Pride parades became literal vehicles to thank supporters of the LGBTQ community and our causes.
Twenty-four years into the Los Angeles parade’s history, in 1994, this convertible carries four notable honorees:
- Tony Award and Golden Globe winner-to-be Judith Light, a gay-rights supporter who played a conversion-therapy minister who develops a change of heart in the 2007 film Save Me.
- Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan, a moderate elected the year before and the first Republican mayor in 30 years.
- Author Patricia Nell Warren, whose second novel, The Front Runner, in 1974, was the first contemporary gay fiction on The New York Times Bestseller List. It told the story of a gay track coach who struggled to get a talented openly gay runner on the U.S. Olympic team.
- And one of the founders of Christopher Street West — Morris Kight, an LA-based gay-rights pioneer who organized a number of groups, including what would become the Gay Liberation Front. In 1977, when the Coors Foundation was financing anti-gay causes and union-busting legislation, Kight launched a successful boycott, even as Coors sponsored LA’s Outfest film festival. He died in 2003.
