They settled on a parade down Hollywood Boulevard.
In Los Angeles, Morris Kight (Gay Liberation Front LA founder), Reverend Troy Perry (Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches founder) and Reverend Bob Humphries (United States Mission founder) gathered to plan a commemoration. The West Coast of the United States saw a march in Los Angeles on Jand a march and 'Gay-in' in San Francisco. Subsequent Chicago parades have been held on the last Sunday of June, coinciding with the date of many similar parades elsewhere.
The date was chosen because the Stonewall events began on the last Saturday of June and because organizers wanted to reach the maximum number of Michigan Avenue shoppers. On Saturday, June 27, 1970, Chicago Gay Liberation organized a march from Washington Square Park ("Bughouse Square") to the Water Tower at the intersection of Michigan and Chicago avenues, which was the route originally planned, and then many of the participants spontaneously marched on to the Civic Center (now Richard J. Template:Nonspecific The Stonewall Inn was a gay bar which catered to an assortment of patrons, but which was popular with the most marginalized people in the gay community: transvestites, transgender people, effeminate young men, hustlers, and homeless youth. Įarly on the morning of Saturday June 28, 1969, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender persons rioted following a police raid on the Stonewall Inn in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City. The Stonewall Inn, New York City, site of the June 1969 riots which spawned the gay rights movement and pride parades around the world. In 1990, they’d produce the first Outfest in the Gayborhood to celebrate National Coming Out Day.History File:Stonewall Inn 5 pride weekend 2016.jpg Later that year, encouraged by the success of the event, community members formed Lesbian and Gay Pride of the Delaware Valley. We are here to show them what we have to be proud of. PLGTF Director Rita Adessa took the podium to exclaim, “Only we can affirm our beings. Thatcher Longstreth expressed disapproval, wondering what those “fairies” had to be proud of. Organized by the Lesbian and Gay Task Force, the crowd of about 1,000 began at 10th and Spruce Streets and proceeded west to end in a rally at JFK Plaza. The Philadelphia Lesbian and Gay Pride parade was revived Jto honor the twentieth anniversary of Stonewall. By 1978, what would be the last Pride event of the decade only included a picnic at the Belmont Plateau.įor most of the 1980s, Philadelphia’s LGBT community celebrated each year with programs, talks and community events, but no parades. In 1973, the parade began with a rally in Rittenhouse Square, then headed down Chestnut Street, wound around City Hall, headed up the Parkway and ended with a fair at Eakins Oval in front of the Art Museum.įor the next few years, the city’s Pride parades assembled each June at Rittenhouse Square and marched to Independence Park, until the last one in 1976. Participants marched east up Chestnut Street and spilled into an open-air dance and celebration at Independence Park. Philadelphia’s first Gay Pride Parade assembled at Rittenhouse Square on June 11, 1972, with rousing speeches by community leaders Barbara Gittings and Jerry Curtis. In 1972, however, several Philadelphia political-activist organizations including the Gay Activists Alliance, the Homophile Action League, Radicalesbians and groups from Penn State and Temple University came together to produce their own event. It’s been 48 years since Philadelphia’s first Pride parade and 30 years since Philly Pride Presents took over organizing the event.īack in 1970 -71, Philadelphia activists were much too involved with the first Christopher Street Liberation Day Parades in New York that commemorated the 1969 Stonewall Riots to produce their own local parade.