Status Active Frequency Annually Country USA | Genre Festival Location(s) Cincinnati | |
Venue Sawyer Point Park and Yeatman’s Cove | ||
The Cincinnati Pride Parade and Festival is a week-long celebration of the city’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, (LGBT) Queer, and Ally community. The festivities are typically held annually at the end of June but have happened as early as April and as late as July in various locations of Cincinnati, Ohio.
Contents
Parade
Cincinnati Pride started in 1973. In 2016, the event had approximately 90,000 attendees. The pride parade serves as the anchor event. The event has corporate and non-profit sponsors, including US Bank, PNC Bank, The Kroger Co., Luxottica, and others. Various LGBT and affinity groups are involved, too, including Human Rights Campaign, PFLAG, GLSEN, Dykes on Bikes, Imperial Court System, and various BDSM groups. Churches, entertainers and politicians are also involved.
Festival
The festival formed out of a political rally held in Fountain Square in Cincinnati. Today, the festival takes place at Sawyer Point Park and Yeatman’s Cove. Traditionally held the last weekend in June, the Cincinnati Pride Festival, along with the Pride Parade, commemorates the 1969 Stonewall riots in New York City.
In addition to the parade and festival, the event’s organizers have expanded the celebration to include numerous fundraisers, gay-themed city bike rides, interfaith religious services, movie screenings, fashion shows featuring the work of local designers, pub crawls, brunches, and local events at the Cincinnati Art Museum.
Administration
After the 40th anniversary of the festival, in 2013, Cincinnati Pride incorporated as a non-profit organization in the State of Ohio and was granted its tax exempt status as a public charity in November, 2015 by the IRS. It is governed by a volunteer board of trustees and ran entirely by volunteers. Before becoming a non-profit, the event was run by various local LGBT groups, including the Gay and Lesbian Center of Greater Cincinnati and the Greater Cincinnati Gay Chamber of Commerce.
History
Pride festivities across the country serve as commemorations of the Stonewall riots (the first organized resistance of the gay community against police harassment) which took place in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, at the Stonewall Inn in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City.
These events are still widely considered the single most important event leading up to the gay liberation movement and the modern fight for LGBT rights in the United States today.
The Anti-Vietnam War movement and "hippie" culture was in full force by the early 1970s and out of these sentiments gave rise to other politically-leftist organizations. By 1972, Cincinnati’s first gay organization, The Cincinnati Gay Community (CGC), was established by Michael Weyand, Terry Flanagan, Carol Kipp, Richard (Dick) Jazwinski, Ronald Carter, Jack Ferguson, and Karl Owens.
In April 1973, four years after the initial events surrounding the Stonewall riots, CGC organizers planned and carried out Cincinnati’s first gay march through Over the Rhine (OTR) and rally at Fountain Square. Although some of the original details are unclear, most reports state that initial attendance ranged from 12-40 individuals.
Shortly after the 1973 rally and march, the CGC disbanded and the next city-wide Pride was not revived until 1978 when the it fell under the auspices of the newly created Greater Cincinnati Gay Coalition. The GCGC became the Greater Cincinnati Gay and Lesbian Coalition in 1984. Subsequently, the GCGLC became the Gay and Lesbian Community Center of Greater Cincinnati (The Center) in 1993. Pride remained with The Center through 2009.
In 1995 when Cincinnati passed the notoriously anti-gay Issue 3 (Article 12). Because of the city’s new ordinances, LGBT activism dropped sharply and a city-wide Pride event no longer seemed feasible. As a result, smaller events popped up in more liberal neighborhoods across the metropolitan area including festivals in Lunken Playfield in Mt. Washington from 1996-1999. In 1999, Michael Blankenship, a local activist, held a small rally at City Hall.
From 2000-2003, Northside (Cincinnati’s first "Gayborhood"), began holding a parade, rallies at Burnet Woods, and a festival at Hoffner Park as an independent committee chaired by Chris Good and then Ken Colegrove all advised by Michael "Goose" Chanak. In 2004, The Gay & Lesbian Community Center of Greater Cincinnati carried out the two-day festival until 2010 when, in an effort to make the event more accessible to the Greater Tri-state area, organizers moved the parade to downtown Cincinnati and the festival to Fountain Square under the stewardship of the Greater Cincinnati Gay Chamber of Commerce.
Although Northside did not host the official Cincinnati Pride Festival after 2009, Northside Pride continued to host their own event, later in the summer for the years 2010-2012.
As Pride Parade and Festival attendance surged (an estimated 90,000 now attend annually), the Greater Cincinnati Gay Chamber of Commerce worked with city officials to move the event from Fountain Square to Sawyer Point Park and Yeatman’s Cove (on the banks of the Ohio River) in 2012.
Following the 2013 festivities (the 40th anniversary of the city’s first Pride event), Cincinnati Pride registered as an independent, non-profit organization becoming Cincinnati Pride, Inc. The 2014 festival marked the first celebration executed entirely under the organization’s newly incorporated board of trustees and planning committee.
Greater Cincinnati Gay & Lesbian Community Center