1969

I start with the year 1969. Of course, there was no poster for the riot in New York City’s Greenwich Village at the seedy Stonewall Inn, which erupted when vice cops tried to bust the nothing-left-to-lose drag queens, street kids, and queers of color. This week-long series of angry demonstrations launched the LGBTQ liberation movement, which transformed society and law over the next several decades.

Unfortunately, it is easy to forget the disreputable fighters such as the dyke who threw the first punch, or the trans people and drag queens of color who rocked the police wagon full of their outrageous sisters, or the young queers who barricaded the police in the bar and tossed in flaming wads of paper. Instead of slinking away into the night, these misfits teased the cops with suggestive come-ons and proudly fought back. They were responding to centuries of oppression.

The early gay riots validated the revolutionary axiom that when the most oppressed lead, everyone’s status is raised. The Stonewall Riots launched the multi-hued, multi-gendered queer liberation movement that followed and led the way for much- needed social change.

The upheaval in Greenwich Village occurred as the civil rights, women’s, student, and anti-war movements were struggling with the question: Who is our enemy? Straight people, men, white people? A capitalist system? And everyone was confronting the sexism, racism, and homophobia that penetrated the very movements we were building.

Obviously, the queer community was not immune from these tensions, but if solidarity can be maintained, nothing can stop it. The Stonewall Rebellion, led by those scraggly champions of human rights, found a way.

FSP, the Stonewall Committee, and RW knew that building on the original militancy of the riots at the Stonewall Inn would be an effective way to organize. In the 2020s, that is still true as the U.S. Supreme Court upholds the right to discriminate based on religious disagreement and strips away our right to control our own bodies regarding abortion, and as transgender people face a barrage of initiatives and laws trying to erase their reality.

1974

Fifty years ago, Seattle organized its first event to commemorate pride. It was also the first year that Seattle Gay News, known as SGN, was published. A group of activists including David Neff, Patrick Haggerty, Cindy Gipple, Sam Deaderick, Faygele Ben-Miriam, and others who hung out around the Gay Community Center and the Seattle Counseling Service for Sexual Minorities put together a week-long series of pride events. This culminated in Pioneer Square at an evening rally and dance with live music featuring Sue Isaacs. It attracted 200 brave souls.

Seattle Gay Pride Week poster, 1975. Courtesy of Chris Smith. Issued on newsprint, the 1975 poster listed six days of pride events.

1975

Two Seattle ordinances banning discrimination in employment and housing based on sexual orientation and political ideology had passed – ordinances that RW and FSP organizers helped draft. The Seattle Women’s Commission formally petitioned Mayor Wes Uhlman to proclaim June 24 – 29 Gay Pride Week. The request was ignored until 1977, when Uhlman finally made it official.

The lack of formal recognition by the city did not stop the Lesbian Resource Center and the Gay Community Center from sponsoring a full schedule of pride events organized by a variety of community groups. The busy 1975 gay pride week, organized by the Union of Sexual Minorities and held at the Seattle Center, culminated in a protest of ongoing police harassment of gay bar owners and patrons.

The official poster was printed with silver lettering on midnight blue velveteen paper in keeping with the mid-1970s disco look.