Pickets, Protests, and Parades: The History of Gay Pride in Washington.

In June of 2025, Washington will host WorldPride 2025. The date will intersect with several important anniversaries in the History of Pride in Washington: the 50th Anniversary of the first Gay Pride Day Block Party, the 60th Anniversary of the first picket at the White House for Homosexual Rights, and the 25th Anniversary of the first Presidential Proclamation of LGBTQ Pride Month. It is also Rainbow History Project’s 25th anniversary.

The Rainbow History Project has launched an 18-month research project to create a public display on the evolution of Pride activities: “Pickets, Protests, and Parades: The History of Gay Pride in Washington.”

The exhibit will tell the origin story of local Pride activities and how the pickets and protests of the 1960s led to parades and celebrations of the 2020s—and all the politics and drama in between. The research will focus on the voices of the event organizers and include the critics of Pride and the significance of the intersection of Pride and other movements for equal rights and liberation.

RHP needs the community’s help to make the exhibit a success! Do you have iconic DC Pride photos to contribute? Do you know someone who should record their oral history about organizing Pride events? Are you interested in volunteering on the Pride Exhibit Committee? Can you donate funds to make it all happen to the Rainbow History Project?

During the first six months of the project, the research team has identified 10 broad themes that will be covered in the exhibit. On Sunday, June 9, 2024, at the Capital Pride Street Festival we will have a large pavilion and present our themes. From 12 p.m. to 7 p.m. on America’s Mainstreet, Pennsylvania Avenue NW, we will be located in the Red Section, R214 and R213.

Exhibition Research Themes

Since 2023, our research team has been working on the main themes of this history of Pride and sharing them with the community for feedback. We have published descriptions in the Washington Blade.

 

• “Picking our Battles and Reminding the Nation” (1965-1970)
• “Gay and Proud” (1970-1975)
• “A Bookstore Blocks the Street: Gay Pride Day” (1975-1979)
• “The Third World Conference Marches on Washington” (1979)
• “Pride’s Day at the Beach” (1980-1986)
• “Dawn of a New Era of Pride Politics” (1987-1992)

Upcoming Events

Get Involved with our Pride Exhibit

How will you tell your community’s story? Who should be included in the exhibit? Why? There are a lot of ways to contribute your time and skills.

Exhibits need visuals!
If you have old photos or images we should include, please take a picture with your phone upload it to our Google Photos account. Contact Colette for next steps.

Exhibits need testimonials!

We continue to look for compelling images to show what Pride events looked like. Do you have photographs, graphics, or illustrations from events past? Anything the older the better. We are telling the story in the voices of the organizers and are looking for

• Anyone who organized Pride events to share their memories
• Volunteers to record the interviews and ask good questions
• Researchers to help find press coverage or other historical writings?
• Editors to formulate an exhibit script

 

Email the exhibit’s assistant curator Colette to get involved: colette@rainbowhistory.org

Exhibits need collections!

If you have old documents, magazines, newsletters, paperwork, audio visual recordings, or ephemera that we should include, please contact Frankie, Deputy Director of Archiving and fill out this form.

Or you can donate here! Or, if you would like to volunteer, join our mailing list or follow our instagram!

“Exhibit Designers Needed!”

We have moved into the design stage of exhibit preparations: we need to convert our research and images into a script and layout the story to fit the space. We have a permit to use Freedom Plaza, on Pennsylvania Avenue for 7 weeks! This is a lot of space to tell a lot of Gay Pride History over an extended period of time. If you have skills or interest in exhibit design, fundraising, or communications we need your help:

• Writers and editors to convert our research into text and captions
• Designers that will plan how to layout the story to fit the space
• Fabrication and installation teams who can build the physical materials
• Fundraising experts who can pay for the entire thing
• Communications staff to help us get the word out about this exhibit and its history

 

Upcoming Events

The exhibit team frequently schedules two types of public events to share project updates and invite people to get involved. Check our events page for a list of all upcoming activities and links to RSVP.

 

Our next exhibit showcase will share the state of the project, an introduction to the research themes, and the ways people can get involved. Join us at:

• Martin Luther King Library, Room 401-A
• Wednesday, October 16, 2024
• Doors Open 6pm; program starts at 6:30pm
• RSVP via EventBrite

We hold monthly Volunteer Working Groups each month for prospective volunteers to learn about RHP, all of our projects, and get-to-know existing volunteers. These are an excellent opportunity to meet the teams, learn some history, and ask questions about our work.  The full schedule is always posted on our website.

Past Presentations

Rainbow History Project team will provide public updates on the exhibit project in the year to come. Community listening sessions are an integral part of telling the story and recruiting volunteers. Get in touch to host a session. To date we have presented:

Our July 23, 2024 event shared an update on the project. We shared:
–an overview of the project and where we are on the timeline
–how you can get involved
–our approaches to visuals and testimonials
–the research themes we’ve discovered over the last 8 months
–our plans to recruit a production team
–the permits and budget
— information on how you can get involved

On May 28, 2024 in conjunction with DC Black Pride weekend, activists Deacon Maccubbin and Jose Gutierrez spoke about their experiences as founders of Pride. Deacon founded Gay Pride Day in 1975 and Jose founded DC Latino Pride in 2007.

On April 6th, 2024 the DC community got a sneak preview of the exhibit themes at the DC History Conference. Activists Paul Kuntzler, Leigh Mosley, Lynne Brown, Chris Dyer and Kenya Hutton spoke about their experiences and provided feedback on the research agenda.