Soon, there was talk of making it an annual event. In other cities, the anniversary was marked with marches, rallies, and demonstrations, but in Los Angeles, the parade was the display of Pride, complete with a float from The Advocate magazine, loaded with men in swimsuits, and a conservative gay group clad in business suits. That, too, was dismissed when the California Superior Court ordered the police to provide protection as they would for any other group.Īll that negotiation left the team with only two days to throw together a parade before the June 28th anniversary. After the American Civil Liberties Union stepped in, the commission dropped all its requirements but a $1,500 fee for police service. Davis telling him, “As far as I’m concerned, granting a permit to a group of homosexuals to parade down Hollywood Boulevard would be the same as giving a permit to a group of thieves and robbers.” Grudgingly, the Police Commission granted the permit, though there were fees exceeding $1.5 million. Perry recalled the Los Angeles Police Chief Edward M. But homosexuality was still illegal in the state of California at the time, so securing a permit from the city was no easy task. They settled on a parade down Hollywood Boulevard. It was fast approaching one year since the Stonewall riots of June, 1969, when Reverend Bob Humphries (United States Mission founder), Morris Kight (Gay Liberation Front founder) and Reverend Troy Perry (Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches founder) gathered to plan a commemoration.
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The parade, which has long been the centerpiece of Pride weekend, was the first of its kind in the world when it began in 1970. With more than 400,000 people descending upon 1.9 square miles, Los Angeles Pride is the largest gathering of LGBT people and allies in Southern California. The photo was by Steve Fleming, assistant coordinator of carnival lot decor. On steps, left to right, John Toy, raffles chair David Schwinkendorf, circus coordinator Pat Rocco, carnival and circus chair John Walsh, food concessions chair Sharon Tobin, secretary Morris Kight, parade theme chair, and Patricia Underwood, treasurer. Pride Parade 1989, Birmingham: Letter from Mayor Richard Arrington, Jr.Part of the CSW Board in 1976: Lower foreground, Sharon Cornelison, president Terry “Spider” Luton, vice president. Pride Parade 1989, Birmingham: Thank-You Letter to Law Enforcement and Related Article
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While most of the materials chosen for this exhibit reflect the first few years of the Central Alabama Pride parade, there are also additional materials from other Pride celebrations in the South and across the nation. The first Pride parade in Birmingham occurred in 1989, adding to the activities included in the “Day in the Park,” which grew to become a week-long celebration known as Central Alabama Pride. Known as “Day in the Park,” the celebration was sponsored by Lambda, Inc., a Birmingham-based gay rights organization founded in 1977.
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Nine years after the first Gay Pride marches, Birmingham held its first Pride celebration on June 24, 1979. The term Pride to describe the marches, parades, and other festivities has come to signify an activist movement and a critique of space that openly embodies and embraces the political and cultural acceptance of the LGBTQ community in public social life. After the first Christopher Street Liberation Day Parades in 1970, the event spread to more cities across the United States, eventually adopting the name PRIDE, an acronym for Personal Rights in Defense and Education. Emboldened by the events at the Stonewall Inn in 1969, activists decided a more radical approach was necessary to secure their vision of a more accepting future. Frank Kameny had organized a demonstration known as the “Annual Reminder” in Philadelphia starting in 1964, in which participants dressed conservatively and refrained from expressing public affection. These marches were not the first attempts to secure equal rights for the LGBTQ community. These early marches, originally called the Christopher Street Liberation Day Parades after the street on which the Stonewall Inn was located, concentrated on political activism and securing rights for the individuals in the LGBTQ community. The first annual Gay Pride marches were held on or near June 28, 1970-the one-year anniversary of the Stonewall Riots-in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco.