The first Philly Pride happened in 1972. By that point, however, gay and lesbian demonstrators had already been making history in Philadelphia for several years (albeit using a different approach).
For a five-year period during the 1960s, Annual Reminder Day protests were held in front of Independence Hall every July 4 following Philly’s Independence Day parade. They were organized by the East Coast Homophile Organizations, a coalition of groups from cities including New York, Philly, and Washington, D.C. Frank Kameny and Barbara Gittings (a Philadelphian) rallied people to come to the first demonstration in 1965.
The idea of the picket was to “remind” the public that lesbian and gay people in the United States weren’t afforded the same civil rights protections as other Americans.
The vibe was a lot different from Pride celebrations as we know them today. Organizers placed a strong emphasis on making sure participants were dressed in formal, business-like clothing, and picketers had to protest in a single-file line.
The focus was meant to be on presenting participants as “employable” and drawing attention primarily to the messages on their signs, said organizer Kameny, who’d previously been fired from his job because of his sexual orientation. According to the Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia, the dress code led some people to question whether the marches were really meant for everyone in the gay community, particularly transgender people.
The Annual Reminder Day demonstrations were small compared to today’s Pride events — each drew only a few dozen attendees, per the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. The largest one took place in 1969, the day after the Stonewall Uprising ended. A turning point in the LGBTQ+ movement and how it was perceived, the Stonewall Uprising was a series of protests and violent confrontations sparked by a police raid on a gay bar in New York City.
Around 150 people showed up for the 1969 Annual Reminder Day. During the protest, some demonstrators defied the stringent rules, notably when they started breaking from the single-file line and holding hands with their partners.
That year’s protest ended up being the final Reminder Day — in November 1969, the event’s organizers decided to shift their focus to planning the 1970 Christopher Street Liberation Day March in New York City, a commemoration of the first anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising.
Unlike the Reminder Day demonstrations, the Christopher Street event lacked a dress code and other strict rules. It became known as the first Pride parade, and LGBTQ+ people across the U.S. started following suit and holding their own marches in subsequent years.
