Gay Pride in the Urban New South: Politics,Neighborhood,and Community in Atlanta and Charlotte

Two Hundred Miles and a Decade Apart: The Origins of Pride in Atlanta and Charlotte

The earliest Pride gatherings in Atlanta, grounded in activism and visible protest, always took place in Midtown near Piedmont Park. To commemorate the Stonewall Riots a year earlier, Atlanta activists handed out educational literature in Piedmont Park in 1970. ⁹ The next year marked the first march. Approximately two hundred attendees encountered police questioning because they did not have a permit, but the event proceeded with marchers wearing lavender Gay Power t-shirts and carrying a matching banner along with signs like “Jimmy Carter Uses Hairspray.” They chanted “TWO FOUR SIX EIGHT, GAY IS TWICE AS GOOD AS STRAIGHT.” Cars passed by with Sunday church-goers who were “freaking out.” The protesters acknowledged that their event was in solidarity with other national events including New York City and Chicago; this was the “Gaysouth rising up.” This was Atlanta Gay day, 1971. ¹⁰ By June 1972, the Georgia Gay Liberation Front had organized a leaflet campaign targeting bars as venues for promoting the events. They viewed the rally as a “Southeast-wide demonstration” and prepared to welcome supporters from around the region. They hosted a booth at the planned activities in the city’s Grant Park on the day prior to President Nixon’s June 19 visit and simultaneous antiwar demonstration. During this Pride weekend, ALFA held its first meeting on June 23, 1972. The next year’s Pride event made headlines in the national gay news magazine, The Advocate, and received relatively balanced local television news coverage. Delayed by three hours because of a Billy Graham crusade, Atlanta Pride was approximately 60 percent women with just two Black participants in 1973. ¹¹ Two miles from Piedmont Park, queer worshippers gathered in the newly purchased building of the Metropolitan Community Church for 1974 Pride. ALFA sponsored an open house and Gay 90s Carnival. The main festival was a Saturday picnic in Piedmont Park. In a local queer newspaper, festival-goers were encouraged to “bring a basket and share it” and to look forward to “softball and happenings.” ¹² Although the early celebrations varied in their scope and approach, they remained tied to the alternative Midtown neighborhood in Atlanta. This consistent space proved vital for enduring queer visibility.

Ten years after Atlanta’s first politically motivated march, a gay Pride celebration finally came to Charlotte in 1981, but not until 2013 would a visible and politically based march be held in conjunction with a local Charlotte Pride celebration. In many ways, Charlotte’s move to greater tolerance for its gay neighbors lagged at least a decade behind Atlanta’s; this decade of separation was true for Pride and politics. The first event in Charlotte created great excitement and anticipation. The Front Page, a regional gay newspaper based in Raleigh, reported that during this week Charlotte would be “the gay/lesbian capital of the Mid Atlantic.” ¹³ Local activist Don King, seemingly the one and only person behind all visible gay organizing in 1980s Charlotte, was eager for this first event to put Charlotte on the southeastern gay map. King was “tired of people having to run off to Atlanta, Washington and other places to hear nationally known speakers and to get that ecstatic feeling of togetherness.” ¹⁴ He viewed this first Charlotte Pride week as an opportunity to address these concerns.

Many of the events, and even housing options for out-of-town visitors, took place at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte (UNCC), located an inconvenient eleven miles from one of the main Pride host bars, The Scorpio, and ten miles from Charlotte’s progressively named “Uptown” center-city district. The University was the site for a film festival, an outdoor disco, softball tournament, and workshops, including the keynote speech by Barbara Gittings, a nationally recognized activist, former editor of the first lesbian journal, The Ladder, and founder of New York’s first lesbian organization in the 1950s, a Daughters of Bilitis chapter. ¹⁵ The Scorpio sponsored a softball team for the tournament, The Stinging Scorpions, again highlighting the problematic distance from the bar to the main events of the festival. In fact, events that year took place at venues scattered throughout the city, and in the coming years Pride in Charlotte would continue to move the entire festival to varying locations with little consistency. This lack of logistical stability would plague Charlotte’s Pride organizers. In June 1984, the event included a softball game and a potluck luncheon, held under an isolated shelter in a remote area of Park Road Park to ensure invisibility. While this was a central location in comparison with the 1981 event at UNCC, Pride was now located in the predominantly white and elite neighborhood, Myers Park.

While Charlotte’s lesbian and gay organizers struggled for consistency and negotiated questions of visibility, the 1984 Atlanta Pride celebration represented tremendous visible growth. Events stretched from June 21 to July 3, celebrating the “Once More . . . With Feeling” theme. Featuring plays, voter registration drives, church services, an ALFA open house, an AID-Atlanta Health Fair, a Dyke Tour of Homes, a Wet Jockey Contest, a candidates forum for upcoming congressional races, and the International Association of Black and White Men Together conference held during this time, diversity and visibility were hallmarks of the celebrations. Organizers corralled members of the Atlanta, Fulton, and DeKalb county police departments to meet at All Saints Church for a discussion on crimes against lesbians and gay people. ¹⁶ A Pride softball tournament included the teams Meshugenehs, Amazons, and Tower Tornadoes and the Sports Page Sports, sponsored by popular lesbian bars. The tournament concluded with an All-Star Game featuring men from the Hotlanta League. Once again marchers paraded on Peachtree Street and rallied between the area blocked off at tenth and eleventh streets in Midtown Atlanta, just two blocks from Piedmont Park where the first leaflets on gay rights were distributed fourteen years earlier. Those who were concerned about being identified in the march were encouraged to wear masks or a costume to conceal their identity, because the goal was a large and visible presence.

