Pride Month is here! Here's when major cities celebrate with parades in 2024.

Clare Mulroy, USA TODAY
Updated
15

The number of U.S. adults who identify as LGBTQ+ has more than doubled in the last 12 years, a recent Gallup poll found. Over 20% of Gen Z adults identify as LGBTQ+. The rising numbers are a sign of "larger society changing" because people feel more comfortable sharing their identities, experts told USA TODAY.

And while Pride Month is about celebrating these identities, it also comes at a time of widespread anti-LGBTQ+ legislation, particularly anti-trans legislation.

Here’s everything you need to know about the upcoming 2024 Pride Month, including dates and a history lesson on the fight for LGBTQ+ rights.

Pride flags at the Indy Pride Parade in Indianapolis on June 10, 2023.
Pride flags at the Indy Pride Parade in Indianapolis on June 10, 2023.

When is Pride Month 2024?

Pride Month is in June every year. In 2024, it begins on Saturday, June 1 and ends on Sunday, June 30. Pride celebrations – including parades, festivals, parties and picnics – are held throughout the month across America.

New York hosts the country’s largest pride parades each year. Approximately 5 million people attended 2019 World Pride there, a global LGBTQ festival that marked the 50th anniversary of the 1969 Stonewall uprising.

Here’s a glimpse at the dates and themes of some of the country’s biggest pride celebrations:

What is Pride Month?

Pride Month commemorates the 1969 Stonewall Uprising in New York and celebrates the LGBTQ community and the fight for equal rights.

The Stonewall Uprising began on June 28, 1969, when police raided the Stonewall Inn, a prominent gay bar in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village. The protests that followed are credited with a shift in LGBTQ+ activism in the U.S.

The following year saw some of the first Pride parades in Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York. Despite the pivotal role transgender people and women of color played in the riots, including trans activist Marsha P. Johnson, they were largely excluded from early Pride celebrations.

"The reality is that most of the folks on the front lines at the Stonewall uprising were trans women, trans women of color, other people of color, butch lesbians,” Cathy Renna, Communications Director for the National LGBTQ Task Force, told USA TODAY in 2022. “And yet somehow, the power that was coming together ... to put together Pride events was from cisgender, gay white men.”

Today, Pride Month presents an opportunity for visibility and community. In addition to celebrating LGBTQ love and joy, it’s also a time to highlight important policy and resource issues the community faces. In 2021, NYC Pride banned law enforcement presence at Pride events through 2025 because of escalating violence "against marginalized groups, specifically BIPOC and trans communities."

This year, anti-trans legislation is growing across the country. Anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric online has also lead to threats at schools and hospitals and to trans communities, USA TODAY found.

According to the Human Rights Campaign, 130 bills targeting trans rights have been filed and 325 anti-LGBTQ+ bills have been proposed in 2024. More than 650 anti-LGBTQ+ bills were introduced in 2023.

When was Pride Month created?

The first Pride marches in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago happened on June 28, 1970, the first anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising.

In New York, thousands marched from Greenwich Village to Central Park in what is widely considered the first Pride parade in the U.S.

But even before the first Pride parades, the gay rights movement was beginning to gain traction all over the country. In 1950, for example, activist Harry Hay founded the Mattachine Society, the first national gay rights organization. And in 1955, the first lesbian rights organization, the Daughters of Bilitis, was founded.

The year 1965 saw the first “Reminder Day,” an annual picketing event outside of Philadelphia’s Independence Hall calling attention to the lack of civil rights for the LGBTQ+ community. In 1966, the Mattachine Society staged a “sip-in” at a Greenwich Village bar after the New York Liquor Authority banned serving gay patrons because they were “disorderly,” PBS reports. And in 1966, the Compton's Cafeteria riot began when a police officer manhandled a transgender customer at a San Francisco eatery. This led to the founding of the National Transsexual Counseling Unit. As the LGBTQ+ rights movement grew, the community turned away from outdated terms like transsexual and homosexual to transgender, gay and lesbian. While many consider these terms offensive, some still use them to describe their identities.

The Christopher Street Liberation Day March on June 28, 1970, marked a shift from politeness to pride. In earlier protests, the “Homophile Movement” of the 1950s and 1960s focused on respectability – dressing in suits and skirts and carrying signs in protest. Post-Stonewall riots didn’t come with a dress code or tone requirement.

“A new spirit has entered the struggle for homosexual freedom – a new spirit both militant in tone and revolutionary in orientation,” a 1970 Gay Liberation Front flyer reads. “Homosexuals at last have realized that they will never be able to be liberated by politely asking the system. Freedom is never given – it must be taken.”

What does Pride stand for?

“Pride” itself does not stand for anything, but the LGBTQ+ community comprises several identities related to sexual orientation and gender identity.

Here are the definitions to know:

Revamped pride: Colors of Philadelphia, Progress Pride flags, explained

Dig deeper: Learn the meanings, and origins of Pride flags

Pride Flag | Progress Pride Flag | Lesbian Pride Flag | Bisexual Pride Flag | Pansexual Pride Flag | Asexual Pride Flag | Intersex Pride Flag | Gender Identity Flags | Trans Pride Flag

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: When is Pride Month? Parade dates for major cities near you in 2024.

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