In 1955, a group of women including Del Martin and Phyllis Lyons founded the Daughters of Bilitis in San Francisco, which emerged as the first lesbian rights group in the United States. In 1924, Henry Gerber, a German immigrant, founded the Society for Human Rights in Chicago it was the first group to campaign for gay rights in the United States. There is a storied history of LGBTQ activism in the United States that dates back decades before the Stonewall riots. There was a gay rights movement long before Pride Month. Read on for the history of Pride Month and LGBTQ activism in the United States. This year marks the 52nd anniversary of the first gay Pride march, which was held on the first anniversary of the Stonewall riots. Pride parades and marches, which are traditionally held on the last weekend in June, commemorate the anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising, a watershed moment in LGBTQ history when patrons of the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in Manhattan that is now a national monument, fought back against a police raid.
Since 1970, the LGBTQ community has marked June as Pride Month-a time to celebrate what it means to be lesbian, gay, bisexual, and/or transgender while demanding equality and liberation from cis and heteronormative constraints.
