The Young Activist and the Atlanta Bar That Shaped Queer History
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By Elon Green
A NIGHT AT THE SWEET GUM HEAD
Drag, Drugs, Disco, and Atlanta’s Gay Revolution
By Martin Padgett
Historically, a city’s queer population ended up in the park, by default. Kicked out of the church and the home, or evicted from the bars, queer people would congregate outside. There were famed open-air refuges like Central Park’s Ramble in New York City, Griffith Park in Los Angeles and Rittenhouse Square in Philadelphia.
Less well known was Atlanta’s Piedmont Park. It was at Piedmont, a year after the Stonewall Inn rebellion in 1969, that queer residents assembled to form the Georgia Gay Liberation Front. And it was on those 200 acres in 1971 that — risking their jobs and their families — they held their first Gay Pride march.