Dawn of a new era of Pride politics
In conjunction with World Pride 2025, the Rainbow History Project is creating an exhibit on the evolution of Pride. In “Dawn of a New Era of Pride Politics,” we discuss how fewer than a dozen picketers in the 1960s grew the political power to celebrate openness, address police brutality, and rally hundreds of thousands to demand federal action.
By the mid-1980s, the LGBTQ community’s political demands and influence had grown. The AIDS crisis took center stage across the nation and locally.
Pride events morphed from the entertainment of the 1970s into speeches, rallies, and protests. Groups like ACT UP, Inner City Aids Network, and GLAA made protests and public pressure year-round events, not just Gay Pride Day.
Blacklight, which was the first national Black gay periodical, ran an in-depth cover story on AIDS and its impact on the community in 1983: “The gay community has to think in terms of what it can do to reduce the incidence of AIDS,” a writer noted in the Q&A section of the article.
