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Those nationally coordinated activist commemorations were evidence of an LGBTQ movement that had rapidly grown in strength during the 1960s, not a movement sparked by a single riot. It was not the first rebellion, but it was the first to be called “the first,” and that act of naming mattered. What was different about Stonewall was that gay activists around the country were prepared to commemorate it publicly.
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British activists can join Stonewall UK, for example, while pride parades in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland are called “Christopher Street Day,” after the street in New York City on which the Stonewall Inn still sits.īut there were gay activists before that early morning of June 28, 1969, previous rebellions of LGBTQ people against police, earlier calls for “gay power,” and earlier riots. In fact it is conventional to date LGBTQ history into “before Stonewall” and “after Stonewall” periods-not just in the United States, but in Europe as well. The story is well known: A routine police raid of a mafia-owned gay bar in New York City sparked three nights of riots and, with them, the global gay rights movement. Pride Parade 1989, Birmingham: Letter from Mayor Richard Arrington, Jr.Despite what you may hear during this year’s fiftieth anniversary commemorations, Stonewall was not the spark that ignited the gay rights movement. Pride Parade 1989, Birmingham: Thank-You Letter to Law Enforcement and Related Article While most of the materials chosen for this exhibit reflect the first few years of the Central Alabama Pride parade, there are also additional materials from other Pride celebrations in the South and across the nation. The first Pride parade in Birmingham occurred in 1989, adding to the activities included in the “Day in the Park,” which grew to become a week-long celebration known as Central Alabama Pride. Known as “Day in the Park,” the celebration was sponsored by Lambda, Inc., a Birmingham-based gay rights organization founded in 1977. Nine years after the first Gay Pride marches, Birmingham held its first Pride celebration on June 24, 1979. The term Pride to describe the marches, parades, and other festivities has come to signify an activist movement and a critique of space that openly embodies and embraces the political and cultural acceptance of the LGBTQ community in public social life. After the first Christopher Street Liberation Day Parades in 1970, the event spread to more cities across the United States, eventually adopting the name PRIDE, an acronym for Personal Rights in Defense and Education. Emboldened by the events at the Stonewall Inn in 1969, activists decided a more radical approach was necessary to secure their vision of a more accepting future. Frank Kameny had organized a demonstration known as the “Annual Reminder” in Philadelphia starting in 1964, in which participants dressed conservatively and refrained from expressing public affection. These marches were not the first attempts to secure equal rights for the LGBTQ community. These early marches, originally called the Christopher Street Liberation Day Parades after the street on which the Stonewall Inn was located, concentrated on political activism and securing rights for the individuals in the LGBTQ community.
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The first annual Gay Pride marches were held on or near June 28, 1970-the one-year anniversary of the Stonewall Riots-in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco.