The Marginalian
The Marginalian

After Stonewall: The First-Ever Pride Parades, In Vintage Photos

In the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, violent protests and street demonstrations took over the streets of New York after a police raid of Stonewall Inn, the now-legendary Greenwich Village gay bar. Known as the Stonewall Riots, these protests are commonly considered the tipping point at which the LGBT community coalesced into political cohesion and the birth of the modern gay rights movement. On that June morning, equality for all seemed a distant but necessary dream — a dream that finally became a reality.

In Stonewall: The Riots That Sparked the Gay Revolution (public library), David Carter contextualizes the remarkable delta of progress that the Stonewall Riots precipitated:

It was only a few decades ago — a very short time in historical terms — that the situation of gay men and lesbians was radically different from what it is today. At the end of the 1960s, homosexual sex was illegal in every state but Illinois. Not one law — federal, state, or local — protected gay men or women from being fired or denied housing. There were no openly gay politicians. No television show had any identifiably gay characters. When Hollywood made a film with a major homosexual character, the character was either killed or killed himself. There were no openly gay policemen, public school teachers, doctors, or lawyers. And no political party had a gay caucus.

Gay Liberation Front march at Times Square, New York, 1969. (Photograph:  Diana Davies / The New York Public Library)
Gay Liberation Front march at Times Square, New York, 1969. (Photograph: Diana Davies / The New York Public Library)

In 1970, to mark the first anniversary of the Stonewall uprisings, the very first Gay Pride marches took place in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Chicago.

Digging through the New York Public Library archives, I unearthed some goosebump-inducing photographs from the first-ever Pride parades around the world:

New York City Gay Liberation Day, Christopher Street, June 27, 1970 (Photograph: Diana Davies / The New York Public Library)
Gay Liberation Day march and dance, New York City, June 27, 1970 (Photograph: Kay Tobin Lahusen / The New York Public Library)
New York City Gay Liberation Day, Christopher Street, June 27, 1970 (Photograph: Diana Davies / The New York Public Library)
Gay Liberation Day march and dance, New York City, June 27, 1970 (Photograph: Barbara Gittings and Kay Tobin Lahusen / The New York Public Library)
Gay Liberation Day march and dance, New York City, June 27, 1970 (Photograph: Barbara Gittings and Kay Tobin Lahusen / The New York Public Library)
Philadelphia’s first Gay Pride rally and march, June 11, 1972 (Photograph: Kay Tobin Lahusen / The New York Public Library)
Annapolis students at Philadelphia’s first Gay Pride rally, 1972 (Photograph: Kay Tobin Lahusen / The New York Public Library)
Philadelphia’s first Gay Pride rally, 1972 (Photograph: Kay Tobin Lahusen / The New York Public Library)
Philadelphia’s first Gay Pride rally, 1972 (Photograph: Kay Tobin Lahusen / The New York Public Library)
Philadelphia’s first Gay Pride rally, 1972 (Photograph: Kay Tobin Lahusen / The New York Public Library)
Chicago Gay Pride celebration, 1972 (Photograph: Kay Tobin Lahusen via NYPL)
Toronto Gay Pride march, 1972 (Photograph: Kay Tobin Lahusen / The New York Public Library)
Gay couple at Toronto’s first Gay Pride Week, August 1972 (Photograph: Kay Tobin Lahusen / The New York Public Library)
Lesbian couple at Toronto’s first Gay Pride Week, August 1972 (Photograph: Kay Tobin Lahusen / The New York Public Library)

For the complete cultural context on this tidal change, Stonewall: The Riots That Sparked the Gay Revolution is indispensable in its entirety.


Published June 28, 2013

https://www.themarginalian.org/2013/06/28/vintage-pride-parade/

BP

www.themarginalian.org

BP

PRINT ARTICLE

Filed Under

View Full Site

The Marginalian participates in the Bookshop.org and Amazon.com affiliate programs, designed to provide a means for sites to earn commissions by linking to books. In more human terms, this means that whenever you buy a book from a link here, I receive a small percentage of its price, which goes straight back into my own colossal biblioexpenses. Privacy policy. (TLDR: You're safe — there are no nefarious "third parties" lurking on my watch or shedding crumbs of the "cookies" the rest of the internet uses.)