Happy Pride Month! June is a month-long celebration of LGBTQIA+ culture and their contributions throughout history. Illinois has a notable history of celebrating pride, particularly in Chicago.

A year after the 1969 Stonewall riots in New York, inspired by what occurred there, activists in Chicago put on the first ever major pride event in the city. A lot of Pride events, including the ones in Chicago, initially started out as protests with LGBTQIA+ people fighting for equality. The pride events in Chicago have grown over the years, going from hundreds of attendees to hundreds of thousands of attendees.

However, Pride Month celebrations in Chicago are not limited to just marches and festivals. There are also Pride-related concerts, readings, films, plays and much more. There are just about enough Pride Month events in Chicago to mark every single day of the month.

Outside of Chicago, Pride events have been held across the state, from Woodstock and Rockford up north to Carbondale and Belleville in the south. Other events have taken place in Mokena, Urbana-Champaign and Peoria. These events across the state each provide unique and supportive experiences for attendees to increase visibility and understanding of the LGBTQIA+ community in their area.

To read more about the history of pride in Chicago, click here.
To read more about the various pride events in Chicago, click here.