Our Stories
David's Story, 2024
David shares stories of his experience with the start of the pride parade in Northampton, MA.
David: Yeah. I was around nineteen eighty or 81, I think, and I was only preferably involved with the the planning of the march. But I was involved with a a group of of gay men that, we formed it because at that time, the only local groups were either lesbian groups or UMass.
Taylor: Mhmm.
David: And it was college age.
And this is an era of especially in Northampton, there was, like, sort of a separatist thing. A lot of lesbians, you know, did not wanna have anything to do with gay men. So, in our organization, we had people that wanted to be in this first March, but, a lot of them were social workers or teachers or you know, they even worked in local businesses. And at that time, they would lose their jobs if it was done. So, what they did, and we didn't think about what it would mean at the time, but these, people wore bags over their heads, you know, with the eyes cut out so they see where they're going.
But that became like something that a lot of people remembered about that first March. And so, I haven't forgotten that. Then I remember the second year that we had it, there had been a number of death threats. And at that time, there was a feminist bookstore on one of the side streets downtown in North Hampton, and, they'd received, arson threats. And, so when we were, in our parade, at that time, we had to go, like, a certain route.
We the jail the county jail still used to be in Northampton sort of downtown area. And so, we had to go by that, and we had to go by the police station. So, but I remember looking up and seeing police sharpshooters up on the buildings as we went by. That was pretty scary. Yeah.
Taylor: That has to be scary.
David: Yeah. And we had, the first number of years for the parade, we had what we called peacekeepers, and it was people that would march on either side of the parade to you know, in case there was gonna be some trouble or something. And, of course, there were police around and everything. But I remember that one of the local fundamentalist churches standing in front of or next to city hall holding up a coffin because this was during AIDS and everything too, and, you know, with signs and stuff like that.
So that was the kind of stuff we had to put up with. Horrible.
Taylor: Was your experience with the pride parade ultimately very positive?
David: Yeah. It might be hard for some people, especially if they're not part of a group that is kinda marginalized, to feel the power of all that of being there.
And then as the years went on, it sort of became an event that people knew was going to happen, you know, one of the first Saturdays in May. And so there would be some years, there were, like, tens of thousands of people Yeah. Downtown. So, it's just like this big celebration, and it was very empowering.