The 2017 New York City Pride Parade marked another moment - the first time the Pride parade was broadcast on live television, showing just how far the movement has come. But here we are over fifty years later, Pride is still going strong - and it's receiving more attention than ever. Of course, the original NYC organizers could never have imagined the ripple effect. That same year, Pride parades also took place in Los Angeles and Chicago.
According to the article, participants described the march as a "gay-in." At the front of the parade, there were about "200 members of the Gay Activists Alliance, followed by people representing the Mattachine Society, women's liberation groups, the Queens, and 14 other homosexual organizations."
Michael Brown, founder of the Gay Liberation Front, called the watershed event, "an affirmation and declaration of our new pride," in a New York Times article published on June 29, 1970. As you can see from these photos, marchers were loud and proud, carried signs - and, of course, Pride today is now known as nothing less than the most glittery and rainbow-covered event of the year. We were supposed to be unthreatening."īut the first NYC Pride Parade changed all that. "Required dress on men was jackets and ties for women, only dresses. The walk would occur in silence," Sargeant explained. "Since 1965, a small, polite group of gays and lesbians had been picketing outside Liberty Hall. The cops turned their backs on us to convey their disdain, but the masses of people kept carrying signs and banners, chanting, and waving to surprised onlookers."īefore Stonewall, the LGBTQ community primarily participated in silent vigils, including an event called the “Annual Reminder” in Philadelphia. "There were no floats, no music, no boys in briefs. I was astonished we stretched out as far as I could see, thousands of us," Sargeant wrote in 2010. "I stayed at the head of the march the entire way, and at one point, I climbed onto the base of a light pole and looked back. The Village Voice published Sargeant's first-person account of the historic event, which paints a picture of what it was like. And half a year later it came to fruition. On November 2, 1969, along with his partner Fred Sargeant, and others, Rodwell proposed the idea for an annual march. One of the people who started the NYC parade was bookstore owner and gay rights activist Craig Rodwell. And that's because the riots inspired members of the community throughout the country to organize, so much so that within two years of Stonewall, LGBTQ rights groups had been started in nearly every major city in the US. And soon up to 600 people in the neighborhood were raging, throwing things, and chanting "gay power."Īccording to the National Parks Service, Stonewall is regarded by many as the single most important event that led to the development of the modern LGBTQ civil rights movement. Led by Black trans women and lesbians, a group reacted by protesting.
While police were known to raid gay bars in the 60s, due to violations of liquor legislation, this particular moment resulted in outrage among Stonewall patrons. It all began a year after the riots that took place on June 28, 1969, following the police raid of the Stonewall Inn - a gay bar located in Greenwich Village. The annual New York City Pride Parade may be cancelled this year, but that doesn't mean we can't celebrate by thinking back to the very first Pride parade in New York, how it was formed, and what it was like.