Christopher Street Gay Liberation Day: 1970
by Susan Stryker, Director, GLBT Historical Society
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In case you haven't had your fill of Gay Pride festivities yet this
summer, here's a photo from the very first Pride parade in New York, on
the first anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising.
While the riots at the Stonewall Inn on Greenwich Village's Christopher
Street seem carved in stone as the birth of the gay liberation movement,
the
event might not be remembered in quite the same way had it not been for
the
commemorative march and rally organized a year later. The riots in 1969
certainly gained a great deal of media attention, and represented a
turning point in the history of
gay militancy in New York. But without the Christopher Street
Liberation Day Committee, "Stonewall" probably wouldn't be any better
known
than the "Annual Reminder" demonstrations held yearly on the Fourth of
July
outside Independence Hall.
Never heard of them? For five years, between 1965 and 1969, activists
from throughout the country gathered outside Independence Hall,
where the U.S. Constitution was drafted and signed,
to remind the nation that not all of its citizens had equal rights under
the
law. The Annual Reminders were important events in the history of the
gay rights
struggle, but outside the gay community of Philadelphia they are largely
forgotten.
Stonewall could have experienced the same
fate. Instead, young militants, whose media savvy and organizing skills
had been honed during the social justice movements of the mid-1960s,
decided to capitalize on the
spirited resistance at the Stonewall and turn that event into a rallying
point
for a national movement. Almost immediately after the riots they started
planning for the
first anniversary march. Thousands of people turned out that first year
in
New York and in other cities across the nation. Now, thirty years
later, Gay Pride festivities draw millions of participants to events
around
the world.
The photo shown here is from "Gay Freedom '70," a commemorative
pictorial essay published by the editors of QQ magazine, an early gay
liberation title (formerly known as Queens Quarterly.)
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