Happy Pride from 4Culture!
Whether you’re out at parades and street parties or enjoying a quiet night in, there are so many ways to celebrate Pride Month in King County! Here, 4Culture staff have pulled together some of our favorite ways that the cultural sector is joining in this June:
What is Pride?
Pride celebrations commemorate a series of demonstrations against a police raid on the Stonewall Inn in 1969. At the time, the Stonewall was the only bar for gay men in New York City where dancing was allowed. The resulting Stonewall Riots were not the first or the last demonstration of LGBTQIA2S+ resistance, but they acted as a catalyst for a more formal and unified gay rights movement.
Pride in Seattle
This year marks the 50th anniversary of Seattle Pride! One of their events this year was a youth exhibit, funded by 4Culture, that displayed on June 6 for Pioneer Square Art Walk.
Our Pioneer Square neighbors, Beneath the Streets, offers a Queer Underground History Tour.
Explore MOHAI’s online exhibit, Objects of Pride, which aims to share a collective regional history of Pride. (Hey, we fund them!)
Our friends at HistoryLink include a variety of articles about LGBTQIA2S+ history in Washington State. (Hey, we fund them!)
Things To Watch
Vanishing Seattle’s short documentary on Capitol Hill (17 min, 2021), which we’ll be screening together at our office Pride event on Thursday. (Hey, we funded that!)
There Goes the Gayborhood: Seattle’s Shifting Queer Geographies: This 8-minute film follows the shifting geography of Seattle’s LGBTQIA2S+ community, and how Capitol Hill has changed since the 1970s.
UW’s Seattle Civil Rights & History Project produced this video on the local history of activism.
Things to Read
King County Public Library offers a variety of books and events during Pride.
Gay Seattle: Stories of Exile & Belonging: First published in 2003, one reviewer wrote that, “It offers the first published account of the formation of gay and lesbian political organizations in the city.”
LGBTQ Activism in Seattle History Project: This project of UW’s Seattle Civil Rights & Labor History Project was written in 2016 and shares a history of activism in our area.