April 7, 1973: The First March

The Cincinnati Gay Community

Cincinnati’s first gay organization grew out of the city’s early-1970s counterculture, shaped by the Stonewall uprising and the anti-Vietnam War movement. The Cincinnati Gay Community (CGC) was founded in 1972 by a small group of committed activists. It first met in a University of Cincinnati classroom and later at St. John’s Unitarian Church on Resor Avenue.

The CGC advertised in UC’s student newspaper and was soon drawing more than 200 people to meetings. Members put on theater productions, organized social events, and sent speakers to sexuality education classes at UC and Miami University.

Richard Jazwinski, a member, shared more in November 2025. The group met with City Council about police harassment and equal employment protection. Councilmember Bobbie Sterne wanted to ban public drag except on Halloween. Members also met with Republican councilmember Guy Guckenberger about police entrapment in gay bars; he was the only councilmember ever to attend a CGC meeting. Bishop (later Cardinal) Joseph Bernardin met with CGC members and wrote to City Council in support of equal treatment for gay people. According to Jazwinski, none of those letters, nor the group’s newsletter, survive.

Pride weekend

About a year after its founding, the CGC held the city’s first Pride Celebration on April 6–7, 1973. Friday night began with a spaghetti dinner at St. John’s Unitarian Church. On Saturday, after brunch at the Badlands dance club, the marchers stepped off from Washington Park in Over-the-Rhine with a parade permit, carrying signs and banners through downtown to Fountain Square. A rally followed with “live music, political speakers, and several theatrical skits.”

The Independent Eye reported that “seventy-five people marched without incident beneath banners proclaiming themselves to be members of the Cincinnati Gay Community.” Other accounts give different numbers. Founding member Terry Flanigan recalled that “there was much heckling along the route,” and that only WCPO Channel 9 covered the event, briefly.

Mayor Theodore Berry, the city’s first African American mayor, was privately a friend to many gay people, but he refused to issue a public proclamation. A month later the CGC fell apart amid heated disagreements, and Pride wasn’t held again until 1978.

Who was there

An unattributed history on file at the Ohio Lesbian Archives claims “40 men” attended. We know that women and people of color were there, both from the photographs and from the testimony of people who marched.

People confirmed or believed to have attended include Phebe Beiser, Vic Ramstetter, Debbie Arapa, Stanley Goodin, Michael Weyand, Peggy Roche, Richard Jazwinski, Karl Owens, Michael Kensinger, Jean Ouimet, Terry Flanigan, and Donald Carter. Jazwinski and John Ray believe Jim Ginandt appears in the photo, and possibly John Griffin (Griffith). Local HIV activist and advocate the late Rick Thies also wrote that he attended.

Do you recognize someone in the photo, or remember who else was there? Please tell us.

Every issue of The Independent Eye, from 1968 to its last issue in October 1975, is held in the Cincinnati Public Library’s Rare Books collection and has been digitized and made free online.