Celebrating 40 Years of Progress

The Parade Marshals that year were Don Gorton, activist and attorney, and Grace Sterling Stowell, executive director of BAGLY, and, posthumously, Senator Ted Kennedy, who had died that year. Gorton reminded attendees that change requires action. “Look back at our past…change was not inevitable. Activism has been our pathway to change.” Longtime community supporter Boston Mayor Tom Menino rode in an antique car along the parade route as a light rain fell. That year, the theme had people looking back.

Rose Tavano, who participated with LGBT Aging Project, recalled the very first Pride Parade in Boston in 1971: “We were so afraid that first parade. We didn’t know what the repercussions would be. People were not as accepting as they are today.”^[1]

“Riots to Rights – Celebrating 40 Years of Progress” honors the 1969 Stonewall Riots that commenced the modern Gay Rights movement and commemorates the progress we’ve made as a community’s since those early days of the battle for equal rights. As Boston Pride celebrates its 40th Anniversary, we encourage our community to remember the brave pioneers before us who bravely took to the streets in protest and in anger, but with incredible hope that one day we would overcome the harsh shackles and restraints of hatred, bigotry and discrimination.

And from those early riots, rose rights and freedoms and progress that we slowly see coming to fruition. What this year’s Pride theme does not do, however, is pretend that the struggle is over. We celebrate the progress that has been won thus far, but also recognize that across the globe- from Massachusetts to Moscow, Puerto Rico to Uganda, Taiwan to Sri Lanka, and thousands of lands across the world- we are still not wholly free.^[1]

Royal Pageant Winners

Lakia Mondale, 2010 Queen

130 Festival Registrations