Over the years, pride has morphed and grown and splintered, transformed now into dozens of local events geographically dispersed across the state. Activists won the right to fly the banner a year later.įive decades on, gay pride is now known as LGBTQ+ pride. Michigan State University administrator Jack Breslin denied the Michigan State GLM - Gay Liberation Movement - permission to fly a Gay Pride Week banner at the campus’s Abbot Street entrance. With a new Republican majority, the Council refused to issue a proclamation in 1973. On June 12, 1972, the Ann Arbor City passed a resolution proclaiming June 19-25 as Gay Pride Week, the first known official proclamation by a governmental body in the United States. The demands of the march were twofold: repeal all antigay laws and full civil rights for gay people. The former Michigan State University student was among hundreds of people who participated in Christopher Street Detroit ’72, Michigan’s very first gay pride celebration, held 50 years ago this summer. Wearing tight pink short shorts, despite temperatures in the mid-50s, Williams was indeed out and flaming. Marching down Woodward Avenue in Detroit on June 24, 1972, Greg Williams carried a hand-made posterboard sign that read “Come Out Flaming.” Flickers of fire drawn on each side echoed the young man’s wavy red hair.
