LGBT Pride celebrations were cancelled or altered all over the world this month, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Fortunately, I have plenty of proud memories to sustain me, because in 2019 I was in New York City for World Pride, which commemorated the 50th anniversary of the infamous Stonewall Riots, and I have very special memories of being there a year ago this weekend.

In addition to my memories, I also have this video! See rainbow flags in Midtown Manhattan, plus fun and information from related exhibits at the New York Public Library and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, all honoring individuality and freedom of expression... Then, of course, there were the parades: the annual Dyke March, last year’s new anti-commercial Queer Liberation March, and the traditionally colorful and often flamboyant Gay Pride Parade.

Included among the notable exhibitions during 2019's World Pride Celebrations were Walt Whitman: America's Poet at the New York Public Library and Camp: Notes on Fashion at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The anti-police messaging displayed and chanted during the 2019 parades are even more poignant this year, as the murders of George Floyd and other African-Americans restrained to death have bought police brutality and injustice to the forefront of the news, and so many more minds in 2020.

What is now known as the Stonewall Riots began in the early hours of June 28, 1969. New York City police raided the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in Greenwich Village. As patrons and employees were pulled from the bar by police, they and neighborhood residents decided to fight back, leading to six days of rioting and demonstrations that began the modern LGBT civil rights movement.