Gilbert Baker, creator of rainbow flag and gay rights activist, dead at 65

The man who created the rainbow flag, which became a symbol for the gay rights movement, has died.

The Advocate reported that Gilbert Baker died at age 65, according to a social media post from his friend Cleve Jones.

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“My dearest friend in the world is gone,” Jones wrote on Twitter. “Gilbert Baker gave the world the Rainbow Flag; he gave me forty years of love and friendship.”

Jones is the author of the memoir “When We Rise: My Life in the Movement,” which partially inspired the ABC miniseries “When We Rise,” which chronicled the gay rights movement after the 1969 Stonewall riots.

Baker was born in 1951 in Kansas and was an Army veteran. According to his official website, he created the iconic rainbow flag in June 1978 and used his skills as a flag maker to create banners for anti-war protests and gay rights marches. Baker was asked by Harvey Milk, the openly gay San Francisco city-county supervisor, to create banners for a city parade months before he was assassinated.

The rainbow flag originally included -- in stripes from the top of the flag down -- hot pink, red, orange, yellow, green, turquoise, indigo and violet-- and became a global symbol for gay rights. Turquoise and hot pink were later removed from the flag because of a lack of accessibility to material in those colors.

"We needed something that expressed us," Baker, who was openly gay, told Time in 2015. "The rainbow really fits that, in terms of: We're all the colors, and all the genders and all the races. It's a natural flag. The rainbow is in the sky and it's beautiful. It's a magical part of nature."

His cause of death is not yet known.