Let me be perfectly queer: what follows is unwieldy, messy, truthful, hopeful, and offered in that spirit.
June 1969: What comes to be known as the Stonewall Rebellion electrifies people who hear of it, and Gay Liberation Front (GLF) groups form across the country. In August, Atlanta police raid a showing of Andy Warhol’s “Lonesome Cowboys,” a satire featuring gay sex scenes. Cops arrest the theater’s manager, and badger and photograph audience members as to identify anyone “with previous sex offenses.” The raid and Stonewall catalyze Atlanta’s queer movement.
June 1970: Atlanta’s newly formed GLF wants action. But if too few people march, it won’t impress. So GLF opts for a table in Piedmont Park topped with info leaflets. This small act of protest astonishes parkgoers and the city’s gay community.
June 1971: A group of “homosexuals” parade down Midtown sidewalks to Piedmont Park. Reports place attendees between 100 and 300, some of whom carry posters that, for example, demand an end to discrimination and call for “Equal Rights for Gays.” Participants are largely white men.
Atlanta Mayor Sam Massell appoints Charlie St. John to the city’s Community Relations Commission, the first such from the queer community.
June 1972: Lesbian activists form the Atlanta Lesbian Feminist Alliance (ALFA), and they march with an ad hoc ALFA banner. Crowd size is around 300.
“Self-avowed Gays” talk about Gay Pride on Georgia Tech’s WREK radio and a local TV talk show. Atlanta’s alternative newspaper, “The Great Speckled Bird,” features a centerfold spread on Gay Pride. And this is also the year when two gay bars, The Cove and the Sweet Gum Head, (in)famously refuse activists Dave Hayward and Charlie St. John permission to distribute Pride demo leaflets onsite and then forcibly evict them from the premises.
June 1973: The parade grows a bit. ALFA has her own, very large banner now. City Community Relations Representative Charlie St. John is tasked with filling out a parade permit for this year’s march. One rather risible question? “How close will the participants march together?” Smiling sardonically, Charlie fills in, “Close. Very close.”
Unfortunately, queer activism leads to Charlie being fired from his job as a “copy boy” at the AJC. There is a protest. Shortly thereafter, the GBI raids Charlie’s apartment, supposedly acting on a tip about drug activity. No drugs are found.
June 1974: We now officially have Lesbian and Gay Pride Day. A march simply won’t fill the hunger for queerness, so we organize a week of activities, including an ALFA-sponsored carnival, beauty contests, the first gay film screenings at the two-year-old Metropolitan Community Church (MCC), and a commemoration of the Rebellion with a news conference at MCC.
ALFA fields the first openly lesbian softball team to play in an Atlanta city league.
June 1975: The Great Southeastern Lesbian Conference takes place in May, and some of that energy must’ve transferred to Pride, as the march number rises to 600.
Linda Bryant forms Charis Books and More, and Bill Smith founds “The Barb,” billing itself as “the groovy newspaper covering Atlanta and the Southeast”
The “AJC” publishes a three-day, front-page series titled “The Gay Life.” Queers, allies, and critics savage it for “omission…of positive and constructive work being done by gay people and gay organizations…while employing the more irascible stereotypes in the community.” As the GLF disbands due to inevitable internecine struggles, ad hoc queer groups form, leading to the Gay Rights Alliance (GRA). After a sit-in threat by MCC and others, Atlanta’s first Black Mayor Maynard Jackson meets with community leaders to discuss Gay Rights and police harassment of queers.
June 1976: Mayor Jackson officially proclaims Gay Pride Day in Atlanta, setting off a visceral, invective-filled firestorm. Within days, baying prominent Southern Baptists, including the progenitor of Day’s Inn and Majik Market, form “Citizens for a Decent Atlanta.” They unsuccessfully try to obtain a court order to rescind the cursed Proclamation. They take out furious full-page ads in local publications, decrying disgusting acts against the moral laws of our Judeo-Christian tradition.
