IndyWeek.com – Jim Baxter
Was it a march or parade? Would the mayor be recalled?
This year’s PrideFest promises to be a mix of fun, parades, information and celebration. But it hasn’t always been that way.
The first PrideFest was in Durham in 1986. But it had a forerunner five years earlier.
“The ’81 march, ‘Our Day Out’ in downtown Durham, is the one that I identify as the first gay pride march in North Carolina,” recalls Sherri Rosenthal. “There were police protecting us, and almost no one as spectators except for some folks who were pretty down and out.
“Sometime in the next months, the Klan applied for a permit to march in downtown Durham. The Herald-Sun ran an editorial saying that they were opposed to the expenditure of any public funds for police or other services on behalf of extremist groups like gays and the Klan that ‘parade their twisted morals.’ That was the last of several times that I canceled my subscription to the local paper, and I have never subscribed again.”