BWW Exclusive: As the Pride Parade Passes By...

June 25th, 2017 marked New York City's 47th Annual Pride parade. Thousands of New Yorkers took to the streets to celebrate the LGBTQ+ community this year. A sea of rainbow, glitter, feathers, and every combination of the three filled the street. The historic march was filled with members of the LGBTQ+ community and allies alike. Stretching from 36th street and 5th avenue all the way down past the historic Stonewall Inn to Christopher street, people sang, danced, and watched as the parade passed by.

A brief history of NYC Pride and Gay Rights in the US:

Taken over by the non-profit Heritage of Pride in 1984, NYC Pride has been celebrated at the end of June every year since 1969, when amidst the Civil Right's Movement a riot broke out between police and civilians at the Stonewall Inn.

The bar was a staple in the underground gay community as one of the few places people of the same sex could be together and trans people were able to express their identities. A year after the Stonewall riots was the first Gay Pride March held by the Christopher Street Liberation Day Committee to commemorate the riot.

Although there were societies and organizations pleading for rights prior (the Mattachine Society organized annual picketing), that early June morning on Christopher Street is where many consider the fight for Gay Rights to really begin. As more organizations were created they began marching along groups like the Black Panthers, and the fight for rights picked up.

By June of 1973, the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from the DSM-II. It was listed in the manual since 1952 (despite research disputing its place there) next to pedophilia and zoophilia.

1979 was the first time Gay Rights were given major national attention as thousands participated in the first National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights.

The movement grew even more once the first case of AIDS was officially documented in 1981 although there were 121 recorded deaths due to AIDS in the US in that year alone. It would take 5 years for President Reagan to mention the epidemic in 1986, by then the cumulative deaths known were 16,301.

The fight for gay rights continued as people strived for gay marriage to be legal in in all of the United States. In 2004, the first same sex marriage laws passed in Massachusetts. Forty-six years after Stonewall, the Supreme Court finally ruled that same sex couples could marry nationwide in 2015.

Pride and the LGBTQ+ community continued to make history as this year's NYC Pride was the first to be broadcasted live.

2017's Grand Marshalls included The American Civil Liberties Union, Brooke Guinan, Krishna Stone, and Geng Le.