Along with the Proclamation, they seek — also unsuccessfully — to undo all the progress made so far by the queer community. Calls for Maynard’s resignation mount and he is savagely slandered; but he does not rescind.
This year has a theme: Christopher Street South. Almost a thousand people show up for a panoply of events over a week.
June 1977: Prior to June Pride, Florida’s Dade County has the temerity to pass a fairly comprehensive Gay Anti-Discrimination Ordinance, and the faded beauty queen orange juice chirper Anita Bryant begins a crusade to “Save Our Children” from the homo menace.
In Atlanta, Maynard must backpedal, so we get Human Rights Week vs. Gay Pride Day. An estimated 1,500 people march in the Parade of Perverts down Peachtree St., with maybe 3,000 attending the rally at the parade’s conclusion in the park.
Gil Robison announces the formation of First Tuesday Democratic Club, toting around a black box in a truck bed, proclaiming, “The only healthy closet is the voting booth.” Inherently political, the group goes on to launch things such as lobbying efforts, voter registration drives, and candidate forums.
Gay Rights Alliance shoulders a large banner reading, “March for Gay Rights—National Gay Rights Legislation, Atlanta Gay Rights Ordinance”
Spring 1978: We learn Anita will be performing at the annual Southern Baptist Convention at the World Congress Center. This must be protested. During an initial organizing meeting, a political neophyte maintains we just need to buy a billboard saying, “We Protest Anita Bryant’s Presence in Our City.” Uh, no. Instead, we have a march ending at the WCC on June 11.
Between 3,000 and 4,000 people want to defy her and what’s going on in there. So, when I raised a fist and loudly proclaimed, “I am a Defiant Dyke.” the roar must’ve reached all those messengers.
June 1979: The Atlanta Gay Center opens in Midtown, using monies left over from the Bryant demo. A group of African American men and women establish the Gay Atlanta Minority Association (GAMA) to, among other things, get issues of racism in Atlanta’s queer community addressed.
A practically toothless verdict against Dan White, Harvey Milk’s assassin, is released on June 4, and enraged San Franciscans to riot. As the mob moves through the Castro, maddened bar patrons pour into the streets, numbers swell, and queers begin destroying property and empty cop cars. Weeks later, Atlanta Pride organizers compile a “chant sheet” to go with megaphones, so the crowd can take up a thunderously rotating series of demands. One popular chant is “We want more than disco/Remember San Francisco.”
Gil Robison and I perform my “The Trial of Dan White” on the steps of City Hall.
1979’s theme is Lavender Anniversary Celebration, reveling in ten years of Stonewall, and over 1,000 march. It’s a big day in the park, with performances by local women’s band Anima Rising, Carole Etzler, and the cast of the Sweet Gum Head. We even provide a community open mic, where anyone can address anything to a portion of the post-parade park crowd. “Overjoyment” and “we-are-family” prove common themes from (often inebriated) lips.
Greg James and Dave Hayward curate a Lavender Anniversary Film Festival at the local MCC.
During the coordinating for this year’s march and the week-long events, workers also organize for the “National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights.” This represents a nationwide momentum-gaining movement for queer liberation, and on October 14, we unleash a massive march on D.C. with attendees estimated at around 250,000 on The Mall. Delirious queers travel to D.C. via Amtrak, Greyhound, and five busloads from Atlanta largely organized by Eva Salzer and Elizabeth Monahan, as well as our reliable ally the Worker’s World Party.
June 1980: The national theme for this year is International Gay Solidarity Day. Here, we celebrate seven days of Lesbian, Gay, Transperson Pride Week or LGT, also known as Let’s Get Together. About 1,200 people march. Gay Atlanta Minorities Association (GAMA) sponsors “Rap Session: Black Lesbian/Gay/Transperson Survival in the ‘80s.” ALFA holds her annual Open House; “Nighthawks” plays at the Film Forum; Lucina’s Music presents Therese Edell; Craig Russell appears at Symphony Hall; First Tuesday holds a “Say It With Music” benefit; the Gay Center has a panel on Community; and the sensational Pretty Good for Girls band plays at Big Al’s (now a Chipotle).
