Podtalk: Gary G. Chichester, Grand Marshall, Chicago Pride Parade

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CHICAGO – 52 years ago Monday (June 27th, 2022), a young activist got together with a group of marchers – with no permit – and showed the City of Chicago the actual faces of gay liberation. Gary G. Chichester was part of that first gay pride march in 1970 … and 52 years later he’s the Grand Marshall of the 2022 Chicago Pride Parade, live and in person!

Left: Chicago’s First Gay Pride Parade, June, 27, 1971. Right: Gary Chichester & the Chicago Pride Flag
Photo credit: Rich Pfieffer/Gary Chichester

After helping to launch the Pride March and Parade in its infancy, Chichester has seen it grow to be the most popular parade event in Chicago, drawing one million people to the Uptown and Boys Town neighborhood. And despite the pandemic postponement of the actual 50th Anniversary in 2020, Gary Chichester will be celebrating anew on June 26th, 2022, as the Chicago Pride Parade marches again.

The Activist: Gary Chichester, Circa 1970 Photo credit: Gary Chichester

The gay scene of 1970 in Chicago was underground, with the riots and uprising of New York City’s Stonewall Inn only one year old. To honor that event, New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Chicago were the first cities to have gay pride marches in 1970. As the march became a parade in 1971, Gary Chichester became involved by co-founding the Chicago Gay Alliance that same year, which created the first gay and lesbian community center in the Windy City. Also on his resume is helping to organize that first Chicago gay pride, and practicing activism through The Chicago Gay Health Project, the Gay Rights National Lobby, the NAMES Project, Strike Against AIDS and the City of Chicago’s Advisory Council on Gay and Lesbian Issues, among so much more. He was inducted in the LGBT Hall of Fame in 1992.

Chichester is a native Chicagoan, whose family lived in the Old Town neighborhood when he was born. Eventually he graduated from Maine East High School in suburban Park Ridge, the classmate of Hillary Rodham. He was radicalized early, participating in the Chicago protests in 1968 at the Democratic National Convention, where he was tear-gassed during the police riots.

As LGBTQ+ people are being made scapegoats once again by the right wing faction in this country, it’s important to remember the achievements of Gary G. Chichester, who struggled against a much more oppressive environment, and lived to celebrate it in all its glory. It’s a new day, everyone. Happy Pride.

In Part One of a Podtalk with Patrick McDonald of HollywoodChicago.com, Gary Chichester talks about his personal experience of activism for the first Gay Liberation March in Chicago, 1970, including how he created the Pride Flag that the marchers carried.

In Part Two, Gary talks about the evolution of the march that became a parade, and what he is most proud of on this 50th Anniversary of the day he helped to make history.

By PATRICK McDONALD Editor and Film Writer HollywoodChicago.com pat@hollywoodchicago.com