It was six weeks after cops had raided the Stonewall Inn, a gay hangout in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village, galvanizing the fight for LGBTQ liberation. That we’re not the problem.”įor many local activists the match was lit nearly two years earlier, on Aug. “It was mostly about feeling good,” said Phil Lambert, a Vietnam veteran who was in attendance. Even today, six years after the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage, Congress, statehouses and the courts continue to grapple with LGBTQ protections, “religious freedom” and transgender youths.īut for the hundred or so Atlantans who participated in the city’s first pride march, the event was a turning point, a moment when, for the first time, they could publicly celebrate a part of themselves that society had long demanded they keep hidden. It would take decades for attitudes and laws to change. (Jerome McClendon / AJC Archive at GSU Library AJCN015-026a) About 1,200 marchers began downtown and marched up to Piedmont Park. Atlanta Gay Rights Alliance and others leading the Pride parade through Atlanta, June 25, 1977.
