When this year’s pride parade marches down Main Street in Dallas, it will mark an important milestone in the LGBTQ rights movement in North Texas.
To understand the significance of this year’s Sunset Parade on Main for Dallas, you have to go back to 1972 — just three years after the historic Stonewall riots in New York City.
On June 24, 1972, the first-ever gay pride parade made its way through downtown Dallas, with around 30 individuals walking from the JFK Memorial until they reached City Hall.
"Thirty unbelievably courageous people stared down Main Street, lined with 3,000 people, not all of whom were there to support them," said Robert Emery, an LGBT historian and co-founder of the gay history project Dallas Way.
The 1972 Pride Parade drew a crowd of protesters.
"Dallas Police Department made it very clear to the 30 that they were not there to protect them — that they were present to protect the spectators from the parade marchers," Emery said.
Still, as the parade moved from the memorial to City Hall, it grew in numbers.
"Along the way, LGBT people who had stood on the sidelines, literally and figuratively, were inspired to join the parade," he says. "They joined in the parade, so that the 30 grew to 300 people by the time they reached City Hall."
Dallas didn't have another pride parade until 1980.
This weekend's parade will make its way through Dallas in the footsteps of the 1972 marchers for the first time in more than 50 years.
The Sunset Parade on Main Street kicks off at 7 p.m. Saturday night. It starts on Field Street and runs to Harwood.
