Out of the Shadows: A History of Pride in 10 Iconic Images

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Every June, on the cusp of early summer, Pride Month arrives in a burst of color. Parades fill city streets, rainbow flags flutter from storefronts, and brands trot out queer iconography where it’s an organic fit or not. Like many cultural movements, Pride has arrived at Peak Branding, where its meaning is almost indistinguishable from its signifiers.

Yet Pride began as a protest, and has had a long and winding road with many chapters. The progress we celebrate for queer people today seemed unthinkable decades ago, and there’s no better use of this month than to commemorate that journey. So while many brands we know and love cash in on the symbols of Pride, here at TQE we’re devoting space to the history that made them. 

Below you’ll find the stories behind ten of the LGBT Pride movement’s most indelible images: moments of resilience, courage, grief, and ultimately joy. In an atomized, divided world, they remind of just how much is possible when we come together. 

1. Pride Before Pride (July 4, 1965)

Though the first “Pride” march as we know it didn’t come until 1970, LGBTQ activism began to surge in the mid-60s. A fledgling group of early gay rights organizations – New York’s Daughters of Bilitis, the Janus Society of Philadelphia, the Mattachine Society of New York, and the Mattachine Society of Washington – came together to form the East Coast Homophile Organizations, or ECHO. They met monthly to form plans of action for addressing employment discrimination, police raids and harassment, and the classification of homosexuality as a mental illness. In 1965, 44 brave members picketed Independence Hall in Philadelphia, in what is widely considered the first gay rights protest. These pickets continued for the next four years, always on July 4th, in what ECHO came to term “the Annual Reminders.”

2. The Stonewall Uprising (June 28 - July 3, 1969)

Though the word “Stonewall” has become synonymous with the LGBTQ rights movement, its cultural context is often misunderstood. Contrary to popular shorthand, it was not the first time American queer people fought back against persecution. In 1955, 162 gay men and lesbians were arrested for disrupting a police raid at Baltimore’s Pepper Hill Club. Four years later,  transgender women stood alongside gay men and lesbians in a clash with police at Cooper Do-Nuts in Los Angeles. However, the Stonewall riots of 1969 marked a watershed moment for LGBT rights in the national consciousness. After police raided New York City gay bar The Stonewall Inn, patrons fought back in a rebellion that spanned the next four nights. It not only spurred New York-based queer communities to organize into political groups, but LGBT people across the country to come out into the streets.

3. Christopher Street Liberation Day (June 28, 1970)

The one year anniversary of Stonewall marked another indelible moment: the birth of what we would recognize today as the first Pride protest. Members of the Gay Liberation Front, including activists Craig Rodwell and Martha Shelley, planned a demonstration to commemorate the riots, which they dubbed the Christopher Street Liberation March & Gay-In (phenomenal name). Though only around 200 people began the march in the West Village, by the time they made their way to Central Park the crowd had surpassed 10,000. As historian Lillian Faderman noted, “Never before in history had so many gay and lesbian people come together in one place and for a common endeavour.” This evolved into parallel marches nationwide that have continued yearly until the present day – yet only after queer people started to attain more rights did the focus change from “liberation” to “pride.”

4. The Debut of the Rainbow Flag (1978)

Of course, no movement is complete without its iconography, and there’s no visual symbol more emblematic of Pride than the rainbow flag. Designed by artist Gilbert Baker in 1978, each of its eight original stripes carried a symbolic meaning: pink (sex), red (life), orange (healing), yellow (sunshine), green (nature), turquoise (art and magic), blue (serenity), purple (spirit). His vision of empowerment for the “rainbow of humanity” was unveiled at the San Francisco Gay Freedom Day Parade in 1978, where it was hoisted high on the flagpole at United Nations Plaza. Today, the flag is a symbol that’s both enduring and ever-changing, with evolutions in its design reflecting the diversity of the movement. In 2017, black and brown stripes were added to highlight the contributions of queer people of color, along with pink, baby blue and white stripes to honor the trans community. 

