The past year has seen an increase in legislation that seeks to attack or control transgender and gender nonconforming behavior and representation, including drag shows. There also have been increased physical attacks and acts of violence against LGBTQ communities at large, as with last November’s attack in an LGBTQ nightclub in Colorado Springs that took the lives of five people.
Last month, two survivors of that attack testified before the U.S. Congress and noted that the increase in anti-LGBTQ rhetoric was to blame for the violence. “Hate speech turns into hate action, and actions based on hate almost took my life from me at 25 years old,” Michael Anderson, who was tending bar at the club that night, said.
As in many other states, there have been several efforts in Tennessee to curb or attack drag performances. In Murfreesboro, about 40 miles southeast of Nashville, city leaders recently denied a permit to the area’s LGBTQ Boro Pride festival because they deemed its drag performances inappropriate for children.
While such attacks are by no means unique to the South, the history of Gay Pride celebrations there reveals a long story of resistance and resilience that often mirrors some of the plights of today. In the urban South, Pride events have survived attempts to shut them down, like the one in Tennessee. The history of Southern LGBTQ Pride events demonstrates that politically motivated, often Christian-backed, attempts to end the celebrations have only strengthened Pride festivals, which eventually flourished in the South with the help of allies, including some in the business community.
Certainly, Gay Pride changed dramatically during the 20th century — from small, primarily political gatherings beginning in 1970 to the brazen spectacles of the 21st century. These celebrations, however, have often been met with challenges.
Atlanta was the first city in the South to commemorate the New York City’s Stonewall Riots, considered the beginning of the gay rights movement, in 1970. A few years later, Atlanta’s first Black mayor, Maynard Jackson, declared June 26, 1976, as Gay Pride Day in Atlanta. In doing so, he connected the Bicentennial celebration of the United States that year to an equal rights initiative for LGBTQ people in Atlanta, noting how Gay Pride aligned with the nation’s founding promise — if not always reality — of equal rights. That year, 300 people marched on Atlanta’s Peachtree Street, headed for Piedmont Park. In response to Jackson’s declaration, a group known as Citizens for Decent Atlanta (CDA) ran newspaper ads that claimed the event endorsed immoral behavior.
Funded by politicians and business executives, the group planned to remain anonymous. But a local leftist paper, the Great Speckled Bird, published their identities. Only one person named “Cathy Truitt,” could not be identified. Historical evidence indicates it could have been the evangelical businessman Truett Cathy of Chick-fil-A fame — a company with a long history of anti-LGBTQ action.
As a result of the pressure the CDA applied, Jackson backed away from his Gay Pride Day declaration but continued to show support for LGBTQ people and Pride in Atlanta during his three terms as mayor. Atlanta Pride was still held annually and has continued to receive the support of its mayors — all of whom were Black Democrats. In a short time, the city’s Pride event became the largest in the Southeast.
In Charlotte, Pride celebrations have a shorter and more turbulent history. The city’s LGBTQ activists held local and inconsistent Pride events in the 1980s, but won a hard-fought opportunity to host a North Carolina statewide Pride in 1994.
That festival, which included a parade, promised a large amount of revenue for the city. Because the Sunday parade route would proceed near First Baptist Church, parishioners did everything in their power to stop it. Church leaders and congregants in Charlotte referenced videos of the 1993 national March on Washington for Lesbian, Gay, and Bi Equal Rights and Liberation as “illegal and horrifying activity” that they did not want on the streets of Charlotte. Pride organizers thwarted the church’s efforts to cancel or curb Pride by changing the start time of the parade so as not to interfere with church service times. Local media claimed this as a win for Pride in Charlotte.
Almost 10 years later, in 2005, the Rev. Flip Benham’s antiabortion and anti-LGBTQ organization, Operation Save America (OSA), relocated from Dallas to Charlotte. Benham’s organization harangued the Charlotte Pride festival, working to end the celebration. Wearing bright red shirts, OSA protesters blared religious music and sermons and infiltrated crowds in Marshall Park, the same location near First Baptist where the state Pride festival met resistance.
With support from local religious leaders, OSA successfully pressured Charlotte mayor Pat McCrory to end Pride in a public space. McCrory openly disapproved of his city’s Pride celebration and its public park venue, telling one supporter that he was “insulted” by its “visual and verbal vulgarity displays.”
While OSA claimed “victory over Charlotte Pride” that year, Charlotte Pride did not come to an end. Rather, it moved to a nearby private venue located in the city’s uptown district. Charlotte-based Bank of America, one of the largest employers in the city and a consistent sponsor of Charlotte Pride, recognized the significant growth of LGBTQ consumers and offered the use of its private space, Gateway Village, for Pride. The celebration was held there for several years. By 2013, Pride had outgrown Gateway Village and revelers returned to the streets of Uptown Charlotte with a parade that attracted at least 50,000 people. Last year, the crowd reached 275, 000.
In 2013, the same year that Pride returned to a public venue, McCrory was elected governor of North Carolina. In 2016, he signed the most restrictive and discriminatory anti-transgender legislation in the country. Perhaps emboldened by his anti-LGBTQ success as mayor of Charlotte, McCrory mustered support for House Bill 2, popularly known as the state’s “bathroom bill.” It eliminated local nondiscrimination legislation and required that transgender people use the bathroom matching the gender designation on their birth certificates. McCrory was once known as a moderate Republican, but his long-running campaign against the LGBTQ community, which he began when he was on Charlotte’s City Council, helped him become the face of the anti-LGBTQ movement in 2016.
HB2 divided Republicans in the North Carolina House. Many Republican state lawmakers caved to boycotts from profitable entities, such as the NBA and NCAA, who pulled championship games from North Carolina, devastating a state where basketball passions run deep. Legislators reached an unsatisfying compromise, overturning HB2 in 2017, but leaving the public restroom controversy in the hands of future legislators to solve, and denying cities like Charlotte the right to pass their own nondiscrimination ordinances.
The political backlash to HB2, accompanied by massive economic repercussions, helped lead to McCrory’s defeat when he ran for a second term in the governor’s mansion. In 2022, he lost his bid for the Senate and declared that his political career was over.
Because of the perseverance of activists, efforts to pull the plug on Pride festivals in the urban South have proven counterproductive. It’s also become clear that Pride and drag shows are good for business. In popular destinations like Nashville, which is the bachelorette capital of the world, drag performance is indispensable to the tourist industry, and Pride festivals generate millions of dollars in revenue.
Today, as polls reveal 71 percent of Americans support same-sex marriage, the Biden administration has successfully passed the Respect for Marriage Act (which received some Republican support) and drag functions as mainstream entertainment, efforts to ban Pride and drag performances seem especially antiquated and against the wishes of the majority. While these changes in public opinion do not necessarily translate to equality for the most vulnerable in the LGBTQ community — especially LGBTQ people of color and transgender people — the history of Pride events in the South makes clear that these celebrations only come back stronger when faced with adversity.