New York-based R&B/Electronica musician Halima (left) and jazz and R&B artist Madison McFerrin (also a New Yorker) will perform mainstage at Durham Pride. Credit: Social Media/Publicity
Pride is returning to Durham on the weekend of Sept. 28 for two days of festivities and fun times. Saturday’s schedule includes a music festival and walkable vendor market filled with local favorites. Sunday the annual Pride parade and community kick back will commence.
The festival is organized every year by the LGBTQ Center of Durham and is partially sponsored by the city itself, making it one of North Carolina’s best attended LGBTQ+ Pride events. Establishments across the city will be hosting Pride-related events, ranging from LGBTQ+ history hikes to a Pride Parade after party.
The History of Durham-Pride
On April 17, 1981, a group of 125 individuals, including men, women, and children, gathered in front of the Durham County Judicial Building holding signs as a form of protest. Their demonstration was sparked by a violent event in their community, demanding justice and denouncing hate.
Just five days earlier, on April 12, Ronald “Sonny” Antonevitch and three companions were sunbathing along the Little River near Johnston Mills Road when they were approached by two men shouting anti-gay slurs. The attackers assaulted the group, and according to Antonevitch’s account, the men targeted him specifically due to his physical disability, beating him while threatening his life. Antonevitch, aged 46, died as a result of severe head and kidney injuries after three days in hospitals in Durham and Chapel Hill.
Following the attack, police charged two men in their early twenties with murder. As the judicial process began, the LGBTQ community and allies organized a vigil outside the courthouse, marking the first of many protests and parades that would shape the LGBTQ movement in Durham for years. One protestor, Carl Whitman, expressed to the Durham Herald the importance of taking a stand: “We just don’t want to let this incident at the Little River pass. It’s a question of the whole atmosphere that would let something like this happen.”
As the trial of Antonevitch’s killers unfolded, there was widespread concern that the defendants might receive lenient treatment due to the anti-gay nature of the crime. In response, local LGBTQ activists organized the first public demonstration for gay civil rights in North Carolina, held at the Durham Courthouse during the 1982 trial.
In 1986, a second public demonstration for equal rights took place at Duke University. Initially a small gathering, it grew into a march that became an annual tradition, with the NC Pride March traveling to major cities across the state for the next 14 years to advocate for equal rights. With each passing year, the march grew larger as more LGBTQ individuals gained the courage to participate, and formerly hostile streets gradually became less threatening. Over time, attitudes shifted and Durham, the site of the first march, became home to many openly gay and supportive businesses.
However, in 2000, the NC Pride March faced a crisis when disorganization among the organizers threatened to cancel the June event just six weeks prior. In response, a dedicated group of 12 individuals rallied to save the march, which took place in 90-degree heat with 2,000 participants. Afterward, the committee restructured the event to better suit the new century, deciding to move the march to the fall for cooler weather and to establish a more manageable model. The parade would remain in Durham, with the goal of supporting additional Pride events across the state.
This new approach was highly successful, leading to the creation of numerous Pride festivals in cities throughout North Carolina, including Charlotte, Raleigh, Winston-Salem, Greensboro, Salisbury, Asheville, the Outer Banks, Monroe and Apex, among others.
After years of impact, NC Pride eventually dissolved as its organizers pursued new projects. To continue the legacy, the LGBTQ Center of Durham, with community support, launched Pride: Durham, NC in 2018, embracing a broader vision of inclusion.
This year’s festivities
The theme for this year’s festival is “Give Them Their Flowers,” to honor the nonbinary and trans community.
With the theme, Pride organizers “intend to commemorate our ancestors who sowed past seeds that still bear fruit today and to pay tribute to the LGBTQ+ people who are alive and help us be our best selves now, embodying our greatest values and visions for a more whole and liberated Durham.”
Durham Pride always hosts a music festival throughout Saturday, with a lineup filled with local and national LGBTQ artists. This year’s headliners are Halima and Madison McFerrin — two very different queer, BIPOC identifying musicians.
Halima is a New York-based producer, and their sound transcends the genres of R&B and soul, giving their music an electronic, funky feel. Their latest release, Awaken, has nearly 10,000 views on YouTube, and you can find Halima’s music on their YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3qL5Ls0farPWp4EHw3OCgw.
McFerrin has earned accolades from The New York Times, NPR, The FADER and Pitchfork, who named her a Rising Artist in 2018. She also has performed at Lincoln Center, Central Park SummerStage and BRIC Celebrate Brooklyn, and shared stages with the likes of De La Soul, Gallant and The Roots.
Saturday will also feature a vendor market on Lot 8 and the Chapel Hill Street Lot from noon to 4 p.m., providing festival goers with a chance to shop local, LGBTQ+ owned, ally-owned and BIPOC owned businesses. Food trucks will also be available from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. on Saturday, giving guests a wide variety of food and snacks to choose from.
Sunday is all about the parade and community kickback. This year’s parade will see hundreds of participants, ranging from Durham-based, mom-and-pop shops to national corporations sharing pride in their queer clients and employees. This year’s Pride Parade Grand Marshall is Durham’s own Naomi Dix — Bull City’s own drag superstar and owner of the new LGBTQ+ inclusive nightclub Club ERA.
Dix’s goal is to pull from her own experience as a queen of color, saying she wanted to create a haven for the most vulnerable members of the LGBTQ+ community, especially for people of color.
“I never really felt as though I was able to find a space where I was accurately represented as a person of color, as an Afro-Latino, in the Triangle,” she says. “I always felt like a lot of those spaces were very overrun by this idea of what society thinks a masculine gay male is …
“I want people to feel like they can let their hair down and they don’t have to feel as though they have to dress a certain way or look a certain way in order to be within this space.”
The Durham Pride Community Kickback will take place on Duke’s East Campus from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. on Sunday, right after the parade. More information about Durham Pride can be found at https://www.lgbtqcenterofdurham.org/program/pride/.
