The History of Pride Month!
By: Sofia Shomento
Because it is Pride month (yay!), we at Bridgercare want to share the history of the pride celebration. Importantly, we want to recognize those who gave so much of themselves to further the movement.
The story of pride month is built on innumerable examples of activism and bravery. The first gay rights group, The Society for Human Rights, began in 1924 in Chicago. In 1966, the Mattachine Society hosted a “sip-in” at bar in New York City. It was illegal to serve alcohol to gay and lesbian people in NYC in this era. It was also illegal to “display homosexuality in public”. This law inspired the group to proudly announce their sexuality and then order cocktails in protest.
Stonewall Inn (Sourced from History.com)
Police often raided bars serving the gay and lesbian community at the time. These “raids” consisted of arresting swaths of people and violently dragging patrons onto the street. On June 28, 1969, the NYPD attacked the Stonewall Inn, a mob-run establishment whose owner paid the police off each week to look the other way while the LGBTQ+ community frequented their bar. Before the attack, many transgender people as well as gay and lesbian people had been drinking at the Stonewall Inn while unknowingly sitting near 6 plainclothes police officers who would later arrest them. Six days of protests and fighting with police followed. The Gay Rights movement was lifted to the forefront of the public eye.
Raid at Stonewall (Sourced from History.com)
In the city at the time, it was also illegal to wear more than 3 pieces of clothing that didn’t match one’s sex assigned at birth. This meant transgender and gender non-conforming individuals were especially targeted by police violence. Marsha P. Johnson, a Black transwoman and self-identifying drag queen, was an important participant at Stonewall and is often credited with “throwing the first brick.” Sylvia Rivera, a Latina transwoman, also represented the trans community at the riot. The two activists later cofounded the Street Transvestite (now Transgender) Action Revolutionaries, a crucial celebration of transgender lives.
A year later, in June 1970, 5,000 activists marched in Manhattan in honor of the Stonewall Uprising. The event was dubbed the Christopher Street Liberation Day March. Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco also held marches that June. The annual event came to be known as the Pride parade.
Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson (Sourced from history.com)
Standing on the left side with the umbrella.
Activist Craig Schoonmaker describes his choice in the word pride: “I authored the word ‘pride’ for gay pride … [my] first thought was ‘Gay Power.’ I didn’t like that, so proposed gay pride. There’s very little chance for people in the world to have power. People did not have power then; even now, we only have some. But anyone can have pride in themselves, and that would make them happier as people, and produce the movement likely to produce change.”
First anniversary of Stonewall, 1970 (Sourced from National Geographic)
In 2000, President Bill Clinton named June as Gay and Lesbian Pride Month. In 2009, President Barack Obama, to make the celebration more inclusive, designated the month Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride month.
“The poison was shame, and the antidote [was] pride,” wrote Craig Schoonmaker. As we move through Pride month and beyond, we hope everyone continues to bring the “antidote” to meet the everyday. We are PROUD of our Bridgercare community-- this month, and every month!