Left: Empress Doris X of the Imperial Court, 1975. Right, top two: Pride 1980. Right, bottom: Empress Jose Sarria, the Widow Norton, 1989. Photos courtesy of Ron Williams.
In June of 1970, fifty years ago, San Francisco celebrated its first Pride celebration with a march down Polk Street followed by a “gay-in” in Golden Gate Park. An estimated 30 people participated in that first march.
Organizers chose the last Sunday in June to commemorate the one-year anniversary of the Stonewall Riots that many consider to be a pivotal moment in the modern. It was given multiple names: San Francisco Gay Liberation March, and the Christopher Street Riots and Free the Park Gay Liberation Front Gay-In. The Stonewall Inn is located on Christopher Street in New York’s West Village.
The following official celebration in 1972 was called Christopher Street West and drew an estimated 2,000 marchers and a crowd of 15,000 spectators. The following year, the event was renamed Gay Freedom Day.
Unfortunately, most of the celebrations scheduled to celebrate the 50th anniversary have had to be scrapped due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In response, many are moving to online celebrations instead.
San Francisco Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Pride Parade & Celebration
SF Pride’s official retrospective on their website, SF Pride 2020 – 50 Years, is organized by Senator Scott Wiener and Joseph Abbati, curator. It features nine San Francisco Bay Area photographers and film makers with over 900 photographs and seven films spanning five decades documenting San Francisco Pride parades and events. The photographers include Arthur Tress, Gooch, Ron Williams, Tommy Wu, Darryl Pelletier, Jim James, Rink Foto, Rich Stadtmiller, and Charles Roseberry. Each photographer brings a wealth of history to create a narrative about the celebration of LGBTQ+ lives at our San Francisco Pride parades from the 1970s to 2019.
GLBT Historical Society’s “Labor of Love”
One of the GLBT Historical Society’s online exhibits is Labor of Love, curated by by Gerard Koskovich, Don Romesburg, and Amy Sueyoshi. It documents the first decade of Pride in San Francisco with photographs, fliers, newspaper clippings, and more.
GLBT Historical Society’s “50 Years of Pride”
Another GLBT Historical Society exhibit, 50 Years of Pride, can also be found on their website. The exhibit, curated by Lenore Chinn and Pamela Peniston, documents SF Pride’s 50-year history, including photographs from near 20 photographers. A photography exhibition is also planned to be shown at San Francisco City Hall, Ground Floor & North Light Court.
Cover photos provided courtesy of Ron Williams and used with permission. Mr. Williams is the author of Capturing Our Diversity: Three Decades of Pride, a photographic history of San Francisco’s Pride celebrations, and of San Francisco’s Native “Sissy” Son, a memoir about growing up and coming out in San Francisco before the Stonewall Riots and the modern gay rights movement.