Organizations and the Struggle to Create Committed Community

In both Charlotte and Atlanta, Pride organizers faced substantial financial difficulties and often struggled to maintain consistent and substantial memberships in key queer organizations, which were central to Pride’s success. In Charlotte, for example, Pride often depended on two or three committed people. As early as 1975, King organized in Charlotte while recognizing that his efforts might be viewed as a threat by gay bar owners. The bars, and the drag performers that supported them, were powerful in the aptly nicknamed Queen City. Any organization that hoped to survive would have to work with that community because many lesbian and gay people preferred the anonymity of the bars and had little interest in visible activism. ¹⁷

Queen City Quordinators (QCQ), a group formed by Don King and responsible for Charlotte’s first Pride, hoped to coordinate programming and organize funding to be shared between several lesbian and gay advocacy groups, including the Gay/Lesbian Switchboard of Charlotte, the Metropolitan Community Church, the Gay/Lesbian Caucus of Charlotte, and the North Carolina Human Rights Fund. All of these organizations desperately needed money and hoped to work together with the bars to provide entertainment while raising funds. The groups shared members, but there were not enough bodies to populate the various activist efforts. The Gay/Lesbian Caucus struggled to survive as its membership overlapped significantly with the QCQ leadership. Many who participated in the Caucus regularly participated in QCQ, which led to fading energy and depleted ideas after the first year of work. In addition to a frustrating lack of community support for their efforts, the highly anticipated and first Pride celebration of 1981 did not live up to the local gay media hype or the QCQ’s financial expectations. In fact, the only financial failure for the Quordinators in 1981 was the Gay Pride Week celebration in Charlotte, and the financial loss was devastating. Pride in Charlotte was troubled from the beginning, and it would remain so throughout its tumultuous incarnations. ¹⁸

By 1983, Pride was a marginally profitable venture, earning over two hundred dollars for the QCQ, but it lagged behind all other events sponsored by the organization that year and it remained their least profitable event. At a cost of almost six hundred dollars, their greatest point of success was the public visibility of that year’s quarter page Pride week announcement in the Charlotte Observer newspaper. Print visibility was extremely important to gay activists in Charlotte. They were willing to raise three times the amount earned by Pride to have mainstream media recognition. The Observer ad promoted Pride as a concept and explained the importance of the celebration’s history to the wide readership of the local paper. ¹⁹ Due to the launch of Q-Notes, the Quordinators newsletter, and a general belief that “Charlotte’s gay men and lesbians” were “acting like a community,” 1983 was seen as a banner year.

Organizations, often more than bars, struggled mightily to survive in the Queen City. ²⁰ In Charlotte, an organizational name and local media coverage might suggest an active and engaged community, but these groups came and went quickly. They rarely boasted a sizable membership, often with numbers under twenty, and they should not be understood as representative of a substantial and united community. The ostensible flurry of activity that Q-Notes promoted represented only a small and white slice of gay Charlotte. QCQ was responsible for most of the visible queer Charlotte of the 1980s, while many lesbians and gay men only showed up in force at the bars, and to a lesser extent at Pride gatherings. The divisions among lesbians and gay men were evident to the QCQ leadership, but seemingly without any recognition that the predominantly white male leadership probably served to alienate those who did not fit that limited demographic. Their frustration reeked of an inability to acknowledge the inherent cost of visible activism that many, especially Black queer people, feared in an oppressive Charlotte.

Like Charlotte, Atlanta’s activist groups fought to maintain a base of involvement—people who were willing to volunteer in addition to being willing partiers for events. Of the many activist and social support groups for lesbian and gay people, their newsletters were constantly calling for money and volunteers. Don Weston of the all-male steering committee for the 1986 Atlanta Pride aimed a subtle jab aimed at those who were visibly involved, but socially problematic, in that year’s Pride Guide. He recognized the importance of political and economic clout in protecting gay rights, and called for wide attendance and visibility at Pride, especially by those who would be more palatable to powerful straight leaders in Atlanta:

The vast majority of gays in metropolitan Atlanta are taking advantage of the limited features of the gay community here and are doing nothing to protect or advance those features. This has left the “battle” to a small number of dedicated individuals who have been carrying the whole load. Many of those individuals are in the forefront because of a much greater personal stake in being openly gay—drag queens, leather lovers, and so on. Thank God they have been there. They represent the diversity and strength of the gay community. But they are also some of the most controversial, easy-to-criticize members of our community. It is unfair and ineffective for the rest of the Atlanta Gay community to rely on these few brave souls for representation to the media, to the politicians, and to our own community. ²¹

A male writer in Atlanta’s Pulse magazine for lesbians and gay men lamented the fact that the Atlanta Gay Pride parade featured people who flaunted their sexuality and crowded out those who arrived to march:

We have places (bars, parties, etc.) that we can run around in drag and leather. Hell, I love to slip on some pumps and purple taffeta and paint the town pink! But there is a time and a place for everything, and it sure would help if some of us learned where these times and places were. ²²

Respectability—appropriate behavior that garnered heterosexual tolerance—guided queer organizing in the New South.

The Politics of Pride

Early success for Pride in Atlanta took root in the political possibilities of mayoral support for gay citizens. When Mayor Maynard Jackson won his Atlanta office in 1973, it was celebrated in the local queer media. The Atlanta Barb saw him as a promise of the future—a positive future for gay citizens of Atlanta. They warned that they intended to hold him to his pre-election promise and Jackson would not disappoint. In 1976, three hundred people, including the lesbian groups ALFA, Atlanta Women’s Union, and Dykes for the Second American Revolution, marched on Peachtree Street headed for Piedmont Park. According to the alternative paper The Great Speckled Bird, “the march was a couple of blocks long and included several cars (Atlanta’s version of floats) with people atop.” ²³ Marching on Peachtree was significant; it was the main drag of visibility. ²⁴ Mayor Maynard Jackson declared June 26, 1976, as Gay Pride Day in Atlanta. In his official proclamation, he urged “citizens to recognize the rights of all people,” noting that “As this nation approaches the celebration of its 200^th birthday, it is appropriate that all people re-evaluate the phrase ‘human rights’ so that it may apply to all citizens in equal fashion.” ²⁵

In response to Jackson’s recognition of Atlanta’s queer citizens, a group known as Citizens for Decent Atlanta (CDA) ran ads in several newspapers and suggested that while they would not deny the right to free expression, they took issue with Jackson’s right “to affix our city’s seal of approval to a sexual orientation which the majority of his fellow citizens believes to be against the moral law of the Judeo-Christian tradition and the institution of the home family unit.” ²⁶ Additional ads took aim at the “perverted sex” that Jackson’s proclamation seemed to ordain. According to one ALFA member, the CDA was attacking Jackson’s proclamation as anti-family, but failing to recognize that “we are mothers, children, and families.” ²⁷ The CDA consisted of seven individuals who initially refused to identify themselves for fear of retaliation. But the local alternative newspaper, The Great Speckled Bird, was unwilling to ignore the potential of uncovering a racist plot against Jackson. Their investigation suggested that politicians and businessmen were at the core of the CDA funding. The paper named names—including a “Cathy Truitt, who could not be identified.” This was most likely the conservative evangelical businessman Truett Cathy, of Chick-fil-A fame, who decades later would face heated controversy in 2012 because of his son’s statements against same-sex marriage. ²⁸ The seven mystery funders, who paid over six thousand dollars for the newspaper ads, worked with several local ministers, one of whom, the Rev. Charles Stanley of First Baptist of Atlanta, publicly “attacked the proclamation from his pulpit.” ²⁹ The Black newspaper, Atlanta Daily World, also carried advertising funded by the CDA. Some in the Black community were angry at Jackson over the proclamation, but only one Black pastor publicly opposed the proclamation. The fundamental problem was not that gay people existed, but that they would take pride in that existence—that they would “flaunt” it. Among these religious leaders existed an underlying fear that Atlanta would become like San Francisco—“a city of real nuts.” ³⁰ The staff at the Great Speckled Bird saw the CDA as a white moneyed attempt to oust Jackson. While they could not get away with “hollering ‘nigger,’” wrote the editors, it would be acceptable to yell “pervert” and “queer.” It was a way to attack Atlanta’s “new Black city power structure.” ³¹ A year later, Jackson backed away from his Gay Pride Day declaration due to pressure from the CDA and changed the proclamation to a watered-down “Civil Liberties Days.” ³²

