvey Milk.
Thus begins a degree as an artist who has in the rainbow flag (1978) his most famous creation and has also become the iconic symbol of his work.
On the occasion of the gay pride parade of 25th June 1978, Harvey Milk, the first openly gay elected United States politician, commissioned Gilbert Baker to design a symbol to represent the homosexual collective.
Gilbert Baker sewed some fabrics that he himself had dyed to create that rainbow flag. According to confessed Baker himself in various interviews, was inspired by the song Over the Rainbow, interpreted by Judy Garland. At first, the flag consisted of eight horizontal stripes with different colors with a particular meaning. After November 27, 1978, after the murder of his friend Harvey Milk along with the then mayor, the demand for the rainbow flag increased exponentially.
A year after the tragic death of his friend, Baker began working at the Paramount Flag Company of San Francisco and from that moment he designed advertising panels for numerous political figures, presidents of different countries and even kings.
In the Paramount Flag Company Gilbert Baker began to sell a new version of the flag, reduced to seven colors, to the detriment of the pink color, due to the scarce availability and difficulties to acquire that color in the factories but then it was reduced to 6 colors, disappearing turquoise.
Since its creation in 1978, the rainbow flag has become a worldwide symbol in favor of gay, transsexual and bisexual rights and next year will turn 40. Baker, with his creativity and skill to sew it by hand, replaced the Existing pink triangle until that year, a symbol of oppression of the Nazi classification of LGBT people in World War II.
In 2003, to commemorate the twenty-fifth anniversary of the LGBT flag, Gilbert Baker devised a two-kilometer rainbow flag that crossed Key West from the Gulf of Mexico to the Atlantic Ocean. After the celebrations, he sent different parts of the flag to more than one hundred cities around the world.
There in 1978 began to change the history of visibility and recognition of the rights of the LGTB collective, and in its main square, on a huge mast, has been flying for years a flag of colors that vindicates the gay community.
Gilbert Baker, who died in his home in New York on March 31 while sleeping, will receive the homage of the Castro neighborhood in San Francisco next Thursday, 8 th, while the city of New York will make a march in his memory the Next June 14.

http://cultura.elpais.com/cultura/2017/06/02/actualidad/1496354435_812969.html