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The parade also grew in response to nationwide repeals of LGBT rights ordinances that prohibited discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. In June 1964, America’s largest-circulation family magazine, Life, proclaimed it the nation’s “gay capital.” LGBT organizers in the 1960s and early 1970s had made significant gains in improving police relations, forming a strong gay business district, and enacting LGBT rights ordinances there. San Francisco had long been known as a mecca for LGBT people from across the country.
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In 19, when the photographs in this topic were taken, the parade had about 250,000 participants, making it the largest annual procession in the city. For example, this photograph depicts people marching in San Jose’s first lesbian/gay pride parade in 1974.īut by the late 1970s, San Francisco’s pride parade had become the country’s largest and most significant. Many cities in California and across the nation organized their own parades. Pride parades, in which participants took to the streets as a politicized LGBT community, were visual representations of this new political consciousness. Influenced by the women's movement maxim that “the personal is political,” LGBT activists increasingly argued that “coming out of the closet” by publicly declaring one’s sexual or gender identity was an important political act. Homophile organizers in New York seized on this activity by planning nationally coordinated parades to commemorate the riot and advance a more visible LGBT rights movement. On June 28, 1969, patrons of the Stonewall Inn-an LGBT bar in New York City-rioted for several days following a police raid. In the 1960s, the advances of the black civil rights movement encouraged racial minorities, women, and LGBT people to create more visible, powerful movements for equality. While early "homophile" organizations advocated for gay and lesbian rights, they did so quietly. In the 1950s, people throughout the country hid their LGBT identities for fear of being fired from jobs, disowned by their families, or arrested. The San Francisco pride parade grew out of decades of work to mobilize for LGBT rights. Currently one of the largest and most well known LBGT events in the world, in these years the parade took on its identity as a potent symbol of LGBT politics and culture. These images depict San Francisco’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) pride parades in 19.