The Reagan Years: 1980s: Growth of a Community: Gay Life from Local Theatre to International Sports Games
Annual Gay and Lesbian Freedom Celebration parade in downtown San Francisco, California. June 1982. Ron Riesterer, photographer. Gelatin silver print. Collection of Oakland Museum of California. The Oakland Tribune Collection. Gift of ANG Newspapers.
The San Francisco Gay and Lesbian Freedom Celebration has been an annual parade and festival every year since June 1970 when thirty "hairy fairies" marched into Golden Gate Park. The parade commemorates the birth of the modern gay rights movement in June 1969, when New York City police raided the Stonewall Inn, a Greenwich Village gay bar. This 1982 photograph of gays and lesbians carrying banners and marching down San Francisco's Market Street illustrates the responsive, engaged community gays and lesbians were creating in Northern California.