It was a full ten years after Maynard Jackson’s election that Harvey Gantt would take office in 1983 as Charlotte’s first Black mayor and the first to acknowledge gay activists in a marginally positive way. Some lesbians and gay men in Charlotte would find new but short-lived hope in Gantt because, like Jackson, he brought a similar excitement to activists in Charlotte. While campaigning before a gay social group supported by the local and transitory Lambda Political Caucus, Gantt said that he would support anti-discrimination legislation that would protect lesbians and gays from housing or job discrimination, and he would appoint a recommended leader from the lesbian and gay community to his Community Relations Council. ³³ The meeting in question was held by “Acceptance,” a gay social group consisting mostly of white gay men who met at the relatively tolerant Park Road Baptist church in Charlotte. The group was supported by the umbrella organization QCQ, also led by gay white men, who worked with the bars and the politicians to gain a place at the Queen City’s table.

Gantt also faced a city that was not ready for vocal mayoral support of lesbian and gay concerns. Charlotte’s influential religious community was openly critical of queer people and did not fear repercussions as the CDA in Atlanta did. They were buoyed by their powerful status and willing vocally to equate homosexuality with what they deemed to be pornographic material. They viewed both as equally harmful to Charlotte. Comprised of religious leaders, some with political aspirations, the group Concerned Charlotteans placed extreme pressure on Gantt to take action against the sale of sexually explicit material. Of significant concern was the material sold in the Charlotte Douglas Airport. Pastor Ed Adams of Charlotte’s Word of Faith Church was one of many religious leaders who wrote to Gantt and rebuked him for his supposed lack of action on the issue. In response to Gantt’s answers when recently questioned by Concerned Charlotteans, Adams wrote, “I hate to think that the Mayor of our city thinks that Playboy and Penthouse aren’t pornographic. Also your answer to, ‘do you believe homosexual acts should be legalized’ concerns me. Surely you know what homosexual acts are.” Adams pleaded with Gantt to “use the position that God has entrusted to you” so that “the city of Charlotte will know that its major [sic] is a man of integrity indeed.” ³⁴ Profiled by The Charlotte Observer in 1986, the founding member of Concerned Charlotteans, Rev. Joseph Chambers, defended his organization’s expansion of their focus to include homosexuality, abortion, and prayer in schools. The piece opened with Chambers examining a Rolling Stone magazine that featured an article on his activism:

The Rev. Joseph Chambers flips through a September issue of Rolling Stone magazine until a picture catches his eye. “Do you think this promotes lesbian sex?” he asks, pointing to a Bloomingdale`s department store ad. Two pages later, there`s a color photograph of Chambers, standing with a Bible in front of a glowing cross and a U.S. flag. The article, about North Carolina`s one-year-old obscenity law, mentions Chambers and his anti-pornography group, Concerned Charlotteans. ³⁵

On the national stage, the Queen City gained notoriety for its anti-queer religious community, which exercised enormous political clout. Charlotte’s anti-gay activism made national news that year, but because of arch-conservative Jesse Helms, the state as a whole would gain infamy in this arena. Just three years after the Rolling Stone interview and the national television news show 20/20 threw the national spotlight on Charlotte’s religious conservative movement, Vice President Dan Quayle attended the fifth annual Concerned Charlotteans conference at Helms’s behest. Rev. Chambers touted the visit as an indicator of North Carolina’s “‘conservative renaissance’ in the battle against pornography and other problems.” ³⁶

Thanks to Senator Helms, North Carolina struck some as the most “queer hating state” that year. Southern lesbian feminist activist, Mab Segrest, analyzed the state of the state for gay people in an attempt to mobilize activists across rural/urban borders in North Carolina against homophobic violence perpetuated by the reign of Helms. Segrest worked as a consultant to the local state organization, NC Coalition for Gay and Lesbian Equality (NCCGLE), to focus on bringing statewide campaigns together against homophobic violence; it was the only statewide effort of its kind at the time. Segrest recognized the challenges of their endeavor, noting that “countering these unifying efforts is a tendency towards turf issues and fragmentation into many smaller organizations. This problem is exacerbated because gay activists receive recognition in these smaller organizations that we are denied in heterosexual society.” The front page of the national publication, Resist: A Call to Resist Illegitimate Authority, featured Segrest’s efforts, and a photo of two men at a 1992 North Carolina state gay Pride festival held in Asheville, North Carolina, decked out in camouflage and holding protest signs including one that read, “Fagits [sic] Get Out of Ashville [sic].” ³⁷ NCCGLE promoted the kind of action that the Queen City Quordinators used with Gantt—recommending participants for the Mayor’s human relation commission and working as advocates for anti-violence campaigns and worker protections. As a result of angry and hate-laced speech, promoted by protesting churchleaders at the state Pride gatherings, Segrest pointed to the need to engage churches whose congregations were willing to reach out in a more loving way to gay people. She noted that the North Carolina Council of Churches had in 1991 “passed a strong resolution condemning anti-gay violence and calling for churches to examine the ways they have contributed to the suffering of lesbians and gay men.” According to Segrest, this type of church leadership on lesbian and gay issues would go a long way in a state like North Carolina especially in rural areas and smaller towns. Because of the significant representations of churches, including the sizable southern Baptist contingent, church repudiation of anti-gay violence was crucial. ³⁸

