It was a near miracle that the first Christopher Street West Parade in Los Angeles kicked off at all on June 28, 1970. As my friend Jerry Hoose used to say about that year, “we went from the shadows to sunlight.” Today, my original marshal’s badge is on display in the Smithsonian.Įarly member of the Gay Liberation Front and Radicalesbians and co-organizer of the first marches in New York and Los Angeles Eventually we made it to Central Park, just like we had promised - and us activists transformed a movement from a few ragtag militants to thousand strong. When we reached 23rd Street, I climbed up a pole, looked back and saw a crowd stretch all the way to Christopher Street.
As a marshal, I especially had to know how to react and control the marchers if we were attacked. So we held self-defense classes and learned how to protect ourselves.
We didn’t have a police permit, so no one knew exactly what would happen - no one knew the type of force that might greet us. We intended to march from Greenwich Village and up to Central Park. The march was a reflection of us: out, loud and proud. The Christopher Street Gay Liberation Day March was as revolutionary and chaotic as everything we did that first year after the Stonewall riots. 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.ĭigging 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, J(Photograph: Diana Davies / The New York Public Library) Gay Liberation Day march and dance, New York City, J(Photograph: Kay Tobin Lahusen / The New York Public Library) New York City Gay Liberation Day, Christopher Street, J(Photograph: Diana Davies / The New York Public Library) Gay Liberation Day march and dance, New York City, J(Photograph: Barbara Gittings and Kay Tobin Lahusen / The New York Public Library) Gay Liberation Day march and dance, New York City, J(Photograph: Barbara Gittings and Kay Tobin Lahusen / The New York Public Library) Philadelphia’s first Gay Pride rally and march, J(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)įor the complete cultural context on this tidal change, Stonewall: The Riots That Sparked the Gay Revolution is indispensable in its entirety.Early member of the Gay Liberation Front and marshal of the first Pride march (Photograph: Diana Davies / The New York Public Library)
Gay Liberation Front march at Times Square, New York, 1969. There were no openly gay policemen, public school teachers, doctors, or lawyers. When Hollywood made a film with a major homosexual character, the character was either killed or killed himself. No television show had any identifiably gay characters. Not one law - federal, state, or local - protected gay men or women from being fired or denied housing. At the end of the 1960s, homosexual sex was illegal in every state but Illinois. 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.
In Stonewall: The Riots That Sparked the Gay Revolution ( public library), David Carter contextualizes the remarkable delta of progress that the Stonewall Riots precipitated: On that June morning, equality for all seemed a distant but necessary dream - a dream that finally became a reality. 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. 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.