5. The Rise of ACT UP (1987)

By the late 1980s, Pride had shifted from a protest to a parade, a softer, more commercialized form of queer visibility. Yet in that same decade, the AIDS epidemic claimed an estimated 100,000 lives in the United States alone. With little to no government intervention, and no medication on the market besides the exorbitantly expensive AZT, it’s not an overstatement to say queer people were being left to die. The AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) formed in response, staging urgent, grassroots demonstrations to demand a national response. Around this time, they began to “invade” Pride parades to center attention around those whose lives were at risk or had been lost. Their dogged efforts eventually led to FDA overhauls that accelerated medication approvals, along with reduced treatment costs – a testament to the power of LGBTQ activism. 

6. The AIDS Memorial Quilt (1987)

Pride has always been about making invisible struggles visible, harnessing the power of coming together as a collective. Though its unveiling was not tied to a Pride event specifically, the AIDS Memorial Quilt was a profound manifestation of those ideals. Conceived by activist Cleve Jones in 1985, the quilt stitched together 3x6 foot panels that each commemorated the life of someone who died of AIDS. When it was first unveiled on the National Mall on October 11, 1987, its 1,920 panels spanned an area larger than a football field; today, it comprises over 50,000 individual panels. Weighing in at 54 tons, the quilt is the largest piece of community folk art ever created worldwide – a gorgeous and devastating acknowledgement of HIV/AIDS’ impact on the queer community. 

‍7. Lesbians Break Up The Boys’ Club (1993)

While women and femmes have always been at the forefront of queer activism, too often cis, white gay men are held up as the faces of the movement. To do so is to overlook the grassroots organizing of groups like The Lesbian Avengers (again, phenomenal name), who mobilized in response to a series of anti-gay bills in the early ‘90s. The group also convened the first Dyke March in April 1993 in Washington D.C., which was then held annually and quickly spread to other cities both domestic and abroad. The marches remain fiercely political and just as urgent over thirty years later, ensuring that Pride does not become a one-size-fits-all monolith.

8. Marriage Equality Becomes Legal (2015)

The push for marriage equality spanned several long decades, borne back by legal challenges at every step. Though localized efforts in the 1990s led to civil unions for same-sex couples in some states, 1996 saw the Defense of Marriage Act federally define marriage as between a man and a woman. It wasn’t until 2015 that the Supreme Court passed a 5-4 decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, which granted same-sex couples in every state the right to full, equal recognition under the law. Concrete, tangible milestones of progress are rare in the march towards progress, and the nationwide celebrations that followed were euphoric. 

9. Pride After Pulse (2016)

Yet just one year after celebrating the largest legal advancement in decades, the LGBTQ community was rocked by the tragedy of the Pulse nightclub shooting. 49 people at the Orlando gay club lost their lives, and millions around the country and the world mourned in response. As the shooting happened during Pride month, it was initially unclear if and how the events would carry on – fears of gathering in numbers weren’t just prevalent but justified. Yet queer communities rallied together in shows of solidarity and defiance, with record-breaking attendance that refused intimidation. Parades across the country led processions honoring the victims, underscoring a truth that has defined the movement since its inception: visibility in and of itself is an act of courage.

10. A Global Movement (2019 and Beyond)

2019 marked the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots, a staggering reminder of just how far the queer community has come. What began with powerful acts of resistance in the margins has grown into a global movement, as marked by the foundation of WorldPride, which draws millions of attendees to international cities every year. Yet along with the celebration of progress lives a call to action, a reminder that equality is not a destination but an ongoing pursuit. 

Even as these ten images remind us of a long, passionate history worth commemorating, their meaning has never been solely confined to the past. With every milestone of progress, backlash has followed – particularly towards the trans community and queer people have color. As long as they, and other LGBTQ people around the world, face discrimination, the story of Pride will remain far from finished.