Charlotte’s gay organizations and activists had to wrestle with the image of the state of North Carolina, which was often portrayed as unwelcoming and unsafe for gay people. Helms’s rants placed Charlotte squarely in a state that made national headlines for its anti-gay political and religious leadership, and anti-gay violence. Although Atlanta was certainly not positioned in a pro-gay state, visible mayoral cooperation was still the byword there, and this buoyed Pride festivals throughout the 1990s. In the same year that Segrest worked to organize leaders in North Carolina against homophobic violence, Atlanta’s Jackson appeared publicly with gay leaders in 1991 in an effort to quell frustration over his absence from the upcoming Pride celebration. Queer activists were often frustrated with Mayor Jackson, yet he continued to express open support for Pride festivals in Atlanta. When Jackson announced that he would actively seek a lesbian or gay person to serve in his administration, he noted the importance of the community’s contributions to Atlanta:

One of the things that bothers me is some people who want to condemn the lesbian and gay community on the one hand and on the other hand accept the help of the lesbian and gay community in all the things the city does. That is sheer hypocrisy and I’m sick and tired of it. ³⁹

Jackson’s actions set a precedent for future Black political leaders to include the queer community in governing the city. By fostering a long history of pro-queer political effort in Atlanta, he helped to cultivate predictable and successful Pride events. ⁴⁰

The Fight for Statewide Pride in Charlotte

Nowhere was the type of hypocrisy Jackson identified more evident than in the North Carolina state Pride festival hosted in Charlotte in 1994. Pride organizers recorded the official attendance for the main rally at 3,841, and the event was the largest state Pride since its inception in 1981. At least half of the festival attendees surveyed were from cities outside of Charlotte, but it would be the only time that the statewide event would be held in the Queen City. ⁴¹ Charlotte’s queer organizers had an opportunity to locate their city on the regional Pride map but would quickly find that the necessary political and business support to sustain the event would not materialize. As the largest city in the state, Charlotte officials missed an opportunity to claim a foothold in the business of state Pride. Businessmen and boosters in a city that loved to make money (look no further than Charlotte’s 1970s Chamber of Commerce slogan, “Charlotte—A Good Place to Make Money”) were happy to take gay dollars but not to embrace those who spent them. The Chamber of Commerce slogan was shameless in its celebration of the city’s economic obsession. Despite its 1992 ranking as the second “hottest metro area” for corporate growth in 1992 (ahead of Atlanta), Charlotte’s business leaders did not link their business growth to a thriving queer community. ⁴² City politicians alienated gay consumers by suggesting that their brand of economic boosterism did not extend to the gay community in the 1990s. ⁴³ They were guilty of the very hypocrisy that Mayor Jackson highlighted in Atlanta. The state Pride event brought five hundred thousand dollars in revenue to Charlotte. This was a certain benefit to the city’s economy, but one that was ignored in the indignant speech of Charlotte’s mayor and battles waged by the religious community over the festival’s appearance in the Queen City. ⁴⁴

State Pride brought to Charlotte an event and a public presence that the city’s gay leaders could not maintain. Pride’s success in 1994 directly connected to the financial support from the state committee and the substantial attendance by those who lived outside of Charlotte. Event co-chairs Dan Kirsch and Sue Henry led the campaign to bring the event to Charlotte for its one and only appearance in the Queen City: “We look at the Pride March as the chance to increase visibility of our local gay and lesbian community in a positive way.” ⁴⁵ Kirsch and Henry exerted considerable energy to secure the promising state festival, and although organizers of North Carolina Pride in Charlotte would view the weekend as a success, Charlotte’s local Pride events would remain inconsistent and unpredictable. Rather than beginning an era of successful Pride events in Charlotte, the state Pride weekend of 1994 was an anomaly that would not be repeated.

Kirsch and Henry specifically requested the June 3-5 dates for the event so as not to compete with Atlanta Pride on June 12, South Carolina Pride, or the Pride celebration of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Stonewall riots in New York City. In their appeal to the state Pride organization, Kirsch and Henry recognized the importance of Charlotte as a leader in the southern financial landscape and hoped to avoid competition with other Pride events that might drive down attendance numbers and revenue. Emphasizing the “economic clout” of the Pride march, they worked to use this as a tool to woo Charlotte’s business leaders. If they could impress corporate leaders, then perhaps they would take the lead in anti-discrimination policies for their lesbian and gay employees. ⁴⁶ Pride organizers hoped to “show off” and “to use the opportunity to demonstrate to Charlotte’s mainstream community the power and political strength” of lesbians and gay men in Charlotte. ⁴⁷

The social and political climate for North Carolina Pride in Charlotte was abysmal. Unlike other host cities, Charlotte did not have any legislative protection for lesbian and gay people. In fact, the City Council rejected such an ordinance in 1992, just a year before the city was awarded the statewide Pride march. In the debate over the ordinance, which would have modified the city’s anti-bias amendment to include protections against discrimination based on sexual orientation, City Council member Hoyle Martin stated that he could not support an ordinance that would allow lesbians and gay men in Charlotte to publicly “flaunt” a “lifestyle” that he “couldn’t explain to his grandchildren.” ⁴⁸ Martin continued his anti-gay tirades throughout the 1990s, blaming gay people for AIDS. When a local city theater attempted to stage the play Angels in America, which explored the beginnings of the AIDS crisis, Martin declared that Charlotte was the Sodom and Gomorrah of the East Coast. ⁴⁹ Like Martin, Mayor Richard Vinroot opposed legislative protections for lesbians and gay men, as did Council member Pat McCrory, a future Mayor of Charlotte and Governor of North Carolina. Queer activists worked diligently to sway the Council’s opinions on the amendment. Diana Travis, a lesbian business owner, appeared before the Council to argue that her tax dollars were happily accepted in Charlotte (never returned and marked “lesbian”), but without the promise of protection from city leaders in return. ⁵⁰ But in a continuation of his public support for Charlotte’s gay citizens, former Mayor Harvey Gantt appealed to council members to support the amendment as an effort to build bridges within the Charlotte community. ⁵¹

Just a year later, Charlotte was the only city to submit a bid to host the 1994 North Carolina Pride event. Although the state Pride committee, North Carolina Lesbian and Gay Pride, Inc., recognized Charlotte as a more conservative city than other previous hosts such as Chapel Hill, Durham, and Raleigh, they approved the Charlotte bid because it would focus attention on lesbians and gay people who were local to Charlotte. ⁵² The committee awarded the festival to Charlotte because it was conservative and they expected controversy:

We chose Charlotte I would not say despite the fact that we’re expecting some organized protest, but because of it in a way. . . . It’s going to bring a lot of attention to the local community. I think it’s going to focus attention on the fact that lesbian and gay people are not “out there” but that they’re in town. ⁵³

