So When Did This Whole Pride Thing Start Anyway?

June 4, 2024
HANK ORSO

So When Did This Whole Pride Thing Start Anyway?

Depending on who you ask, there are many opinions about Pride Month, Pride parades, Pride rallies, and especially the torrential wave of corporate Pride grandstanding. They range from "absolutely still essential" to "boring political and corporate pandering and not for me." Yer boy Hank here falls somewhere in the middle, but it can't be said that even today, the need for representation is still as important as ever. And given the state of politics and upcoming elections later this year, representation is probably more important than ever! So where did it all begin?

Well, for those of you who have been under a rock for the past 55 years, there's only one word to answer that question. Stonewall. On June 28th, 1969, The Stonewall Inn became a flashpoint and catalyst in the nascent Gay Liberation Movement when...someone...threw the first shot glass, or rock, or something, and four or so days of rioting commenced in response to a police raid on the Mafia-run Greenwich Village bar.

The following year on Sunday June 28th, 1970 in NYC, Los Angeles, and with some smaller marches in San Francisco and Chicago, marches were held in commemoration of the event the previous year. And from that point on, the swell of Pride has grown to large cities and small towns worldwide, sometimes with a wellspring of admiration and acceptance, and sometimes with backlash and violence.

The feelings regarding what fed the anger on that first night and to follow, who was there, and who "started it" are varied and colorful, and yes, some of the truths are lost to time and myths have grown in their place. Without a doubt, the whitewashing of Stonewall has occurred through the years when its story is told through and for mainstream pop culture, but we have come to laud and hold high the energy and actions of Black and Latino street youth, drag queens and others in those early hours and days of the uprising. Black transgender activist Marsha P. Mason has gone down in popular history has having thrown "the shot glass heard round the world." But even this popular telling is refuted by Mason herself in a 1970 interview, discovered and shared in historian Eric Marcus's “Making Gay History” podcast:

I was uptown and I didn’t get downtown until about 2 o’clock, because when I got downtown the place was already on fire....It was a raid already. The riots had already started.

Credit: Photo by Diana Davies, courtesy of Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New York Public Library.

As NBC News reports, myths like these are as "famous as the riots." Another popular myth is that the funeral of gay icon Judy Garland the day before fueled some of the pain and sadness that exploded that night, a notion that angers activist Mark Segal who witnessed the event.

That really angers me and angers all of us who were here,” Segal told NBC News. “It’s an insult to each of us. Some old songstress had nothing to do with it.

As with all history, it comes down the pike and is transformed by the storytellers, the witnesses, and the people who only claim to be there. But remember that there are kernels of truth to all of it, and whether or not Mason herself threw that shot glass, or stone, or not, doesn't diminish the historical impact of the event, however it transpired. What's important is that it happened at all. And there's still a dire need for such representation around the world.

Pride has become an important monolith of sorts. Pride events in NYC and Sao Paulo have drawn upwards of 4 million each, with hundreds of thousands and into the millions marching or cheering ourselves on in cities around the world. And while I can fall into my curmudgeonly ways and avoid parties of Pride, I'll always keep in mind that for some young person out there, this is their first Pride, and there might be an older person who is just coming out for the first time and that people here and around the world still face real danger when trying to be their authentic selves.