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Watch Video of the Earliest San Francisco Pride Parades

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The San Francisco Pride Parade has existed in in one form or another for 41 years now, its latest incarnation having rolled down Market Street last Sunday.

To mark the occasion, Chronicle blogger Peter Hartlaub dug up some great historical photos of the parade from the paper's morgue. And I found the following YouTube clips of some of the earliest parades, from the 1970s.

Sunday's celebration came right on the heels of a huge victory for the LGBT-rights movement, New York State's passage of a law allowing same-sex marriage. Pretty remarkable to think of the gains made over the years as you watch the earliest activists -- and revelers -- take to the streets...

1975, featuring a lot of feather boas and costumes

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1977, featuring a heavy musical dose of Sylvester

1978. Harvey Milk shows up at around :40.

Here's a great 1979 KTVU report, which deals in part with the Milk assassination and its political ramifications in the city.

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