At the heart of Pride in Charlotte existed a commitment to visibility. The event culminated in a rally and a march, and until 2013, it would be the only time that a gay Pride parade took place in Charlotte. The thought of queer people in the streets of Charlotte is exactly what some religious leaders and their congregations feared and abhorred. The pages of the Charlotte Observer were filled with letters to the editor, opinion columns, and general coverage of the rancor—especially the vociferous pleadings of the First Baptist Church congregation, located just two blocks from Marshall Park where the march organizers would gather. First Baptist’s pastor, Rev. Charles Page, was a leader in the 1992 mêlée against the anti-bias ordinance that would have extended protections to lesbian and gay people in Charlotte, and he also led the battle against the state Pride rally and march. Parishioners at the First Baptist Church viewed the parade portion of the Pride weekend festival as a direct provocation: by marching near the church gay people would be expressing animosity against the church’s anti-gay position and teachings. ⁵⁴ In response to First Baptist’s “proposed ‘alternate’ finishing point” for the gay Pride march, a local political cartoon illustrated that suggestion by a path lined in arrows leading to a barely opened closet door. ⁵⁵

Business leaders with ties to First Baptist wrote letters pleading with the city’s Parade Permit Committee chair to deny the permit. The letter writers were clearly instructed to reference the 1993 national March on Washington for gay rights as an example of the inappropriate nature of the event planned in Charlotte. Attorney Tim Sellers and other letter writers offered to share a video from the national March with the Parade Permit Committee in an effort to demonstrate the “illegal and horrifying activity” that a similar “gay rights march” might bring to the streets of Charlotte. ⁵⁶ Harkening back to a 1970s style of activism, similar to the rhetoric promoted by Anita Bryant in her anti-gay Save Our Children campaign, several letter writers expressed concern for children’s safety and the risk of exposing them to the state Pride event. Architect Graham Adams referenced his firm’s work with neighborhood students who lived in a low-income housing project just a few blocks from Marshall Park and argued that they “must not be subjected to such a parade that would certainly be protested if it were proposed to occur in another neighborhood.” Adams’s suggestion that at-risk youth were being exposed to the danger of an influential gay message that would not be allowed in more affluent neighborhoods smacked of opportunism as he used the students who would “suffer emotionally and educationally” from Pride’s message to advance his position. ⁵⁷

In an effort to quiet the hubbub, leaders of Charlotte Pride quickly responded to the frustrated Rev. Page and his congregation. The organizing committee offered to meet with church members, provide volunteers to direct festival attendees away from the First Baptist property, and change the start time of the parade (from noon to 1:30 p.m.) to reduce any interference with the Sunday worship activities. In his response, Page reiterated his opposition to the parade and declined the committee’s offer to meet and police festival attendees near church property, but ultimately gave up the public fight after these accommodations. The media made hay of this common ground between the Pride organizers and the Church, even suggesting that the speedy compromise by Pride leaders displayed a more “Christian” approach. ⁵⁸

A letter from a representative of the Fellowship of Deacons for First Baptist, celebrated Mayor Vinroot’s complete opposition to the march and noted his delight at the Mayor’s efforts to keep Charlotte from becoming a “worldly” class city. ⁵⁹ Two years after his opposition to the local anti-discrimination amendment, Vinroot refused to be involved in North Carolina Pride, stating,

I happened to watch on C-SPAN about two months ago what looked like a gay-Pride march. I was embarrassed by the language and the references and the public exposition of sex. It was very offensive. If that’s what this is, I want no part of it. ⁶⁰

In a 1995 response to one of his constituents, Vinroot was equally candid and consistent on his opinion of gay people and their visible presence in Charlotte:

Three years ago, I spoke out strongly against a proposed “Gay Rights” ordinance then under consideration; last year I stated publicly (when asked) that I wished that the “Gay Pride” parade which occurred in June would not take place here; and this week I essentially responded the same way (when asked) about the “OutCharlotte” event which prompted your letter. I’ve no idea what the “Christian Coalition” thinks about all these things, but my position has been consistent and quite public for most of my term as Mayor. ⁶¹

Charlotte’s lesbians and gay men heard Vinroot’s message loud and clear because it was publicized widely in the local media when organizers attempted queer events in the 1990s. As the Mayor stated in a letter to one of his gay constituents, a visible queer presence in the Queen City was not “desirable.” ⁶²

Politicians and congregations were not the only Charlotteans who reacted negatively to Pride. In fact, some lesbians and gay men were not pleased with the perceived flamboyance that the statewide event might bring to Charlotte. In a promotional mailer for the Saturday night Pride dance, two shirtless couples were pictured in an embrace—one lesbian couple and a gay male couple—with the words, “Trust Your Desire.” ⁶³ The “inappropriate” flyer generated complaints, primarily from lesbians who were upset by the blatantly sexual nature of the postcard. Linda Carmichael wrote to Pride organizers to express her embarrassment at receiving the promotion. She shared a mailbox with her landlady and viewed the mailer as an affront to her privacy. ⁶⁴ Sheelayh Anderson went further by noting that people often go to dances to find partners, “but as far as I know, they do not go topless!” Anderson suggested that men who failed to recognize the difference between male sexuality (“sex sex sex”) and female sexuality, which she believed to be relationship-focused, must have been responsible for the postcard. ⁶⁵

Respectability was a goal for some lesbians and gay men who desperately hoped to garner heterosexual approval and tolerance. Ruth Derrow worried about the event as a whole and wrote to the Pride committee asking that a “smart” dress and behavior code be suggested for the weekend’s events. Derrow hoped that attendees would “consider the city” where they would be marching and avoid making waves that would earn negative media attention similar to that received by the 1993 March on Washington. ⁶⁶ Steering committee member Don King also worried about the negative and lasting impact of the national March on Washington. King admitted to being offended by four-letter words at the March and expressed his concerned about “good taste” in Charlotte. He did not want to encourage hecklers at the Queen City event and kowtowed to the dominant religious and business leaders to gain their attention, or at least tolerance. ⁶⁷ Pride organizers in Charlotte hoped to negotiate a balance between the “normal everyday people” and the community’s “decorative fringe”—groups like the queer leather fetish community and the motorcycle-riding Dykes on Bikes who were fixtures at Pride parades and darlings of a media eager to show the most outrageous footage from festivals. ⁶⁸ Planners considered issuing statements to attendees on “recommended behavior” for the event, similar to Derrow’s suggestion, and they made a point to clarify in media coverage leading up to Pride that bankers and lawyers (respectable business people “within the bounds of good taste”) would be at Pride. ⁶⁹

