About 150 people marched along Pioneer Avenue last Saturday in a combination parade and rally celebrating Juneteenth and Pride month. The event acknowledged the shared interests and concerns of the Black and lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer and trans plus communities.

Waving rainbow flags and banners that symbolize Pride and the LGBQT+ communities, some marchers also carried Juneteenth flags. The march went from the HERC parking lot to Wisdom, Knowledge, Faith and Love Park. There they listened to speakers and visited information booths.

Juneteenth — June Nineteenth, now a national holiday on the third Monday of June — commemorates the day on June 19, 1865, when Union troops arrived in Galveston, Texas, and U.S. General Gordon Granger read General Orders No. 3: “The people of Texas are informed that in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free.”

Homer held its first Pride March in June 2018, partly in response to a canceled meeting of the Homer City Council when three council members made themselves absent to keep then-Mayor Bryan Zak from making a formal recognition of Pride Month. Zak instead read the proclamation in the Homer City Hall parking lot.

Pride Month is part of international celebrations “in which the LGBTQ (community) and supporters come together in various celebrations of Pride,” the 2018 mayoral recognition read. The first Pride marches happened in 1970 on the 1-year anniversary of the 1969 Stonewall riots in New York City in which LGBTQ supporters protested over six days against police raids of the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar. Stonewall is considered the catalyst that sparked the American lesbian and gay rights movement.

Marchers wearing Pride rainbow colors and carrying Juneteenth flags march in the Pride-X-Juneteenth parade on Saturday, June 18, 2022, on Pioneer Avenue in Homer, Alaska. (Photo by Michael Armstrong/Homer News)