Pride Month is a time to celebrate love, diversity, the progress made within the LGBTQ community, and the countless, often unnamed heroes that have brought about that progress. At the center of these celebrations is the Pride Flag, a global symbol of the pride, inclusion, and unity that all members of the community deserve to experience.

For employers, the choice to add the Pride Flag to websites, social media posts, and blogs may seem like a first, small step toward greater allyship and engagement. It is. But it’s an important one.

With its vibrant, instantly recognizable design, the Pride Flag speaks to us all. For members of the LGBTQ community, it can serve as a jubilant, shared statement of visibility. For allies, it can be a reminder that the rights enjoyed today have been hard fought and at great cost. The history of this flag matters.

Why a flag? Why a rainbow?

The Pride Flag was designed in 1978 by Gilbert Baker, a talented artist, and activist in San Francisco. Baker was inspired by his friend, Harvey Milk, one of the first openly gay elected officials in the United States, who envisioned a powerful and unifying symbol for the community.

Before the Pride flag, the only widely recognized symbol in the community was the pink triangle. But that triangle’s history was steeped in tragedy, created by the Nazis to label and denigrate LGBTQ people. Although it had been reclaimed and redefined by the community over the decades, Milk, among many of Baker’s friends, fellow artists, and other leaders believed it was time for a new symbol that would better represent the promise and progress of the LGBTQ movement and its values.

In a 2015 article for MoMA, Baker described why the flag project was not just important to him but “necessary…we needed something beautiful, something from us. The rainbow is so perfect because it really fits our diversity in terms of race, gender, age, all of those things.”

Baker and his team completed the design, hand-dyed the fabric, and sewed the first, giant version of it in time for Harvey Milk to introduce it at the 1978 San Francisco Gay Freedom Day parade. Just a few short months later, Milk was assassinated. But his legacy and the flag he championed lives on.

Every time you and your organization display that flag, you're saying something that deserves to be said. You're sending a powerful message to the world that the LGBTQ community is part of your whole community: visible, equal, included, and valued.

On behalf of all of us at SkyWater Search Partners, we hope you are enjoying a celebratory and reflective Pride Month.