Local organizers were pleased with final outcome of the event. For Sonya Lewis, a native Charlottean, the 1994 Pride event was a personal triumph—the ability to march visibly in Uptown Charlotte with her parents and siblings in the Pride parade. One of the highlights of the weekend’s activities was landing the nationally known lesbian comedian, Lea DeLaria, with the proud headline, “Bull Dyke in a Queen City.” In 1993 DeLaria became the first openly gay comic to appear on national television, and her arrival in the Queen City was clearly a coup. Kirsch and Henry were eager to attract national entertainers like DeLaria for the event, but they were unsuccessful in securing active participation from important local political allies, like Harvey Gantt. ⁷⁰ Marshall Park in the Uptown district was the site of the parade organization and the celebratory rally, but it was a site that just a few years later would be too visible and highly problematic for Pride revelers in the city of Charlotte. ⁷¹ The Scorpio, the original Pride host bar from the first Charlotte Pride in 1981, was the only bar to be named as an official Pride celebration spot and represented some consistency of gay space associated with Pride. But the main festival dance, held Uptown in the artsy and swanky Spirit Square, epitomized the Queen City’s obsession with economic posturing and fulfilled the need held by Pride organizers to impress business leaders. State Pride was a hard-fought and momentous event for many in Charlotte, but it did not serve as a bellwether for queer visibility in the Queen City.

The Gayborhood as Livelihood

One of the reasons for Atlanta’s successful gay Pride festivals was the steady growth of gay business districts and neighborhoods in the 1980s and 1990s. Although many gay-friendly businesses eventually faded away in Atlanta due to typical small business struggles and the perceived integration of lesbian and gay people in mainstream and normative business environments, the importance of separate business spaces that catered to a queer audience cannot be overestimated. The Atlanta Business and Professional Guild, one of many active lesbian and gay groups in 1980s Atlanta, worked to beautify Peachtree Street in Midtown Atlanta by adopting and claiming its burgeoning gay business district. A neighborhood that defined its own distinct identity through a neighborhood alliance formed in 1978, it was also significantly defined by gay businesses and those seeking an identifiable “gayborhood” in Atlanta. ⁷² In 1982, the national gay magazine, The Advocate, celebrated Atlanta’s “blossoming” gay community by noting the importance of businesses with doors that brazenly faced Peachtree Street—recognizing the remarkable move toward gay business visibility in Atlanta. Gone were the days, it seemed, of dimly lit back entrances to shrouded gay bars. Atlanta’s Peachtree Street was noticeable to passersby, featured on-street entrances, and welcomed queer-friendly patrons with accessible shopping. One such area known as “Peachtree 800” contained an entire block of queer businesses, including a florist, gift shop, gym, clothing store, bars, and a video arcade. ⁷³

Just two miles from the Peachtree Street district, Ansley Mall anchored the vibrant Midtown gayborhood and maintained this important position for decades, known in 2012 as Atlanta’s “virtual gay courtyard.” ⁷⁴ These businesses created a certain comfort level for lesbian and gay people, and subsequently for the spectacle of the Atlanta Pride Parade that took place on Peachtree Street in the same midtown neighborhood. When a retailer was accused of making anti-gay comments to shoppers in 1993, the owner of the Mall property, Selig Enterprises, confronted the store owners—even offering to buy out the lease so that they would leave. When these attempts were unsuccessful, Selig compensated by offering free space for a year to the fledgling Lambda Community Center. ⁷⁵ As predicted by The Advocate,

the gay and multinational renovation of Atlanta’s midtown may have a profound effect on the future of the city’s tourist and convention business. At one time Midtown was seen as a natural northern extension of the central business district. Now it appears to have taken on the role of arts and entertainment center . . . Midtown is at the forefront of attractions. It is becoming the city’s heart and soul. ⁷⁶

A visible gay district and a successful Pride celebration in Atlanta should not be read as an indicator of a united gay community in the city—or even in the midtown neighborhood. Divisions among queer people seethed below the surface, and this welcoming Midtown environment could be deceiving. Lesbians worked together with gay men to organize Pride celebrations, and they moved in the same circles as they shopped in the visibly gay Peachtree Street midtown district, but everyday socializing and relationship-building often took place in separate spaces. These interactions were also constrained by race. Just as the larger heterosexual socializations that took place in Atlanta often occurred in socially segregated neighborhoods and establishments, lesbians and gay men typically socialized in spaces that were segregated by race. For example, a 1987 issue of Phoenix, a publication of the Atlanta Business and Professional Guild, featured a story that considered racist behavior among gay people. Inspired by the recent overt racism featured on an episode of Oprah, the writer tried to explain why Forsyth County—a Georgia county made famous for its virulent hatred of Black people—was really not that different from midtown Atlanta. In retelling the story of a party hosted by elite gay male Atlantans, where the word nigger was bandied about as entertainment, the presumably white writer struggled with his own quiet complicity in the incident:

The real danger of Forsyth County is not the hatred and the blind prejudice that unquestionably exists there. It is that those of us in luppie/guppie households in Midtown and Virginia Highlands and Buckhead and Grant Park and Ansley Park and all points in between may, because such hatred is visible OUT THERE, come tacitly to believe that it is not present, alive and well, in our neighborhoods, in our friendships, and in ourselves. ⁷⁷

Social spaces segregated by race were still the norm in Atlanta—whether gay or straight.

Outside of Midtown Atlanta’s Fulton County, other Atlanta counties struggled to come to terms with the visibly burgeoning gay community. Cobb County’s 1993 anti-gay resolution made national headlines by condemning “‘the gay life style’ as incompatible with community standards.” Community organizers launched an immediate and hostile response to the resolution. In one of the more memorable repercussions, an organization known as “Olympics Out of Cobb” successfully removed planned Olympic volleyball from the county due to their virulent protests. ⁷⁸ Mayor Mike Mears of Decatur encouraged embattled gay Cobb County residents to come to his city, noting that the seat of DeKalb County welcomed all residents and took a “180-degree opposite view of that in Cobb.” ⁷⁹ Along with the city of Atlanta, DeKalb County led the way in securing rights for gay people in public employment and in offering protections although local law enforcement. Mears and DeKalb promoted their county as a welcoming and accepting community while also advertising the importance of their business district in providing a welcoming environment for the arts. As in many places, including Charlotte, funding for the arts in Atlanta’s DeKalb County was often conflated with the community’s hospitality toward lesbian and gay people. Decatur’s mayor hoped to land Marietta’s Theatre in the Square—the theater that sparked the Cobb County resolution because of its production featuring a gay theme—to his business district. The campaign to bring the theater focused on promoting the acceptance of both the arts and gay people. As one writer wryly observed in 1993, “should the relocation take place, an appropriate first performance might be a stage adaptation of ‘The Wizard of Oz’ with a slight rewrite of one of Dorothy’s most famous lines: ‘Gee. Toto. Thank goodness we’re not in Cobb anymore’.” ⁸⁰

While some Atlanta politicians worked to build gay community and neighborhoods, Charlotte’s gay activists did not have the support from city leaders or even a queer community commitment necessary to support a gay district. As early as 1971, one small business owner in Charlotte lamented the lack of support, and an appropriate business district, for his Uptown head shop, “Asterisk.” He felt that his location was perfect for complementary businesses, such as a leather store, coffee shop, bookstore, or a theater, and he craved this camaraderie because he knew that “soon even Kmart will sell roach clips.” This shop owner wanted an independent shopping district—a “strip like most big towns.” ⁸¹ This lack of artsy shopping districts would plague Charlotte’s lesbian and gay community in its effort to locate identifiable queer urban space. There was no Queen City gayborhood.

