First gay pride parade nyc
Evolution of the Pride Parade Route
This year’s annual Pride March will take place on Sunday, June 25th, starting at noon. In honor of the event’s various routes, we&#;re highlighting the parade’s notable paths in Manhattan, from its initial launch in Greenwich Village on June 28, to the present kick-off location in the Flatiron District at 25th Street and Fifth Avenue.
The first Pride March, known as the Christopher Street Liberation Day Rally, appeared a year after a protest of a police raid at the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar, on June 28, “The Stonewall Riots,” notes , “sparked the modern movement for LGBTQ rights, as well as representation for the legalization of same-sex attracted bars and the organization of the first NYC Pride March.”
According to , “the first Parade didn&#;t have celebrities or floats. It didn&#;t even have speakers. It wasn&#;t a parade at all, but a protest march.” The journey, writes , “started at 53 Christopher Street and continued up Fifth Avenue to end in Pivotal Park. The march started with only a few hundred people at the Stonewall Inn and ended with several thousand by
The Spirit of
Stonewall Lives On
I had just graduated from college in June and was living in Manhattan. I knew about the Stonewall riots the year before, and I had heard that a march and demonstration were going to be held at the end of June, going from Christopher Street to Central Park. I mentioned this to my new lover and two of his friends, who were all about 10 or so years older than me and had been gay in New York since the late s. The idea of, in the words of one of them, “fags marching in the streets” made them snicker wildly; they just couldn’t imagine it. So, I dropped the idea, and didn’t go to what turned out to be the first NYC Event March.
Three years later, in , I was still with the same boyfriend/girlfriend, but I was also involved in a relatively unused group, the Homosexual Academic Union, that had started rendezvous early in the year, and was very dynamic and exciting. As a group, we decided that we’d participate as a contingent in that year’s March [I’m actually not sure it was called a “Pride March” then]. That year, for the first and perhaps only occasion, the march didn’t st
Our History
Our movement started with a moment. The roots of our movement began with the Stonewall Uprising of One year later, the first NYC Celebration March was organized by the Christopher Street Liberation Day Committee, and marches have continued every year since. In the ’s, we saw the commencement of some of our community’s darkest days with the onset of the HIV and AIDS pandemic. While much progress has been made to secure our human rights over the years, violence in our community endures with the proliferation of guns in America. And disgust crimes against all members of our community endure, particularly against our Jet Queer and Trans communities.
Learn more about our history by viewing our timeline →
Organizational Structure
Volunteers are the foundation of our organization. Our events could not take place without the thousands of volunteers who devote their time executing a multitude of tasks across a wide range of disciplines including talent, marketing, and operations. Heritage of Pride is a volunteer membership-based organization. All of HOP’s members ar