Atlanta Black Pride | |
---|---|
Inaugurated | 1996 |
Attendance | 100,000 (est.) |
People | African-American LGBT community |
Website | atlantablackpride |
Atlanta Black Pride started in 1996 and is one of two officially recognized festivals for the African-American LGBT community. [1] It is held in Atlanta each year at the end of August and beginning of September (week of Labor Day holiday). [2] [3] Atlanta Black Pride is the largest black gay pride celebration in the world with an estimated 100,000 people annually in attendance. [4] [5] Atlanta Black Pride heavily contributes to the annual $65 million economic impact on Atlanta's economy during the city's eventful Labor Day weekend most recently organized by Traxx Girls Inc & Atlanta Black Pride Weekend LLC due to the administration dissolve of In The Life Atlanta. [6] [7] [8]
Atlanta is widely noted for being the "Black Gay Mecca" due to its highly visible black LGBT community, progressive reputation, and vibrant black LGBT culture. [9] [10] [11] [12] It also is noted for having one of the largest communities of openly black same-sex couples in the world. [13]
January's Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend is when Atlanta's first major pride event of the year is held. During this unofficial pride weekend, there are several special black LGBT events and celebrations to entertain the many locals and visitors. [14]
King's wife and Atlanta resident, Coretta Scott King, was a well-known proud supporter of the black LGBT community. In 1998, Mrs. King publicly stated at the 25th Lambda Legal anniversary reception that she believes her late husband would have also been a supporter of LGBT rights. [15]
Bernice Albertine King is an American inactive lawyer, minister, and the youngest child of civil rights leaders Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King. She was five years old when her father died in 1968. In her adolescence, King chose to work towards becoming a minister after having a breakdown from watching a documentary about her father. King was 17 when she was invited to speak at the United Nations. Twenty years after her father was assassinated, she preached her trial sermon, inspired by her parents' activism.
Atlanta is the capital and largest city in the state of Georgia. It ranks as the 37th-largest city in the United States, and the eighth-largest in the southeastern region. 2020 census results varied dramatically with previous Census Bureau estimates, counting a record 498,715 residents. Atlanta is the core city of the eighth most populous United States metropolitan area at 6,104,803, with a combined statistical area of 6,930,423. For the first time since the 1960 Census, the 2020 Census revealed Atlanta is no longer majority African American. Atlanta has strongly increased in diversity in recent decades and is projected to continue.
Joseph Echols Lowery was an American minister in the United Methodist Church and leader in the civil rights movement. He founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference with Martin Luther King Jr. and others, serving as its vice president, later chairman of the board, and its third president from 1977 to 1997. Lowery participated in most of the major activities of the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s, and continued his civil rights work into the 21st century. He was called the "Dean of the Civil Rights Movement."
Anye Elite is an American singer, rapper and LGBT activist. He is best known for his contributions to Atlanta's gay community.
Atlanta Pride, also colloquially called the Atlanta Gay Pride Festival, is a week-long annual lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBTQ) pride festival held in Atlanta, Georgia. Established in 1971, it is one of the oldest and largest pride festivals in the United States. According to the Atlanta Pride Committee, as of 2017, attendance had continually grown to around 300,000. Originally held in June, Atlanta Pride has been held in October every year since 2008, typically on a weekend closest to National Coming Out Day.
The black gay pride movement is a global campaign tailored for black people who are also members of the LGBTQ community. Starting in the 1990s, black gay pride movements began as a way to provide black LGBT people an alternative to the largely white mainstream LGBT movement. According to some, white gay prides are seen to enforce, both consciously and unconsciously, a long history of ignoring the people of color who share in their experiences. The history of racial segregation seen in other organizations such as nursing associations, journalism associations, and fraternities is carried on into the black gay prides seen today. The exclusion of people of color in gay pride events is perceived by some to play into existing undertones of white superiority and racist political movements.
Black Atlantans form a major population group in the Atlanta metropolitan area, encompassing both those of African-American ancestry as well as those of recent Caribbean or African origin. Atlanta has long been known as a center of black entrepreneurship, higher education, political power and culture; a cradle of the Civil Rights Movement.
Atlanta's mild climate and plentiful trees allow for festivals and events to take place in the city year-round. One of the city's most popular events is the Atlanta Dogwood Festival, an arts and crafts festival held in Piedmont Park each spring, when the native dogwoods are in bloom. Atlanta Streets Alive, inspired by the ciclovía in Bogotá, Colombia, closes city streets to car traffic to allow people to participate in health and community-oriented, such as bicycling, strolling, skating, people-watching, tango, yoga, hula hooping, and break dancing.
An 1859 industrial journal was among the first to note nicknames for Atlanta, Georgia:
An orator claimed for it the signification of "a city among the hills" while a writer has declared that it was the opposite of "rus in urbe" and proclaimed it "'the city in the woods".
A black mecca, in the United States, is a city to which African Americans, particularly singles, professionals, and middle-class families, are drawn to live, due to some or all of the following factors:
Dallas Black Pride is an annual five-day event to celebrate the emerging black LGBT community in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex. The event has been in existence since 1996. It is held in conjunction with the State Fair of Texas and State Fair Classic in Dallas every fall. Dallas Her Pride is the official women's host of Dallas Black Pride. Annually, about 15,000 people participate in the planned pride events, making it the largest black gay pride event in Texas and one of the largest in the nation.
There have been pride parades in South Africa celebrating LGBT pride since 1990. South African pride parades were historically used for political advocacy protesting against legal discrimination against LGBT people, and for the celebration of equality before the law after the apartheid era. They are increasingly used for political advocacy against LGBT hate crimes, such as the so-called corrective rape of lesbians in townships, and to remember victims thereof.
Throughout Dallas–Fort Worth, there is a large lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community. Since 2005, DFW has constituted one of the largest LGBT communities in Texas.
The LGBT community in London is one of the largest within Europe. LGBT culture of London, England, is centred on Old Compton Street in Soho. There are also LGBT pubs and restaurants across London in Haggerston, Dalston and Vauxhall.
D.C.Black Pride is the first official black gay pride event in the United States and one of two officially recognized festivals for the African-American LGBT community. It is a program of the Center for Black Equity (CBE) and is also affiliated with the Capital Pride Alliance. DC Black Pride is held annually on Memorial Day weekend.
This is a timeline of notable events in the history of non-heterosexual conforming people of African ancestry, who may identify as LGBTIQGNC, men who have sex with men, or related culturally specific identities. This timeline includes events both in Africa, the Americas and Europe and in the global African diaspora, as the histories are very deeply linked.
Taylor Alxndr is an Atlanta social activist, community organizer, entertainer, drag queen, and founder of the LGBTQ non-profit "Southern Fried Queer Pride".
On August 5, 1969, the Atlanta Police Department led a police raid on a screening of the film Lonesome Cowboys at a movie theater in Atlanta, Georgia, United States.
The Atlanta Eagle police raid was a police raid targeting the Atlanta Eagle, a gay bar in Atlanta, Georgia, United States. The raid occurred on September 10, 2009, due to anonymous tips alleging that illegal drug use and sex was occurring at the bar. Several dozen officers were involved in the raid, including members of the Atlanta Police Department's vice squad and the "Red Dog Unit", a SWAT-like unit typically used in high drug use areas. None of the 62 bar patrons that night were arrested, although eight employees were. Seven of these employees were either found not guilty or had charges dropped against them, while one was not present at the trials and had a bench warrant issued against him.