Just two hours to the west of Charlotte, the mountain town of Asheville offered the queer neighborhood space that Charlotteans struggled to maintain. The city of Asheville offers an instructive comparison because it demonstrates that a vibrant and resilient queer community is possible notwithstanding a city’s size. A brief look at Pride in Asheville disrupts the perception that Pride celebrations in Atlanta often fared better simply because the city was larger than Charlotte. Asheville boasted a welcoming environment for queer people, which directly related to the growth of a noticeably welcoming and gay-friendly business district with a funky tourist vibe. Just a few years after the highly contested 1994 North Carolina state Pride event in Charlotte, the festival returned to Asheville in 1998. Although the state Pride attendees faced angry picketing by anti-gay groups in Asheville just six years earlier, the environment for the 1998 North Carolina Pride featured anticipation, excitement, and a growing acceptance for lesbian and gay people. While the festival still met with some opposition, there was a visible and organized response from festival attendees. The 1998 North Carolina Pride was largely supported by lesbians, a thriving business district, and the larger heterosexual community in Asheville. Although a significantly smaller city, whose 1990 population was approximately 64,000 in comparison to Charlotte’s 395,934, Asheville, like Atlanta, fostered the necessary attributes for lesbian and gay visibility that Charlotte lacked. ⁸² In fact, Asheville’s large lesbian population possibly outnumbered gay men in the city. Popular media portrayed the city as queer-friendly—a city separate from the mythological South in many ways. Yet, as in Atlanta and Charlotte, what worked for queer people in Asheville often did not include Black queer people. Although the city was home to a thriving lesbian population, it was largely a white community unwelcoming to Black women. ⁸³ When Asheville hosted its second North Carolina statewide Pride, the white population outnumbered the Black population by almost 60 percent, which meant that for some Black women Atlanta was the safer place to be Black and queer, offering a more integrated space than Asheville. ⁸⁴

When compared to Charlotte in the late 1990s, Asheville was able to boast a vibrant and eclectic downtown, which included the queer (and particularly lesbian) friendly, Malaprop’s bookstore. Charlotte had two similar stores in the 1980s and 1990s, each operated by local gay activists and Pride organizers, Don King and Sue Henry. Despite some progress for Charlotte’s Pride celebrations in the 1980s, Don King decided to close his Friends of Dorothy Bookshop. After two and a half years in business, King’s lesbian and gay boutique folded during the same year that he would be the sole Charlottean to make “The Advocate 400,” a list of four hundred gay rights leaders published by the national gay magazine, The Advocate. King was the face of gay Charlotte, but he was helpless to maintain the Bookshop while working a full-time job. This decision exposed not only the limits of his capabilities to juggle so many responsibilities but also his inability to find a community to adequately support the only gay shopping outlet in the city. ⁸⁵

Henry opened her Rising Moon Books in the Dilworth neighborhood, just a five-minute walk from the Charlotte Women’s Center, a feminist hub. Similar to King’s Friends of Dorothy, her shop was a haven for lesbians and gay men seeking queer-affirming reading, greeting cards, information, and sex videos, yet it lacked the reinforcement of a likeminded and unconventional business district, functioning as a niche business strictly for lesbian and gay people. In contrast, Malaprop’s catered to the broad and eclectic touristy Asheville market and as a result attracted a diverse clientele. Although Henry’s store was “gay Charlotte’s unofficial headquarters,” it closed in December 1997 due to inconsistent and insufficient sales. ⁸⁶ According to Henry, the “demise was due to the lack of support from the majority of the gay and lesbian community.” In an interview with The Charlotte Observer on the store’s closing, she aptly observed that “in pin-striped Charlotte, gays and lesbians are often as conservative as their heterosexual counterparts.” ⁸⁷ Lesbian and gay Charlotteans were also Charlotteans. Their queer identity did not necessarily trump their commitment to their identification with the city they called home; they were products of Charlotte’s New South urban identity. Charlotteans were residents of a city known for its commitment to banking, religion, and making money—a city known for its shiny veneer of appropriateness and always operating with an eye toward attracting business. Charlotte was not a place to ruffle feathers. Sue Henry’s business ruffled feathers and it was not the kind of business that most Charlotteans, gay or straight, were willing to support.

Several downtown businesses in Asheville, like Malaprop’s, were queer-owned. Just as businesses in Atlanta’s Peachtree district established a queer-friendly district, Asheville’s lesbian and gay business owners created an energized and revitalized downtown. When Malaprop’s opened downtown in Asheville in 1982, the district was all but abandoned, but Charlotte’s local entertainment newspaper, Creative Loafing, observed that Asheville’s independent businesses maintained original building structures, including the original “art deco edifices,” and the city itself exhibited “all the idiosyncrasies of a truly metropolitan life—including homosexuality.” According to Creative Loafing, it was “no wonder” that Charlotte destroyed “every fine piece of old architecture,” noting that suburbanization was clearly a “right-wing conspiracy.” ⁸⁸ Charlotte leaders embraced economic progressivism while sidelining its historical identity and uniqueness.

Pride festivals were visible manifestations and celebrations of a thriving lesbian and gay population, and this was directly related to a gay-friendly business climate and mayoral support. Charlotte’s inability to mount a Pride festival in the 1970s, sustain a regular event in the 1980s and 1990s, maintain lesbian feminist activism, or support funky gay business districts reflected the troubled climate for lesbian and gay people. ⁸⁹ The foundation for Pride and a cohesive gay neighborhood did not exist. Atlanta’s booming Midtown neighborhood, its consistency in its Pride location, and the participants’ insistence on visibility were vitally important to creating the Pride spectacles that would help the city earn The Advocate’s coveted “Gayest City in America” title in 2010. ⁹⁰ Asheville also joined the celebrated list that year as a “prime example of the new gay South,” due in part to “its thriving art scene and adorable homes.” ⁹¹ Nationally recognized as queer-friendly, and occasionally referred to as the “San Francisco of the South,” by 2000 Asheville ranked within the top fifteen cities nationally for same-sex partnerships. ⁹² The culture of the city’s business climate was increasingly welcoming to gay people, proving that even in the “queer hating state” of North Carolina, a visible queer community could thrive.

