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Event
Information:
The
Capital Pride is an annual LGBT
pride festival held in early June
each year in Washington, D.C. As of
2007, the festival was planned and
produced by Whitman-Walker Clinic,
and is the fourth-largest gay pride
event in the United States. The
festival was first held in 1975.
Deacon Maccubbin, owner of the LGBT
bookstore Lambda Rising, organized
the city's first gay pride event, a
one-day community block party held
on 20th Street N.W. between R and S
Streets N.W. in Washington, D.C.
(the same block where Lambda Rising
was then located). Two pickup
trucks, one loaded with beer and
another with soft drinks, served the
crowd. About 2,000 people attended
and visited about a dozen booths and
vendors. In a surprising political
move indicative of the growing
political power of gays and lesbians
in the city, several candidates for
the D.C. City Council also attended
and shook hands for several hours.
By
1979, the festival was drawing more
than 10,000 attendees. Washington
Mayor Marion Barry, elected the
previous November, attended Gay
Pride that year as he would for the
rest of his time in office. A
community board of 11 LGBT
organizations in the Washington,
D.C., metropolitan area assist
Whitman-Walker Clinic in organizing
Capital Pride. Whitman-Walker Clinic
assigns a full-time staff member to
Capital Pride, making this
individual the event's only
full-time employee. This individual
acts as the executive director of
the festival, and coordinates
day-to-day operations, secures
sponsorships, and oversees
logistics.
Whitman-Walker Clinic became the
sole sponsor of Capital Pride in
2000. The festival was moved to
Pennsylvania Avenue N.W. between 4th
and 7th Streets N.W., and the
festival's main stage repositioned
so that the United States Capitol
building was in the background. As a
cost-saving move, in 2002 the parade
was moved to early evening on
Saturday while the festival
continued to occur on Sunday
afternoon. The same year, the
number of parade contingents reached
200 for the first time.
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