Piedmont Park has softball, voter registration, and a hilarious drag queen dunking booth. (Dykes do make most of the dunks with speedy hard ball action.)
June 1981: It’s LGT again, and a posse of white Gay men show up at an organizing meeting, volubly demanding the theme changed. Uh, no. Perhaps not all are unhappy, as between 3,000 and 4,000 march during Lesbian/Gay/Transperson Pride Week. Theo Thomas announces that GAMA calls for a boycott of the festival, citing racism.
Still, there are concerts, radio shows, art shows, ALFA’s Open House, a history seminar, and a “Town Meeting” at the Gay Center.
Film showings grace Image Film and Video, and The Silver Screen. This is also the year when one Mark McIntire steals $2,200 from Pride operating funds. (Pride functions on a strictly volunteer basis, and the Old Leftie organizers try to share necessary tasks, and thus don’t control finances.) Margo George assists to get the court ordering restitution, but Marky could not derail a juggernaut. We have a Street Dance and Festival on 7th Street, between Piedmont and Juniper. This is the first-time sawhorses and cops make a city block ours.
June 1982: Pride’s theme is Stonewall Then, Atlanta Now, and we’re at the State Capitol. Pride Week begins with a carnival on Peachtree Place, between 8th and 10th. Queers are dancing in the streets! March attendance is down as we walk from Piedmont Park to the State Capitol, where 4,000 attend a rally.
The increasingly queer-supportive Atlanta City Council issues a Lesbian Gay Transperson Pride Proclamation, without Mayor Andrew Young’s signature. He snoots that there is no need to approve “private sexual practices.”
With the gay men’s health emergency ramping up, Graham Burton and a few others open AID Atlanta. This non-profit provides HIV/AIDS-related services and education. It has evolved into one of the nation’s most comprehensive AIDS service organizations.
August 1982: A singularly homophobic police officer with an apparent obsession with local bartender Michael Hardwick enters Michael’s apartment to serve an invalid warrant. Observing Michael engaged in mutually consenting oral sex with another man, he arrests them on a sodomy charge, a felony under Georgia law carrying a sentence of one to twenty years imprisonment. Michael’s reaction: “Excuse me, what are you doing in my bedroom?” and “I’ll have your badge.”
Michael sues in various local city, county, and then state entities, challenging the constitutionality of the sodomy statute. The case is like a pin ball, flipping back and forth between courts, with Michael capably represented by ACLU attorney Kathleen Wilde, winning in various venues.
Finally, Georgia attorney general Michael Bowers, stung by negative rulings and sniffing out a run for Governor, takes his case to the Supreme Court, where Harvard Law School Professor Laurence Tribe represents Michael. On June 30, 1986, the Supremes issue homophobic carnage wrapped in judicial black.
Chief Justice Burger cites “ancient roots” against the “infamous crime against nature…the crime not fit to be named.” And “to hold that the act of homosexual sodomy is somehow protected as a fundamental right would be to cast aside millennia of moral teaching.”
Justice Blackmun’s dissent accuses the Court of an “almost obsessive focus on homosexual activity” and an “overall refusal to consider the broad principles that have informed our treatment of privacy in specific cases.”
In response to all the fulminations inveighing against homosexuality, Blackmun grimly weighs in against “invocations of religious taboos…(simply because) certain, but by no means all, religious groups condemn the behavior at issue gives the State no license to impose their judgments on the entire citizenry.”
June 1983: We are OUT: Out Front/Out Loud/Outstanding, Openly United Together. Two thousand march from the Civic Center to Peachtree and 10th Street. For the first time we see a “Stop AIDS” banner in the march.
The week of events includes a performance by the Gay Men’s Chorus and ALFA’s candlelight vigil/walk from Candler Park to Little Five Points.
Stagemasters produces two well-received queer plays at The Redoubt (now a Chipotle): T-Shirts and My Blue Heaven.
