The Origin of New York City’s Inaugural Pride March

This article is part of Hyperallergic’s 2025 Pride Month series, spotlighting moments from New York’s LGBTQ+ art history throughout June.

In 1970, one year after the legendary first brick shattered the windows of the Stonewall Inn, thousands took to the streets of Lower Manhattan to participate in the Christopher Street Liberation Day March — an event that would later be remembered as the inaugural annual New York City Pride March. Held in coordination with sister events planned in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Chicago, it was a defining moment in the United States queer rights movement that shined a light on the struggles of the LGBTQ+ community, who had been demanding equality for years through grassroots protest actions and shows of resistance against police brutality and harassment.

Prior to Stonewall, many early protests for queer rights were organized by the Homophile Movement — a predominantly White-led campaign that emerged after World War II and fought against discriminatory anti-sodomy laws and other measures that criminalized lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender identities in education, employment, and broader society. This movement led to the founding of several dozen queer rights groups across the country, like the Mattachine Society and the Daughters of Bilitis, which opted for cryptic names to avoid using explicitly queer terms like “gay” and “lesbian.” These organizations often focused on raising public awareness of queer discrimination by conducting demonstrations such as the annual Fourth of July Reminder Day picket outside Independence Hall in Philadelphia, which took place from 1965 to 1969.

But after Stonewall, many young activists began discussing replacing the Reminder Day protests with an annual demonstration to commemorate the uprising. Several of these conversations were spearheaded by Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop owner Craig Rodwell and members of the nascent Gay Liberation Front (GLF), a group that proudly reclaimed queer identifying terms.

In late 1969, at the annual Eastern Regional Conference of Homophile Organizations, Rodwell and Ellen Broidy of New York University’s Student Homophile League proposed holding a demonstration on the last weekend in June to honor the liberation of Stonewall and Christopher Street. Following a majority vote in favor, the Christopher Street Liberation Day Committee was formed with the purpose of planning the march.

“Say it clear, say it loud: Gay is good, gay is proud!” participants chanted on Sunday, June 28, 1970, as the march progressed from Washington Place north up Sixth Avenue. Fred Sargent, one of the organizers, described the event in the Village Voice: “I was astonished; we stretched out as far as I could see, thousands of us,” he recalled. “There were no floats, no music, no boys in briefs. The cops turned their backs on us to convey their disdain, but the masses of people kept carrying signs and banners, chanting and waving to surprised onlookers.” After 50 blocks, the march culminated in a massive celebration that organizers called a “gay-in” at Central Park’s Sheep Meadow.

“ The politics [of the march] was just to end the closet,” Jay W. Walker, co-founder of the Reclaim Pride Coalition, told Hyperallergic. “To stop hiding. To stop being passive victims and to demand our human rights.”

The celebration of Pride has evolved in the years since that first march, especially as the queer rights movement gained momentum through events like the 1979 National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights and AIDS advocacy throughout the 1980s and ’90s. This expansion has also led to criticism of opportunistic practices like corporate “rainbow-washing,” in which companies leverage LGBTQ+ symbolism in their marketing without supporting queer rights in practice.

Today, New York City’s Pride March is organized by the nonprofit Heritage of Pride, and its course has also changed significantly. For two decades after the inaugural event, the procession concluded in Central Park; now, the march typically disperses at 15th Street and Seventh Avenue after weaving its way through the West Village on a route pre-approved by the city’s police department.

These changes have led to alternative Pride festivities, such as the Reclaim Pride Coalition’s annual Queer Liberation March, which seeks to uphold the original political mission of the inaugural march by rejecting corporate influence and police involvement. Founded in 2019, the march is rooted in intersectional causes and has supported Black Lives Matter, disability justice, trans rights, and an end to the US-backed Israeli war on Gaza over the years.

“ When we had our very first Queer Liberation March, we ended with a big rally in Central Park on the Great Lawn and above our rally stage was a banner that read, ‘ None are free until all are free.’  That’s really the driving tenet of the march,” Walker said.

Scheduled for this Sunday, June 29, this year’s march will focus on the Trump administration’s ongoing attacks against civil liberties, which have acutely targeted immigrants, LGBTQ