OCTOBER 31, 1969 · SAN FRANCISCO

The Friday of the Purple Hand

Our name honors a moment when an attempt to humiliate queer protesters became an enduring mark of visibility and resistance.

What happened

On October 31, 1969, members of the Committee for Homosexual Freedom, the Gay Liberation Front, and allied activists gathered outside the San Francisco Examiner. They were protesting the newspaper’s disparaging treatment of gay people and gay bars.

Purple printing ink was poured onto the demonstrators from above. Protesters pressed their ink-covered hands onto the building and carried purple handprints through downtown San Francisco. Police moved against the crowd, and accounts from the day describe injuries and arrests.

Why remember it

The purple hands endured because the protesters refused to let someone else decide what the ink meant. A substance used against them became their mark—a declaration that queer people were present, organized, and unwilling to disappear.

Purple Hand Books carries that spirit into a different kind of public space: the bookshelf.

We use the name with respect for the people who stood there, for the movements that preceded and followed them, and for the responsibility to keep LGBTQ+ history available in our own words.

Further reading

Learn more through GLIDE’s history of the protest and the Berkeley Revolution digital archive.