Queer Spaces Atlanta

The earliest documented performance by a female impersonator in Atlanta took place at
the Cotton States and International Exposition in modern-day Piedmont Park.

Twenty men were arrested by the Atlanta
Police Department for sodomy and similar charges
during a stakeout of the Atlanta Public Library’s men’s
restroom. The local newspapers called the operation
the Atlanta Public Library Perversion Case, and in their
coverage, they published the names and addresses
of the men. 

The Georgia Gay Liberation Front, led by activist Bill
Smith and formed in a cafe in Emory Village earlier in the
year, organized the first Pride march through Atlanta on
June 27th. The Great Speckled Bird reported that there
were over 100 participants, which included both members
of the LGBTQ+ community and allies, who were marching
to protest anti-gay legislation and job discrimination.
The city would not grant a permit for the march, so the
marchers were forced to walk along the sidewalks.

- Approximately 2,000 people protested the appearance
of Anita Bryant, a singer and anti-gay activist, at the Southern
Baptist Convention that was being held at the World Congress
Center in Atlanta. The protest is remembered as a turning point
in Atlanta’s LGBTQ+ history, galvanizing a larger segment of the
city’s LGBTQ+ population to openly fight for their rights.

- An Atlanta police officer arrested Michael Hardwick,
a gay Atlantan, in the bedroom of his Virginia-Highland
home for sodomy. Though the district attorney decided not
to prosecute Hardwick on the sodomy charge, Hardwick
sued Georgia’s attorney general, Michael Bowers, in order
to invalidate the state’s sodomy law. The case was taken to
the U.S. Supreme Court, and in 1986, the court ruled that
Georgia’s sodomy law was constitutional, but only when it
was applied to gay people.

The first official Black Gay Pride was held over Labor Day Weekend in 1996, though Black
LGBTQ+ Atlantans had been gathering over Labor Day Weekend since the late 1970s. Between
1976 and 1988, Henri McTerry, a successful gay Black event organizer in Atlanta, hosted picnics
in his backyard that were attended by Black LGBTQ+ people from across the country.

- The Atlanta City Council adopted an ordinance that made it illegal for business
to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. The ordinance was
proposed by Councilmember Cathy Woolard.

While Anthony Auriemma, a female impersonator, was in Atlanta for a show, he
contested the cross-dressing ordinances of the city with the Atlanta Chief of Police, James
Beavers. Later, Auriemma became known as Francis Renault.

On August 5th, six weeks after the riots at
the Stonewall Inn in New York City, the Atlanta

Police Department raided the Ansley Mall Mini-
Cinema during a screening of Lonesome Cowboys,

Andy Warhol’s homoerotic satire of Hollywood Westerns.

- June 23 - The Atlanta Lesbian Feminist Alliance
(ALFA), an organization that focused on issues at the
intersection of the gay and women’s liberation movements,
was formed in the Little Five Points neighborhood.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              

The Gay Atlanta Minority Association (GAMA) was
established by Black LGBTQ+ people in the city to bring
attention to racism within the gay community.

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The NAMES Project AIDS
Memorial Quilt was displayed at
the World Congress Center in May,
and the Atlanta chapter of the Aids
Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT/UP)
was established in August.

Cathy Woolard was elected to the Atlanta City Council. She was the first openly gay
elected official in Georgia and served as the City Council President from 2002 to 2004.

George Hyde established the Eucharistic Catholic Church, a gay-affirming
Catholic church, after being denied communion for defending a man who confessed his
homosexuality to the priest of Sacred Heart Catholic Church. The first service was held at
the Winecoff Hotel in downtown Atlanta.

- In recognition of the first anniversary of the Stonewall riots,
approximately 100 people gathered in Piedmont Park for Atlanta’s
first Pride rally. There was no media coverage of the event.

-The first location of the Atlanta Gay Center
opened in Midtown, offering health, legal, and social
services with a team of trained telephone counselors.

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Phoebe Smith, a transsexual Atlanta woman, began publishing the Transsexual
Voice, a newsletter for trans people. The newsletter, which Smith published through 1995,
contained advice through articles and letters to the editor, descriptions of the personal
experiences of trans contributors, and a section of personal ads.

Outwrite Bookstore and Coffeehouse opens on Monroe Drive.
The bookstore not only provided literature to Atlanta’s LGBTQ+
community, but also gave them another space to develop community.
In 1996, the bookstore was relocated to the intersection of 10th Street
NE and Piedmont Avenue, where it remained until it closed in 2012.

The Supreme Court of Georgia rules that the state’s sodomy law is unconstitutional,
making consensual, private sexual relationships between all adults legal. The U.S. Supreme
Court did not overturn its decision from the Bowers v. Hardwick case until 2003.