Footage of the First NYC Gay Pride Parade in 1970
From the Library of Congress, footage of the first gay pride march in NYC in 1970. The march, called the Christopher Street Liberation Day Parade, was held on June 28 to commemorate the first anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising. From Gothamist:
The Christopher Street Gay Liberation Day March started in Greenwich Village at about 2 p.m. that day in 1970, just outside the Stonewall Inn, which was then for rent, having closed the previous October.
As they gathered, the marchers were few, and brave. There were groups from Washington, DC and Boston, college organizations from Rutgers, Yale and Columbia. Some transgender people who were there at the time said that organizers asked them to march in the back, but they refused.
“The trans community said, ‘Hell no, we won’t go.’ We fought for this as much as you did, or even started it,” said Victoria Cruz. “And we just mingled throughout the crowd. There was no trans contingent. We just mingled.”
They started walking very briskly up Christopher Street, because they were scared. There had been bomb threats. People worried they would be shot at, or harassed again by the police. Martin Boyce was there, and he says that afterwards they joked it was “the first run.”
“I was worried about being single file, because I just watched a program on National Geographic about wildebeests and I saw how the ones on the side were picked off. So I thought I would stay in the middle — but there was no middle.”
As the march went on, it gathered people & momentum and they eventually made it without major incident to Central Park.
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