The Roots and Reach of Chattanooga Pride

Chattanooga Pride is holding board elections this Sunday, so I’d like to take a moment to look at the beginnings of our local Pride as this community is called upon to choose some of the leadership that will carry us forward. This is by no means a thorough accounting of what occurred around the early years of Pride celebrations in Chattanooga. While documentation of those early years is sparse and at times difficult to locate, I’m pulling from the few pieces written around that time which I was able to track down from online archives.

Chattanooga’s first Pride Celebration was organized in 1992 by a group then known as the Chattanooga Gay and Lesbian Pride Committee (CGLPC). According to a short summary of the events published in the June 18, 1992 edition of Southern Voice, a now defunct but once profoundly important regional LGBTQ publication, the first Chattanooga Pride was small yet ambitious for its time. 

That auspicious weekend kicked off on Friday, June 12 with a candlelight vigil in remembrance of Stonewall. Saturday, an estimated 140 people attended a banquet where Chattanooga Symphony musicians performed pieces written by gay composers. That Sunday the first Pride parade in the city’s history marched through Highland Park and a rally was held in Warner Park, despite being denied a permit from the city and limited to the sidewalks. Unsurprisingly, protesters followed the approximately 75 marchers and infiltrated the rally with their ubiquitous anti-queer signs and slogans. Chattanooga police refused to make the protesters leave or distance themselves. By most accounts there weren’t any significant altercations and, according to Southern Voice, “organizers said they felt some understanding came out of the day.”

Photo source is Southern Voice, June 17-23, 1993. Original photographer credited as F. Bennett

Only a year later, it was made apparent that very little if any understanding made it out of Warner Park that day. In 1993, the city council bowed to pressure from church groups and some residents by attempting to again deny the organizers a permit for the Pride parade to go through Highland Park. They proposed rerouting the parade through a different location along the train tracks. CGLPC Co-Chair Susan Nicholas was quoted in the May 13, 1993 edition of Southern Voice saying, “It’s basically an industrial area. The area we requested is pretty much the gay area of town–there are two gay bars, and the park is where the softball teams play.”

The original choice of route was indeed a thoughtful one based on where our community gathered. Organizers were willing to risk both arrest and potential violence to hold true to their chosen course, with or without permission from the city. Only one city councilman initially stood by the Pride Committee in an 8-1 vote denying the permit. Councilmember Leaman Pierce even went so far as to go on the record in the same issue of Southern Voice saying “I support them in terms of their rights…If I have to be out there on the 13th [of June]...I intend to be out there. Not to march, but if they are confronted by police I’ll be there. If that means going to jail, then I’ll go to jail.”

After being sued by CGLPC and the ACLU, the city and police agreed to permit the parade as originally planned. The march went along the original route, but those who were there reported a variety of harassment and threats. From parade participants being kicked off of buses on their way to the staging area to protesters shouting death threats and throwing things at marchers, it was a day when Chattanooga showed both of its faces boldly beneath the sun. 

As reported, once again, by Southern Voice, one side of this story is that over 200 people from Chattanooga, Atlanta, Knoxville, and parts of Alabama walked proudly together to celebrate the very existence of LGBTQ people. The other side is that around 60 or so Christian protesters came with signs harboring such Christ-like messages as “Get AIDS and Die Quickly” and “You Should Have Been in Waco.” A testament to the nature of their deeply and humbly held beliefs.

Overall, the day was seen as a success. Our community refused to back down and did what many had deemed impossible by gathering so many in a Pride march through the closest thing we had to a geographical center for the queer community. In the years since, groups that have organized Pride have changed names, leadership, and structure several times. The celebrations have gone from Warner park to the riverfront to parks outside of the city center to Miller Park and Plaza and back to the riverfront–occasionally being held at indoor venues due to inclement weather or concerns for safety.

We must remember the opposition from neighbors and elected officials that leadership faced in those first few years. We must remember the root of all Prides in the uprising of Stonewall. The threats to our people have never gone away, they only learned to whisper for a while. Our community has never in its history been simply given or allowed anything. For every rainbow sticker and tailormade tear away costume spinning off in sequined glory at every single Pride celebration in this world, people had to fight and sacrifice and choose to be boldly out during times when it could have–and sometimes did–cost them everything.

We must be so bold now. The coming years are likely to echo some of the struggles of days gone by. May we all keep that in mind as we choose our leadership and as some choose to lead. We are going to have to not only continue the fight for the rights, dignity, and equity we need; but also to hold on to what our predecessors already fought for and won. 

If you would like to read more from the archives of Southern Voice and their coverage of LGBTQ news from 1988 through 2010, you can find many preserved issues at The Digital Library of Georgia: https://dlg.usg.edu/collection/gkj_sovo