By Jeff Devine, The Chronicle
DALEVILLE—The 4th Annual South Alabama Pride Festival is scheduled for Saturday, Sept. 19, at the Daleville Cultural & Convention Center, continuing an event that organizers say grew from years of discussions about bringing a Pride celebration to rural Southeast Alabama, an area that has sometimes seemed to historically be slow to accept the LGBTQ+ community.
The festival, organized by South Alabama Pride, will run from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at 750 S. Daleville Ave (The Daleville Cultural & Convention Center). Organizers say the event will be family-friendly and will include vendors, community and nonprofit organizations, artists, entertainment, food, shopping, and informational resources.
Organizers emphasize that the event is not meant to be divisive but the opposite. It is intended to bring together the LGBTQ community, friends, family, allies, and others who want to have a great time.
According to a South Alabama Pride spokesperson, the idea for the festival began taking shape around 2017 or 2018 as organizers discussed establishing a Pride celebration in Southeast Alabama.
“There were Pride events in larger cities and other parts of the region, but we kept coming back to the idea that people in our rural communities deserved something here, too,” the spokesperson said.
In fact, it took years for Pride celebrations to make their way to rural Southeast Alabama. Those discussions eventually led a small group to begin planning the first South Alabama Pride Festival, which was held in 2023. This year’s event marks the fourth annual festival.
From the beginning, organizers said they wanted the event to have a local, community-oriented focus, bringing together businesses, nonprofit and community organizations, artists, vendors, food providers, and entertainers rather than attempting to duplicate larger metropolitan Pride celebrations.
“We want people to come out and enjoy themselves, but we also want them to meet people and organizations they may not otherwise encounter and leave feeling a little more connected to their community,” the spokesperson said.
Attendance has varied from year to year, with organizers generally reporting between 250 and 400 attendees. They are preparing for a similar turnout this year.
The September date is also intentional. Rather than scheduling the festival during June, when most Pride events take place during National Pride Month, organizers said they chose a date that would give South Alabama Pride its own place on the calendar while avoiding competition with other regional celebrations.
The history of modern Pride celebrations can be traced to New York City and the Stonewall uprising of June 1969. At the time, police regularly raided establishments and harassed, arrested, and even assaulted the LGBTQ+ patrons being served there. In the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, police raided the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village, but patrons tired of the harassment resisted rather than leaving quietly. The confrontation continued into a series of protests and clashes over several days and became perhaps the most significant event in the history of the LGBTQ+ rights movement.
One year later, activists organized the first Gay Pride Liberation March in Manhattan on June 28, 1970, marking the first anniversary of the Stonewall uprising. Similar demonstrations were held in other cities that year, establishing an annual tradition of public gatherings that eventually developed into the Pride parades and festivals held across the United States today. Pride Month was formally recognized at the federal level in 1999, when President Bill Clinton issued a proclamation designating June as Gay and Lesbian Pride Month.
For South Alabama Pride organizers, the local character of the Daleville festival remains an important part of its identity.
“South Alabama Pride is not about trying to recreate a large-city Pride festival on a smaller scale,” the spokesperson said. “It is about creating something that reflects the community we actually live in.”
The spokesperson said the event also provides an opportunity for LGBTQ+ residents in rural South Alabama to connect with the broader community.
“South Alabama Pride is about more than having a festival once a year,” the spokesperson said. “It is about reminding LGBTQ+ people in rural South Alabama that they are part of this community, that they deserve to be visible here, and that they should not have to leave home to find belonging.”
The announcement welcomes everyone who is open to celebrating the LGBTQ community and the progress that has been made in obtaining equal rights.
South Alabama Pride is seeking food vendors interested in participating in the festival. Restaurants, food trucks, and other vendors interested in serving the event can contact organizers at [email protected] for participation and event information. Others with questions about the event can also email them at the address above.