Visibility and Respectability

As much as Pride organizers and attendees longed for a united queer front and an appropriate face for lesbian and gay people, such a diverse group of people could not assume this singular identity. Overworked Pride activists in the New South failed to understand that Pride and visibility were not always a priority (or even synonymous) for queer people; the price of visibility carried different risks for different attendees. Queer activists faced similar difficulties in the earliest days of claiming gay visibility. In the 1950s, it came at the expense of marginalizing those who did not present a palatable and heterosexually agreeable persona. Drag queens, butch lesbians, and Black and working-class queers were all viewed as problematic in the accommodationist politics of early lesbian and gay activism. For example, as Marcia Gallo argues, “the lengths to which a lesbian would go for societal acceptance was a contested issue from the beginning.” The first national lesbian organization, Daughters of Bilitis, “championed outward conformity to achieve integration, primarily through the provision in its Statement of Purpose that required members to adopt a ‘mode of dress and behavior acceptable to society’.” ⁹³ Decades earlier in Atlanta, Tera W. Hunter demonstrates that the “Black bourgeoisie lamented the shame and disgrace that befell the entire race” when Black domestic workers danced in public halls located on the seedy Decatur Street. ⁹⁴ In the first decades of the twentieth century South, a middle-class Black elite “sought to impose its own values and standards on the masses” and “asserted its paternalism through the language of morality” directed at working-class African Americans. In the final decades of the twentieth century, so too did queer elites assert a similar authority aimed at southern Pride attendees. ⁹⁵

Gay Pride in the New South was not necessarily a celebration of the variety of ways that queer could be expressed, but instead it was a chance to present a respectable and strictly defined identity to the straight community. According to Ronald Reagan’s campaign, it was “Morning in America,” offering a supposed return to white and heterosexual family values and a renewed commitment to capitalism. With Georgians and North Carolinians giving Reagan more than 60 percent of their votes in his landslide 1984 victory, 1950s-style conformity made good sense for the politics of Pride in the urban New South. ⁹⁶

Impassioned concerns about visibility and respectability led Black queer people to create their own Pride celebrations beginning in the 1990s. While this article does not fully address the history of Black Gay Pride, it is important to note that by the first decade of the twenty-first century, both Atlanta and Charlotte hosted separate Black queer pride celebrations. Black Prides exist because Black queer identity is not fully addressed in the longstanding and predominately white Pride celebrations focused on queer identity. While Black queer people organized and attended mainstream Pride celebrations immediately following the Stonewall riots, they often did not find their community and culture represented there.

Black queer people launched their own Pride beginning in Washington, D.C. for the purpose of addressing the HIV/AIDS crisis. Some organizers of the 1991 event also abhorred the neoliberal focus of mainstream pride, which excluded Black people by kowtowing to white capitalist elites and shifting Pride’s political roots. ⁹⁷ Atlanta’s first Black Gay Pride was held in 1996, while Charlotte’s Black Gay Pride began almost a decade later. In the same year that Black Gay Pride first arrived in Charlotte, 40,000 people attended Atlanta’s Black Gay Pride, “Living in our Pride.” That year’s theme represented organizers’ unchanging awareness that Black queer people were also Black people. Organizers in Atlanta sought to unify straight and queer Black people and also welcomed interracial attendance. ⁹⁸ Yet it did not occur to many whites to attend Black Pride, unless they moved in Black circles or had Black romantic partners. Whites did not need a cultural connection based on race because they maintained their white privilege in all circumstances, including Pride events. Queer was not always a visible marginality but Black usually was.

In addition to AIDS education, religion played a notable role at Black Pride events. Religious leaders frequently participated and encouraged Black queer Atlantans to go to their churches “open and . . . self proud.” ⁹⁹ Black churches had a long history of providing political guidance and sanctuary for Civil Rights activists, and even in conservative Black churches queer Black people were active members. Because Atlanta sits at the heart of the midcentury Civil Rights Movement, as the home to Martin Luther King Jr., churches and Pride made sense for Black queer people in the city. “Freedom is here,” noted one Black lesbian in Atlanta; not in the state of Georgia, but in the city where politicians supported, or at least recognized, the importance of the queer community by offering AIDS support and pro-gay ordinances. In 2007, fifty Black Pride marchers moved from the Martin Luther King, Jr., Center to the State Capital singing songs from the Civil Rights movement. Although the marchers were few, approximately 60,000 attended that year, making Atlanta’s event the largest Black Gay Pride in the world. ¹⁰⁰

The first decades of the twenty-first century radically altered the possibilities for diversity in New South Pride celebrations. Moving on from the powerful marriage between churches and conservative city politics, Charlotteans have not elected a Republican mayor since Pat McCrory. In 2017, Vi Lyles became the city’s first Black women to hold the office of mayor. Atlanta’s citizens remained consistent by continuing to elect Black Democratic mayors and boasting one of the largest Black queer populations in the twenty-first century South. Atlanta’s Pride celebration and Black Pride festival are tourist destinations, regularly receiving national press coverage. Although neither Atlanta or Charlotte ranked on the 2015 New York Times list of the cities with the highest LGBT populations, both Georgia and North Carolina joined Maryland and New York as states with the highest Black LGBT populations in 2013. ¹⁰¹ Charlotte Pride welcomed approximately 200,000 festival attendees in 2019, while Atlanta Pride welcomed over 300,000 revelers that year. ¹⁰² Both cities hosted a parade in conjunction with their Pride events, and both hosted a separate Black Pride. In Atlanta, events such as Trans Pride, Bi & Pan Pride, and the Dyke March joined Atlanta Pride and Atlanta Black Pride Weekend. Charlotte’s Latinx Pride, Trans Pride, and Women’s Pride round out year-round Pride themed programming.

With both cities gaining queer archives in the last decade, the possibilities for future research on the queer urban South are vast. When I began this project, none of the queer sources I accessed for this research were digitized. A decade later, almost all are. Activists have joined universities in Atlanta, Charlotte, and other New South urban spaces to create vital queer repositories. A map of queer history research at the dawn of the twenty-first century appeared southless, but two decades later we are on the cusp of a southern queer reckoning bursting with Pride.