Louis Pride Celebration didn’t occur until 1980. Louis Lesbian & Gay Pride Celebration Committee" was born in 1979, but the first St. Louis welcomed 300,000 people to Downtown St. Louis," the nonprofit organization planning PrideFest each year, was born. Sponsored by the "Magnolia Committee," named for the street where the majority of the member lived and had their meetings, a week's worth of activities were planned in April of 1980. Louis had their first Gay and Lesbian Pride Celebration. A year later, more pride celebrations took place around the world - everywhere from the United Kingdom, to France, to Germany, to Sweden. This first pride, simultaneously held in Chicago and Los Angeles, commemorated the Stonewall Riots. Christopher Street was the location of the Stonewall Inn. The first gay pride, called the "Christopher Street Liberation Day" was held on June 28th, 1970 in New York City. The efforts of Johnson and Rivera, along with many others, paved the way for LGBTQIA+ rights today. With Johnson, Sylvia Rivera helped start some of the first programs to serve LGBTQIA+ people on the streets. Johnson - an African-American trans woman, sex worker, and founder of the Gay Liberation Front - were instrumental in the Stonewall uprising, and indeed were strong catalysts of the movement. The Stonewall Riots predicted the rise of a new era in LGBTQIA+ affairs worldwide. It took different forms, but the bottom line was, we weren't going to go away. There was something in the air, freedom a long time overdue, and we're going to fight for it. We weren't going to be walking meekly in the night and letting them shove us around-it's like standing your ground for the first time and in a really strong way, and that's what caught the police by surprise. One individual who was there, Michael Fader, said the following: "We felt that we had freedom at last, or freedom to at least show that we demanded freedom. Anger toward the injustice experienced by the LGBT community came to a point, and the crowd struggled against the police.
It wasn't long before the tension developed into protests, and then riots.
Continued, targeted raids by the New York City police led to tension between the department and the LGBTQIA+ community, specifically the patrons at Stonewall. The years leading up to the events at Stonewall were filled with violence, police brutality, discrimination, and hate toward the LGBTQIA+ community.