The original Pride flag, which usually resides in San Francisco, is going on a world tour, and Cork is its first stop.
Cork may seem like a surprising stop on the world tour, certainly for the first stop, but San Francisco and Cork are actually sister cities. Twinning and sister cities aim to celebrate culture and build communities through international links.
Cllr John Maher, local representative of the Labour Party for Cork City North East, visited San Francisco and the flag in 2024. He is another reason for Cork being selected as the inaugural stop on tour. “I made the comment a bit flippantly, to be honest, when we met the curator of the museum where the flag is held. He had said that they were thinking of sending the flag on tour, and I just said ‘make sure Cork is first’,” he told Cork Independent.
The original Pride flag was designed in 1978 by LGBTQ+ rights activist Gilbert Baker. It is usually on display in the GLBT Historical Society in the Castro district of San Francisco. Baker was popular for his drag costumes and political banners. Harvey Milk encouraged Baker to create a symbol of Pride for the LGBTQ+ community, and Baker decided on a flag as a way to come out and attain visibility.
The dyed cotton muslin flag is a fragment of one of the two original eight-stripe rainbow flags raised at the San Francisco Gay Freedom Day Parade on June 25, 1978.
The original flag boasted eight colours, two more than the now-standard six-colour Pride flag. Pink and turquoise were cut by 1979 due to production issues and aesthetic choices, and indigo was replaced by blue. Baker made a mile-long version of the flag for the 25th anniversary of the Stonewall riots in 1994.
Cleve Jones, a friend of Baker, told SFGate, “I told him he’d better patent it, and he said, ‘No, it’s my gift to the world.’” Many flag versions have been created since, with the Progress flag and Intersex-inclusive ones being popular additions in recent years.
Cork LGBT Archive is to launch a permanent exhibition this year, and the original Pride flag is expected to be on display beside the exhibition in autumn, in the Cork Public Museum.
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