A pride parade is an event celebrating lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) social and self-acceptance, achievements, legal rights, and pride. The events sometimes also serve as demonstrations for legal rights such as same-sex marriage. Most occur annually throughout the Western world, while some take place every June to commemorate the 1969 Stonewall riots in New York City, a pivotal moment in modern LGBT social movements. The parades seek to create community and honor the history of the movement.
In 1970, pride and protest marches were held in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York City, and San Francisco around the first anniversary of Stonewall. The events became annual and grew internationally. In 2019, New York and the world celebrated the largest international Pride celebration in history: Stonewall 50 - WorldPride NYC 2019, produced by Heritage of Pride commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, with five million attending in Manhattan alone.
LGBT activists at Cologne Pride carrying a banner with the flags of 72 countries where homosexuality is illegal
Pride March 2019 in Dili, East Timor
A rainbow flag flying in Mar Mkhayel, Beirut on May 20, 2017
The Stonewall riots, also known as the Stonewall uprising, Stonewall rebellion, or simply Stonewall, were a series of protests by members of the LGBTQ community in response to a police raid that began in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, at the Stonewall Inn in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Lower Manhattan in New York City. Patrons of the Stonewall, other Village lesbian and gay bars, trans activists and unhoused LGBT individuals fought back when the police became violent. The riots are widely considered the watershed event that transformed the gay liberation movement and the twentieth-century fight for LGBT rights in the United States.
The only known photograph taken during the first night of the riots, by freelance photographer Joseph Ambrosini, shows gay youth scuffling with police.
Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village
Owner Larry Boxx (here in 1972 at Stonewall Miami Beach with one of the performers there)
This photograph – the only known photo of the riots – appeared on the front page of The New York Daily News on Sunday, June 29, 1969. Here the "street kids" who were the first to fight back against the police are seen.