Flashback Friday Looks Back at the First Pride Marches

First Pride Marches

 

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Pride has become ubiquitous during the month of June, with the big parades and celebrations occurring on the last Sunday of the month. Cities like NY, Chicago, Toronto, Los Angeles, and San Francisco hold the largest parades with attendance in the millions each year. We gather, we feel safe, we feel seen. But it wasn't always that way, though it was always a celebration of being seen. So how did those first parades in 1970 come about?

 

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Modern Pride parades were birthed from the Reminder Day Pickets which were held each year on July 4th from 1965-1969 at Independence Hall in Philidelphia. These picket rallies were the result of the organization of various and disparate LGBT groups along the East Coast, including the New York Chapter of the Daughters of Bilitis, the Janus Society in Philadelphia, and the Mattachine Society of Washington and New York. Some of these groups, especially The Mattachine Society, had been in various states of operation since the 50's!

Check out footage and narration of the 1968 Reminder Day Picket:

Following the multi-day street riot sparked by the Stonewall uprising on June 28th, 1969, the Eastern Regional Conference of Homophile Organizations, the organizing arm of the Reinder Day Pickets, began talks about a national parade and celebration of community to be held the following year on the Stonewall anniversary. As reported by the Library of Congress, the 13 participating groups proposed the following resolution at their November conference:

We propose that a demonstration be held annually on the last Saturday in June in New York City to commemorate the 1969 spontaneous demonstrations on Christopher Street and this demonstration be called CHRISTOPHER STREET LIBERATION DAY.

Chanting gay liberation slogans, we wore Halloween costumes, our best drag, tie-dye T-shirts, or almost nothing. Homemade floats featured Vaseline jars and a crucified queer man. Amazons rode on horseback. Crowds 10 deep cheered as we raucously urged them to join us.

The following features rare footage of that first NYC parade.

#TBT rare footage of pride parade, June 28, 1970, marchers took to streets of NY to mark the 1st anniversary o/t #StonewallRiots. That march was known as the Christopher Street Liberation Day Parade among 1st Pride parades in U.S. history.
Video @librarycongress #DignitySeniors pic.twitter.com/q6CmfVQ4JG

— Dignity Seniors (@dignity_seniors) June 6, 2024

Street interviews from the 1970 Los Angeles parade:

How are you celebrating your Pride this year? I hope you enjoyed this look back over 50 years ago.

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