June 1984 (Actually, Pride is pushed to July 3, due to competing public events). The jaunty theme and t-shirt graphic is Once More, With Feeling.
Sonia Johnson rolls onto the stage with her anti-patriarchal Presidential “From Housewife to Heretic” ex-Mormon feminist road show. Charlie St. John speaks of his busts for “obscene materials” at Christopher’s Kind bookstore.
We block off Peachtree Street between 10th and 11th, with the stage smack in the middle, and dancing follows the orators, including National Gay and Lesbian Task Force’s Sue Hyde, who advises that we will never have any real progress here with the sodomy statue in place. Attendance estimates reach 1,500.
June 1985: Mayor Andy, clocking where the wind is blowing, proclaims Gay Pride Week in Atlanta. We hold the first community memorial service for people felled by the AIDS epidemic. It feels like a lean year, with people carrying photographs and posters of their dead at the memorial and in the march itself.
June 1986: Forward Together is the theme. There is some extremely diligent organizing, as most of the workers also begin organizing for 1987’s vast and furious D.C. March to protest both the Hardwick decision, and President Reagan’s refusal to even utter the word AIDS, never mind release federal dollars for programs.
We are so together, we even issue a newsletter as the event arrives. People are asked to bring canned goods for the Food Bank at AID Atlanta. The week includes a statewide conference on Lesbian/Gay issues; Human Rights Campaign (HRC) hosts a “Picnic in the Park; the Gay Atheist League gives a social, counterbalancing all the gay church groups; there’s women’s softball in the afternoon.
Perhaps people don’t wish to march to the State Capitol, as attendance needles at 2,000. Behind the scenes there is Coca-Cola drama. The company was approached to provide beverages for all those thirsty marchers. At first they like the idea—until they learn who the group actually is. So, no cold drinks of sainted beverage for those people. Coke offers to provide non-branded ice cream.
Several incensed organizers chip in to buy several kiddie wading pools and stock them with ice and Pepsi products.
June 1987: With veteran organizers focused on the critical March approaching on October 11, a new ad hoc Pride organizing group fails to coalesce. Gene Holloway calls every activist he knows and with tears in his voice demands that we “save Pride!”
He’s right. At this point in our history, there cannot be a Pride-less year. But with mere weeks to throw something together, we don’t have time to attract performers and people to the Capitol, let alone pull permits. So, Pride is a rally with no marching. We do have speakers, including the very affecting Leigh VanderEls, who lost custody of her son for being queer. (She and partner Chris Cash found “Southern Voice.”)
Only about 500 souls show up, but we are passionate, and Atlanta does not suffer a Pride-gap.
June 1988: In the depths of the AIDS crisis, Pride’s theme is A Celebration of Life. And we keep on living. There’s an AIDS memorial service, with candles and speakers; a Family Night at The Country Place; a presentation of “Higher Ground”; and a cabaret night. Channel 30 shows “We are Family,” a documentary on Queer parenting. And there’s the first Pride Prom, where you can bring the date of your dreams instead of all that high school yearning for the dream of a date. Those 1,500 or so who march from the Civic Center to Piedmont Park seem to enjoy themselves immensely.
June 1989: Stonewall—Reasons to Remember is the theme, with the rebellion highlighted and work that needs doing now emphasized.
Mayoral candidate Maynard hustles for queer votes, not just from the back of a car, but at the park’s celebration too. (Next year, Mr. Mayor is too busy to attend.)
Local playwright, artist, and arts activist Rebecca Ranson has cofounded SAME (Southeast Arts, Media and Education) in Atlanta. Its mission is to provide education and artistic expression during this crisis time. She presents a dyke drama, “The Well of Horniness.” There are “Dueling Dykes”; an AIDS research project update; “Fly High (About AIDS)” at Onstage Atlanta; and a Kiss-In in the Park.
With thanks to Wesley Chenault, Dyana Bagby, Cal Gough, all those who came and went and come again, and Wikipedia.