Central Alabama Pride celebrated 40 years of visibility and action in Birmingham, Alabama this past weekend.  As the oldest Pride festival in the state of Alabama, CAP brings people together from all over the state for 10 days of activities that help Queer people celebrate and connect.  This was the very first year that invisible Histories Project had a booth and we really wanted to show what we are made of, so we upped our game a bit and took our history to the next level.  About a month ago a community member in Birmingham pointed us in the direction of a very grainy YouTube clip of footage from the first Pride march in Alabama (June 24th, 1989).  After watching a few minutes of it, I knew that this was something special.  I spent some time tracking down the director and after a few days located Bob Huff via email.  He was thrilled that we had reached out and he immediately located a pristine digital copy of the film and sent it to us to use here in Alabama.  So the day of the Pride festival at Sloss Furnace we put up the TV, moved it right to the front of the tent and waited for folks to come by and see that not only had we found this footage, but we brought it right back to the festival to celebrate the old and the new.  No one at the iHP tent was surprised that people found it fascinating, but what made us so happy (that entire sweaty day) was seeing the faces of people watching those 150 marchers out on the sidewalks of Rushton Park, as the pure joy of being reconnected to their past set in.  We had folks in their 60s coming over to tell us who the marchers were and about the joy and anger that first march represented.  We had people with ears pressed to the screen amazed that the speakers called Birmingham to action to support people with HIV and connect our movement from Auschwitz to Stonewall to the fight against the Reagan administration.  We had a group of young Queer and Trans people (celebrating their 1st Pride) stand with eyes fixed on the screen who wanted to talk about how awesome our community must have been to put something like that on. 
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The first 40 years of Pride in Birmingham has paved the way for organizations to develop, for groups to form, for people to find community.  The first 40 years have seen legal battles won and lost, the death of so many people, and the slow march toward a more visible community.  The people who put together the very first march knew that they were a part of something groundbreaking, but they also knew they were creating a space of love and joy.  As iHP starts its work to preserve the past, I am reminded that these moments of shared excitement are what the work of this project is all about.  It really is about putting all of us together on a path of liberation through our shared history, and making our own moments.  I don’t know what the next 40 years look like, but I believe that as we learn from our past we can envision a future that is more remarkable than this dark moment we are going through.  Please check out the video of the 1st Gay Pride march at invisiblehistory.org under the Projects tab and let us know what you think! Happy Pride to everyone and here’s to another 40!