How Activists Organized the First Gay Pri Paras | HISTORY

Contents:

• INSI THE FIRST PRI PARA—A R PROTT FOR GAY LIBERATN
• LGBTQ HISTORY MONTH: THE ROAD TO AMERI'S FIRST GAY PRI MARCH
• HOW ACTIVISTS ORGANIZED THE FIRST GAY PRI PARAS

INSI THE FIRST PRI PARA—A R PROTT FOR GAY LIBERATN

“Comg out” me wh threats of vlence and social that changed the aftermath of the 1969 Stonewall uprisg—when a group of LGBTQ people rted rponse to a police raid of the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar New York Cy. “The homosexual who wants to live a life of self-fulfillment our current society has all the rds stacked agast them, ” read one 1970 article about the upg march the Gay Liberatn Front News. ” The same day, a small group of San Francisns marched down Polk Street, then had a “gay-” piic that was broken up by equtrian and other New York groups had spent months planng the Manhattan event wh the help of anizers like Brenda Howard, a bisexual activist who had cut her anizg teeth durg the anti-Vietnam movement of the late 1960s.

The first gay pri march took place New York Cy on June 28, 1970 — the one-year anniversary of the Stonewall holdg Christopher Street Liberatn Day banner, Davi / New York Public LibraryOct. Each week’s feature will clu imag om the New York Public Library’s LGBTQ week, we look back at the untry’s first gay pri march — held New York Cy on June 28, 1970, the one-year anniversary of the Stonewall Rts — and what led up to that historic Saturday morng on June 28, 1969, police staged a raid at the Stonewall Inn, a mafia-n gay bar New York Cy's Greenwich Village neighborhood. The ps barrid themselv to the bar, and then the gay mob outsi the bar began to throw bricks and rocks toward the door and tried to break through the board up Stonewall Inn, September 1969.

The sign the wdow reads: “WE HOMOSEXUALS PLEAD WITH OUR PEOPLE TO PLEASE HELP MAINTAIN PEACEFUL AND QUIET CONDUCT ON THE STREETS OF THE VILLAGE — MATTACHINE” Diana Davi / New York Public LibraryJt a few days after the Stonewall Rts, gay activist Frank Kameny load up a b wh fellow activists and head down to Philalphia for the fifth “annual remr” picket prott outsi Inpennce Hall.

LGBTQ HISTORY MONTH: THE ROAD TO AMERI'S FIRST GAY PRI MARCH

“I thk that was probably Frank’s first realizatn that this was a new orr, thgs were changg, ” Farman days after the "annual remr, " on July 6, 1969, the New York tabloid The Daily News ran a homophobic article about the Stonewall raid by Frank Lisky, tled “Homo Nt Raid, Queen Be Are Stgg Mad. ”Activists Lda Rhos, Arlene Khner, and Ellen Davi / New York Public LibrarySoon after the 1969 "remr", four activists — Craig Rodwell, Fred Sargeant, Lda Rhos and Ellen Broidy — cid to attend a regnal “homophile” nference and “propose that the staid ‘annual remrs’ of homophile pickets at Inpennce Hall Philalphia, held every July 4 for the prev five years, be replaced by a march New York Cy, " Farman men were members of the Homophile Youth Movement Neighborhoods, and the women members of Lavenr Menace. The march stretched 15 blocks — three quarters of a e — at s longt, The New York Tim march end Central Park's Sheep’s Meadow, where the Tim wrote marchers "gathered to prott laws that make homosexual acts between nsentg adults illegal and social ndns that often make impossible for them to display affectn public, mata jobs or rent apartments.

HOW ACTIVISTS ORGANIZED THE FIRST GAY PRI PARAS

”Michael Brown, who is named by the Tim as a founr of the Gay Liberatn Front, told Tim reporter Lacey Fosburgh: “We have to e out to the open and stop beg ashamed, or else people will go on treatg as eaks. ”At the end of the march, protters gathered Central Park's Sheep's Meadow for a gay "be-"Diana Davi / New York Public LibraryLater that same day, Los Angel held a “Christopher Street Wt” celebratn on Hollywood Boulevard that drew thoands.

Pl Hoton reported the Los Angel Tim on the “hour-long, e-long procsn” down Hollywood Boulevard: “Sunday eveng had many thgs — joyo monstrators for sexual rights and digny, some sual attire, others briefs, ‘queens’ drag, ‘fairi’ wh paper wgs, clowns, leather-jacketed motorcyclists, a lbian on horseback, a python, whe hki, Amerin flags, hilar and somber signs and chants, a float pictg a homosexual nailed to the cross.