A pride parade is an outdoor event celebrating lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer social and self-acceptance, achievements, legal rights, and pride. The events sometimes also serve as demonstrations for legal rights such as same-sex marriage. 

In 1965, the gay rights protest movement was visible at the Annual Reminder pickets, organized by members of the lesbian group Daughters of Bilitis, and the gay men's group Mattachine Society. Mattachine members were also involved in demonstrations in support of homosexuals imprisoned in Cuban labor camps. All of these groups held protests at the United Nations and the White House, in 1965. Early on the morning of Saturday, June 28, 1969, LGBTQ people rioted following a police raid on the Stonewall Inn in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Lower Manhattan, New York City. The Stonewall Inn was a gay bar which catered to an assortment of patrons, but which was popular with the most marginalized people in the gay community: transvestites, transgender people, effeminate young men, hustlers, and homeless youth.