“It’s like a big family reunion,” he said. “It brings everyone together. It’s just a chance to celebrate who we are. Celebrate our agencies. Show off our businesses. Be a place where we’re in the majority even if it is only for a couple of hours. We love to have straight people come out and enjoy it with us, but it really is our day.”
The festival and parade, which typically attract tens of thousands of spectators, gets its name from the Stonewall Riots, which started in response to police harassment of gays in New York City in June 1969, and mark the beginning of the modern gay rights movement.
Some of the history of the last 43 years will be on display in a special “pop-up museum,” which will give a snapshot of the collections at Fort Lauderdale’s Stonewall National Museum and Archives.
Bryan W. Knicely, the museum’s president, said the display will include “Days Without Sunshine: Anita Bryant’s Anti-Gay Crusade,” detailing the former orange juice pitchwoman’s South Florida-based anti-gay campaign, and a review of 50-plus years of the gay community in Fort Lauderdale through the “Where the Gays Are” exhibit.
The pop-up museum operates from noon to 9:30 p.m. Wednesday through this Saturday, and noon to 10 p.m. Sunday, the museum’s final day. It will be located at 2190 Wilton Drive, Wilton Manors.
The Stonewall museum is also hosting “afternoon conversations” on the now-repealed “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy that banned open gays and lesbians from the U.S. military, at 3 p.m. Thursday; on bullying of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender school students, at 3 p.m. Friday; and on the 35 years since the Bryant campaign, at 3 p.m. Saturday. The conversations will be held at the pop-up museum site.
Because of the events, organizers said Wilton Drive will be closed all day Sunday from the Five Points intersection of 26th Street, Dixie Highway
This article originally appeared on: http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/2012-06-19/news/fl-stonewall-pride-events-20120619_1_stonewall-street-festival-stonewall-riots-modern-gay-rights-movement