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Great Wall Institute: The Process of the Great Wall of Los Angeles

First LGBTQ Pride Parade

On June 28, 1970 Los Angeles became the home to the first LGBTQ Pride Parade organized by Rev. Bob Humphries (founder of United States Mission), Morris Kight (founder of Gay Liberation Front) and Rev. Troy Perry (founder of Metropolitan Community Church). The parade came together after Morris Kight called Rev. Troy Perry and asked if he and Rev. Robert Humphries could meet with Kight to organize something that would honor the Stonewall Riot. They wanted to march in Los Angeles, but in the spirit of Hollywood they decided to hold a parade.

The organizers were met with a lot of resistance by the Los Angeles Police Commission who issued parade permits. The organizers applied for the permit under Rev. Troy Perry’s Metropolitan Community Church without specifying that it was a safe space for the LGBTQ community to practice their worship. After the Police Commission continually questioned Perry on what kind of church it was, he angrily explained that the church represented LA’s gay community. The commission stated that from a legal standpoint it would be “ill-advised for them to inconvenience people for a robbers or burglars, or homosexuals parade.” They required the organizers to pay for a $1 million dollar liability insurance policy and a cash bond for the damages that would be incurred to the surrounding businesses as a result of the rocks and bricks people would throw at the parade goers. Morris Kight suggested they reach out to the ACLU of Southern California. Attorney Herb Selwyn, who worked with the ACLU took the case on. He argued that the costly liability insurance required violated parade organizers’ rights. He took the case to the Los Angeles Superior Court where Judge Richard Schauer declared that homosexuals were also citizens and ordered the commission to drop the conditions they had placed on the parade permit.

The win in court was a joyous moment and allowed the parade to come to life. No violence erupted on the day of the parade; instead an estimated crowd of 2,000 people showed up as themselves and full of pride. By the following year, the parade had doubled in size.

Sources:
Colker, David. “Fighting for Our Right to Pride: How L.A.’s First Pride Parade Almost Didn’t Happen.” ACLU of Southern California, 1 June 2023, www.aclusocal.org/en/news/fighting-our-right-pride-how-las-first-pride-parade-almost-didnt-happen#:~:text=As%20we%20celebrate%20100%20years,Parade%20on%20June%2028%2C%201970.
“Troy Perry’s Pride.” Advocate.Com, 18 May 2007, www.advocate.com/politics/commentary/2007/05/18/troy-perrys-pride.
“World’s First Officially-Permitted LGBTQ Pride Parade.” World’s First Officially-Permitted LGBTQ Pride Parade, Los Angeles, California, www.laalmanac.com/history/hi720.php. Accessed 27 Oct. 2023.

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The Movement suffered from misogyny and homophobia. Though perhaps less so than other Third World left groups (e.g. there were fewer instances of physical abuse and assault), women and queer-identified people fought for presence, voice, and their issues. At the same time, the analysis of a “triple oppression” of class, race, and gender for women, and the creation of a multiracial LGBT identity, opened a profound reworking of patriarchal and heterosexual norms. These movements within the Movement are crucial not only to appraising the Asian American Movement, but offer vital case studies for our intersectional present.
Established in 1966, the Personal Rights in Defense and Education (PRIDE) group set out to combat police harassment of homosexuals and provide a social outlet for gay men in Los Angeles. Founded by Steve Ginsburg, co-chair of the 1973 Gay Freedom Day Parade in San Francisco, the gay rights organization existed for only two years but made a profound and lasting impact. On Feb. 11, 1967, PRIDE organized a peaceful demonstration protesting the Los Angeles Police Department’s raid of the Black Cat Tavern, a gay bar in the Silverlake neighborhood of Los Angeles. Undercover vice squad officers beat and arrested gay male patrons on the evening of Dec. 31, 1966, for openly engaging in the traditional New Year’s Eve kiss. PRIDE’s action in response to the Black Cat Tavern incident was one of the earliest organized gay rights demonstrations in the United States. Two years later, the Stonewall Riots, a series of spontaneous demonstrations protesting police raids at the Stonewall Inn in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City, would usher in the lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer and transgender/transsexual (LGBTQ) rights movement. Prior to the police raid on the Black Cat Tavern, PRIDE published a single-page monthly newsletter that would become The Los Angeles Advocate. The original newsletter provided legal advice and printed an updated list of gay-friendly bars in the Los Angeles area. The Los Angeles Advocate would later evolve into the oldest and largest LGBTQ publication in the United States. Now known simply as The Advocate, the publication still runs monthly and covers the LGBTQ community. PRIDE also created a small instructional booklet called The Pocket Lawyer for people to carry in the event that they were arrested for homosexual conduct. The booklet made clear an individual’s right to refuse to make a statement or to give personal information, such as employment.
In 1966, members of the Mattachine Society in New York City staged a “sip-in”—a twist on the “sit-in” protests of the 1960s—in which they visited taverns, declared themselves gay, and waited to be turned away so they could sue. They were denied service at the Greenwich Village tavern Julius, resulting in much publicity and the quick reversal of the anti-gay liquor laws. On an afternoon in the spring of 1966, at the corner of 10th Street and Waverly Place in Greenwich Village, three men set out to disrupt the political and social climate of New York City. After having gone from one bar to the next, the men reached Julius’, a cozy tavern with a bar opposite a small grill and an isolated space in the back. They approached the bartender, proclaimed they were gay and then requested a drink—and were promptly denied service. The trio had accomplished their goal; their “Sip-In” had begun. The men, who were part of the Mattachine Society—an early organization dedicated to fighting for gay rights—wanted to demonstrate that bars in the city discriminated against LGBTQ people. The practice of refusing service to gay people in bars was common at the time, although it was more veiled than discriminatory legislation like Jim Crow laws in the South that forced racial segregation.
The first L.A. Pride Parade (originally Gay Pride Parade), organized by Rev. Bob Humphries (founder, United States Mission), Morris Kight (founder, Gay Liberation Front) and Rev. Troy Perry (founder, Metropolitan Community Church) and the Christopher Street West Association, was held on June 28, 1970 in Los Angeles. L.A.'s Gay Pride Parade permit did not come easily. No city had, until that time, ever experienced thousands of LGBTQ people marching openly and LAPD Chief Edward Davis did not hesitate to remind organizers that homosexuality was still illegal in California. Rev. Perry recounted that Davis declared to them, “As far as I’m concerned, granting a permit to a group of homosexuals to parade down Hollywood Boulevard would be the same as giving a permit to a group of thieves and robbers.” The Los Angeles Police Commission, for their part, claiming to fear violent homophobic counter-reactions, imposed excessive permit requirements, such as $1.5 million in fees. Parade organizers and the ACLU challenged the city in court, taking their fight all the way to the California Supreme Court. The court ended up ordering the city to issue a parade permit without discriminatory add-ons. L.A.’s Gay Pride Parade became the world’s first officially-permitted parade advocating for LGBTQ rights. The parade was moved from Hollywood in Los Angeles to West Hollywood in 1979.