It’s Pride Week in Boston, so we’re bringing you the story of Boston’s first Pride parade. While most early Pride celebrations were joyous occasions, Boston’s 1971 Pride parade was a protest march. Inspired by Stonewall, activists confronted representatives of religion, policing, and government.
Wicked Proud
- Pride Parades: How a Parade Changed the World, by Katherine McFarland Bruce.
- Pictures from the early years of Boston Pride.
- How buttoned up 1970s Boston helped to inspire the nation’s gay liberation movement.
- The 1970 announcement of Harvard’s homophile club.
- The 1970 Pride celebration before Pride was invented.
- A report released to correspond with Pride 2018 outlines the size of the Boston LGBTQ community and the challenges it faces.
Featured Historic Site
Jacques Cabaret in Bay Village is Boston’s oldest gay bar, having been founded in 1938 and serving the gay community since about 1940. Today, it specializes in drag shows, from karaoke to comedy to drag competitions.
Being Boston’s oldest gay bar isn’t Jacques’ only claim to fame. Regulars are adamant that the club is haunted, though they can’t agree on what ghost stalks the halls. Writing in his New England Folklore blog, Peter Muise describes the two competing theories.
After [a comedian] said the energy [he encountered at Jacques] felt like it had a “bit of an attitude,” Jacques’s manager suggested it might be the ghost of Sylvia Sidney, the bar’s most famous performer. A drag pioneer known as the “Bitch of Boston,” Sidney eschewed the gentle femininity most early drag performers cultivated and instead indulged in crude humor. Sidney died in 1998 at the age of 68, so perhaps her ghost still wants another moment in the spotlight. If you’re feeling brave but don’t want to summon Sidney’s ghost, you can watch one of her performances on YouTube. Be warned: they’re full of toilet humor, sex jokes, racial slurs, and nose-picking. Oh, and a really dirty story about Nat King Cole.
I don’t believe that Sidney died in a particularly traumatic way, but her ghost may not be the only one haunting Jacques. According to a rumor that has circulated for many years, the bar may also be haunted by victims of the infamous and tragic Cocoanut Grove fire.
Those who have been listening for a while may recall that we described the tragic 1942 fire at the Cocoanut Grove nightclub in Episode 39. It was Boston’s deadliest single disaster, killing 492 people in just a few seconds. The site of the Cocoanut Grove is just around the corner from Jacques.
Muise continues:
What’s the connection to Jacques? Well, according to longstanding rumors in the gay community, Jacques was used as a temporary morgue for the victim’s bodies. It is not proven, but is entirely possible. Photos show the bodies being laid out on Piedmont Street so it’s not inconceivable that the police would have used a nearby bar as well. According to the rumor some of the victims still haunt the place where their bodies rested.
Upcoming Event
Our episode this week is all about the first Boston Pride celebration. If you want to experience the route of that first parade firsthand, the History Project is leading a tour on June 16th that traces the route of the first Boston Pride parade. Here’s how they describe it:
Boston’s first official Gay Pride March was held on Saturday, June 26, 1971. When the March took place it sought to highlight four oppressive institutions in Boston: the police, the government, hostile bars, and religious institutions.
This June, The History Project is offering a walking tour that follows the first Pride March’s route and tells the stories of the community groups, individuals, and issues related to the route.
The tour will meet outside Jacques Cabaret at 79 Broadway in Bay Village. It will take about 90 minutes, and it will go on rain or shine. Tickets are $20, and they must be purchased in advance. Any additional donations will go to support the important work of the History Project.