Photography

COLE PORTER / THE SEATTLE TIMES ARCHIVE

Dean Leighton, baton twirler, led 2,000 demonstrators in the Lesbian/Gay Pride March.

Nearly 2,000 gay demonstrators and their supporters marched through downtown Seattle yesterday as a reminder that they still face discrimination. This was the third annual Northwest Lesbian/Gay Pride March that was the finale of a week of festivities. The demonstrators marched from Freeway Park to Occidental Park with little counter-demonstrators present.

The mostly young demonstrators carried balloons and signs bearing gay-pride slogans or twirled streamers on sticks. Floats were interspersed among the marchers. A flat-bed truck carried a closet with a banner reading "closets are for clothes, not people."

Shouting "gay rights now" and "gay, straight, black, white -- same struggle, same fight," the demonstrators flooded Occidental Park to hear gay activists speak. ~ The Seattle Times, July 1, 1979

Postcards from the past is an occasional feature, highlighting images from The Seattle Times historical archive.

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