The Purple Hand Protests on October 31, 1969 at the offices of The San Francisco Examiner were organized by the Committee for Homosexual Freedom (CHF), which had recently become the Gay Liberation Front (GLF) and allied with The Society for Individual Rights (SIR). The protest was against The San Francisco Examiner for running an inflammatory article about the Gay bars and community.

The day ended in 15 arrests, a broken rib, one set of knocked-out teeth and purple handprints scattered across the San Francisco Examiner’s exterior walls¹³⁴. Employees from the newspaper dumped bags of ink onto the protesters, and the protesters responded by coating their hands in the purple ink and marking the walls and glass of the front of the building². 

 

Sources:

(1) Armed with Ink, 1960s Activists 'Struck Back' Against Homophobic ... - KQED. https://www.kqed.org/arts/13859570/friday-purple-hand-gay-liberation-1969.

(2) San Francisco Examiner - Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Examiner.

(3) Friday of the Purple Hand - FoundSF. https://www.foundsf.org/index.php?title=Friday_of_the_Purple_Hand.

(4) “Friday of the Purple Hand” - The Berkeley Revolution. https://revolution.berkeley.edu/night-purple-hand/.