It’s been 53 years since Michigan’s first Pride celebration took place in Detroit. For Pride Month this year, One Detroit’s Bill Kubota, Zosette Guir and Chris Jordan take an in-depth look at the state’s contributions to LGBTQ+ history and share the story behind that first celebration.
It included a march on Woodward and was called Christopher Street Detroit ‘72. The name came from Christopher Street in Manhattan, where the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar, is located. That’s where demonstrators clashed with police after a raid in June 1969. A year later, in 1970, New York had its first Pride march called Christopher Street Gay Liberation Day. Detroit’s march followed two years later.
Tim Retzloff, who teaches history and LGBTQ+ studies at Michigan State University, collaborated with artist Isabel Clare Paul to create a comic book dedicated to telling the story of the Christopher Street Detroit ‘72 celebration. It’s titled “Come Out! In Detroit.”
“It’s the origin story,” Retzloff said. “That’s what comic books are known for … the origin stories. We know where Bruce Wayne and Superman and Spiderman come from.”
An exhibit about the comic book is on display at the Detroit Historical Museum through Aug. 24.
Merrilee Melvin, Jaye Spiro and Susan Swope participated in Christopher Street Detroit ‘72. Five decades later, they talked about challenges they faced as lesbians before the gay liberation movement spread and the march’s significance to them — then and now.
“It’s really strange to get old and then what you did in your youth is actually history,” Swope said.
Ann Arbor activist Jim Toy, who died in 2022, also participated in Christopher Street Detroit ‘72. Scott Dennis, the executor of Toy’s estate, recalled Toy’s tireless work to advocate for LGBTQ+ rights, which included spearheading the creation of the Human Sexuality Office at the University of Michigan. It was the first of its kind and is now known as The Spectrum Center.
Two years after the march in Detroit, voters in Michigan elected the nation’s first openly gay political candidate to office. Kathy Kozachenko won a seat on the Ann Arbor City Council in 1974.
One Detroit sat down with Kozachenko, who currently lives in Pittsburgh, to talk to her about what inspires her activism today, campaigning more than 50 years ago and her history-making win.
“We knew that it was a first,” Kozachenko said. “But there’s no way that I would have ever thought that I would be talking about it 50 years later.”