The San Francisco Pride Band was founded by Jon Reed Sims in 1978 as the San Francisco Gay Freedom Day Marching Band and Twirling Corps. Sims, born in Smith Center, Kansas, was a musician and performer who formed the band in response to Anita Bryant‘s anti-gay campaign in the late 1970s.

Upon its founding in 1978, it became the first openly-gay musical group in the world. In successive years, Sims created the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus, the Lesbian/Gay Chorus of San Francisco, Lambda Pro Musica orchestra (now defunct), and encouraged the formation of the The Queer Big Apple Corps band in New York by Nancy Corporon and The Great American Yankee Freedom Band of Los Angeles by Wayne Love.