Many people associate Pride with the Pride parades. These parades have been around since 1970, but over these past 50 years they have changed a lot in nature. Starting out as serious marches, now they are more of a festival.
On Saturday June 27th, 1970, multiple marches happened in different areas in the United States. The date was chosen to mark the one year anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, which you can read about in this NT article. The parades were held on a Saturday to reach the maximum amount of shopping street pedestrians.
Especially the people planning the march Los Angeles ran into a lot of trouble, as they police weren't happy to give them a permit to hold the march. This was due to homosexuality still being illegal in California at the time. The local Police Chief is said to have said that “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.” Despite this, they did get the permission but had to pay fees of more than 1,5 million USD. Fortunately for the organisers, the American Civil Liberties Union stepped in and the police dropped most of the fees. The rest were dropped after the California Superior Court ordered the police to provide protection for the march as they would for any other protesting group. Over 1000 people showed up for this march.
The first marches were very activistic and served to inspire the widening activist movement. In the following years, more and more cities in the USA started hosting their own marches. Originally the events were called things like 'Gay Liberation Marches' and 'Gay Freedom Day'. However, in the 1980s, there was a cultural shift in the gay movement where those planning the Pride events were less radical than before. This less radical approach led to the name becomming 'Gay Pride Parade' instead. Although 'gay' now seems somewhat exclusive, when the parades started, the word was used as an umbrella term for what is now called the 'queer' or LGBT+ community.
Modern Pride parades vary a lot. In large and accepting cities they take on a festival-like character, but in less accepting settings they still have some of the original activist character. Nowadays there are Pride parades all over the world, from Africa to Asia to Europe. There are even Pride parades in some countries where even just being homosexual is illegal. Varying a lot in size, São Paulo in Brazil have one of - if not the - largest Pride parades in the world. On average, there are between 3 and 5 million people participating each year! Other large Pride evevnts include Spain's, which had 3,5 million people attending in 2019 and New York City's which regularly have between 2 and 3 million people, but in 2019 - the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots - about 4 million people attended the parade.
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