First gay pride parade 1970
Brenda Howard, a bisexual woman, is considered the “Mother of Pride.” While the Christopher Street Gay Liberation Day March in New York City is widely considered to be the first Pride Parade, it actually occurred one day after Chicago held its first march, which technically makes Chicago the birthplace of gay pride. And that the first Pride marches, which were more militant and liberationist and less celebratory and corporatist than today's events, took place in 1970 to mark the first anniversary of Stonewall.
Most people know that Pride commemorates the Stonewall Uprising. The first Gay Pride parade was held in Chicago. According to a 2015 article in Out magazine, the group, which was led by several transgender women, “pelted officers with donuts, coffee, and paper plates until they were forced to retreat and return with larger numbers.” It is the first documented LGBTQ uprising in U.S. In May 1959, a group of LGBTQ individuals who were fed up with being mistreated by the police revolted at Cooper Do-Nuts in Los Angeles. The Stonewall Riots were not America's first LGBTQ uprising.
In the 1960s, the Mattachine Society would hold “Annual Reminders” at Philadelphia’s Independence Hall every Fourth of July, where they'd advocate for lesbian and gay equality. In 1955, the Daughters of Bilitis was founded in San Francisco, and became the first lesbian rights group in the United States. In 1924, Henry Gerber, a German immigrant, founded the Society for Human Rights in Chicago it was the first group to campaign for gay rights in the United States. There is a storied history of LGBTQ activism in the United States that dates back long before the Stonewall Riots. There was a gay rights movement before Pride Month. Given that many of the event's 50th anniversary celebrations were lost amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, now is the perfect time to look back at the history of Pride Month and LGBTQ activism in the United States. This year marks the 51st anniversary of the first gay pride march, which was held on the first anniversary of the Stonewall Riots. Pride parades, which are traditionally held on the last weekend in June, commemorate the anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising, a watershed moment in LGBTQ history when patrons of The Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in Manhattan that is now a national monument, fought back against a police raid. In honor of this month's festivities, here are the themes of every San Francisco Pride parade from 1970 to 2019.Since 1970, the LGBTQ community has marked June as Pride Month-a time to celebrate what it means to be lesbian, gay, bisexual, and/or transgender while demanding equality and liberation from cis and heteronormative constraints.
This year they’re dedicating the entire weekend to the theme of resistance within the political sphere. In 2017, Pride decided to kick off the parade with a #resist contingent as a way of demonstrating against the current administration in Washington DC. This year’s theme, "Generations of resistance," pays tribute to the generations of queer pioneers and current activists who are helping pave the way to a more inclusive community and world at large. In 1975 it was "Join us, the more visible we are, the stronger we become," the following year it was "United for freedom, diversity is our strength." In 2003, the theme was a famous quote by activist and assassinated politician Harvey Milk: "You’ve gotta give them hope." It was officially called the Gay Freedom Day up until 1981 when it became known as the International Lesbian and Gay Freedom Day Parade, and then changing again in 1995 to the San Francisco Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Pride Celebration. San Francisco’s first-ever parade was a response to New York City’s Stonewall riots.