Gilbert Baker, the civil rights activist and artist whose rainbow flag design became synonymous with the LGBTQ movement ever since its 1978 debut, has died. According to the Bay Area Reporter, a free weekly newspaper serving the LGBTQ community in San Francisco, Baker died in New York on Friday, March 31st. The exact cause of his passing had not been made public as of this writing, though the news of it quickly went viral across social media.
Baker’s partner of 40 years, fellow civil rights activist Cleve Jones, later confirmed the news on Twitter. “My dearest friend in the world is gone. Gilbert Baker gave the world the Rainbow Flag,” he wrote. “He gave me forty years of love and friendship.”
My dearest friend in the world is gone. Gilbert Baker gave the world the Rainbow Flag; he gave me forty years of love and friendship. pic.twitter.com/titd3XZ0zD
— Cleve Jones (@CleveJones1) March 31, 2017
Author of When We Rise: My Life in the Movement, Jones’ account of the Stonewall riots in 1969 and what followed became the basis for Dustin Lance Black’s When We Rise miniseries on NBC. The dramatization included Baker as a character, and cast Dylan Arnold and Jack Plotnick to portray him as a young man and an adult respectively.
According to BuzzFeed News reporter Dominic Holden, Baker gave the original, hand-sewn rainbow flag as a gift to former President Barack Obama. The latter put it on display last June, during his final summer in the White House.
https://twitter.com/dominicholden/status/847925287727792129
(Via Bay Area Reporter and Cleve Jones)