When James Millner moved to Richmond in 2009, it was a “big shock.” In Washington, D.C., and New York City, where he’d previously lived, the LGBTQ+ community seemed to have clout, influence, resources and seats at tables. But in Richmond, everything felt different.
He wondered why public officials didn’t attend community events and why there wasn’t representation on city or state commissions. “The LGBTQ community was still very much on the outskirts of mainstream society,” he says. “We were welcome at cocktail parties — but not in boardrooms.”
As he surveyed the landscape in Richmond, his mother’s voice rang in his head: “If you don’t like something, then change it.”
So, Millner joined the board of Virginia Pride in 2014. Within a few months, he was elected board president, a role he retained until 2021. Then, Virginia Pride merged with the nonprofit Diversity Richmond and Pride became his full-time job.
Millner and the all-volunteer Pride Committee have guided Virginia Pride through location changes, literal and metaphorical storms, and significant growth in terms of budget, number of attendees and types of events (which now include the annual Pridefest in September, its Summer of Pride program and more).
Pridefest 2024 (Photo by Michael Hostetler)
Today, 30,000 to 40,000 people attend Pridefest annually. This year, the event will be held on Saturday, Sept. 27, from noon to 8 p.m. at Midtown Green (2401 W. Leigh St.) in Richmond — its third year at the location.
“In 2023, we had to cancel the festival on Brown’s Island because of a tropical storm that came through,” Millner says. Virginia Pride was able to secure Midtown Green as an alternate venue three weeks later. Millner says the event had outgrown Brown’s Island anyway, and what started as a challenge — swapping spaces in a matter of weeks — turned into an opportunity.
“We were like, ‘My gosh, this has so many benefits to us that we really need to think about, can this be our new home?’” he says. For example, while the Virginia Pride team loved Brown’s Island, Midtown Green offers more space, more accessibility and indoor options while still being “smack dab in the middle of the city.”
“It’s going to be a big festival,” Millner says of this year’s event. “We are investing heavily in ensuring that it is going to be a big, bold statement for the Richmond community.”
Alvion Davenport, who uses he, she and they pronouns, is a member of the Virginia Pride Committee, an award- winning drag performer and “Richmond’s LGBTQ+ mayor.” This year, she’s in charge of Pridefest’s entertainment, which will include headliner Saucy Santana, a queer Black rapper, and Kevin Aviance, a Richmond native and icon in the club and ballroom scenes.
Davenport explains that the committee had long discussions about the kinds of artists it wanted, recognizing that “today is different than Pride in 1990 — or Pride in 2000, even.”
“I wanted to bring in more local artists this year, but we also wanted to mix that with cutting-edge artists, artists who are breaking the molds, artists who are living bold and out loud, because that’s our theme this year — ‘Live Out Loud,’” she says. “So, we tried to mix a little bit of … something for everybody.”
Millner says there will be a Youth Pride Pavilion again this year and about 150 vendors. At the same time, he wonders what else Virginia Pride — and its partners — can do to support those in our community most under attack, including trans youth.
“We need to think about what Pride looks like and what Pride means in today’s environment,” Millner says. “And what does the next 10 years look like, and how do we need to evolve to meet our community’s ever-changing needs — and ever-more-important needs?”
An LGBTQ+ Pride march on Broad Street during the 1990s (Photo courtesy Beth Marschak)
‘Birth of Pride’
“As with most things, it wasn’t something that just happened,” Beth Marschak says of Richmond’s first Virginia Pride in 1979.
Marschak traces the event’s roots to October 1977, when LGBTQ+ activists, including Marschak herself, organized Richmond’s first rally for lesbian and gay rights in Monroe Park.
“The emphasis of that rally was on the things that were important to us in terms of our rights,” Marschak says. This included “getting rid of sodomy laws, having anti-discrimination legislation and, for lesbians in particular, custody issues.” About 250 people attended the rally, which served as a counterprotest to an event at the University of Richmond featuring anti-gay advocate Anita Bryant.
While there were already several politically active LGBTQ+ groups in Richmond — and even more social ones — the rally drew new organizations into the movement, including religious and human rights groups. Shortly after the rally, the Richmond Gay Rights Association was formed. A few months later, in 1978, 43 people representing more than a dozen LGBTQ+ organizations formed the Virginia Coalition for Lesbian and Gay Rights, the forerunner of Equality Virginia.
And then came 1979 and the 10th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising in New York City. The occasion marked “the first real blossoming of Pride” in Richmond, Marschak says.
Image courtesy Beth Marschak
The uprising had taken place in June 1969 outside the Stonewall Inn, an LGBTQ+ bar in Greenwich Village. At that time, homosexuality and “cross-dressing” were criminalized in New York and many other states. Frustration bubbled over on a hot summer night when police raided the inn for the second time in a week. Such raids were not unusual, but the patrons’ reaction was: They threw bricks and bottles and chanted things like, “Gay power!” and “We want freedom!” By some accounts, the Stonewall uprising lasted for six days, with up to 2,000 people protesting on a given day.
In the riots’ wake, LGBTQ+ rights organizations and gay pride marches and parades sprung up like wildflowers. In Richmond, this included the Gay Liberation Front, Gay Awareness in Perspective, Gay Alliance of Students (at Virginia Commonwealth University) and Richmond Lesbian-Feminists, which Marschak cofounded.
“We weren’t sure that we would be able to get people to show up for a parade,” Marschak says of the 1979 Richmond Pride event. “So, we ended up with sort of an in-between thing.”
On June 23, 1979, 15 decorated cars made their way along the 3-mile route from Azalea Mall to Byrd Park, where hundreds of participants gathered for live music, games, speeches and a picnic lunch. The theme was “Death of Denial … Birth of Pride.”
“People were very excited about something happening, and it brought out people who would not have come out to the rally,” Marschak explains.
For years, Marschak remained active in planning and supporting Virginia Pride in all its various forms. “I wanted to change the world. And a lot of other people felt that way. And by myself, I was never going to change the world, but in working with other people, we were able to change things.”
Singer-songwriter and guitarist Landon Elliott performing on the Main Stage at Pridefest 2024 (Photo by Michael Hostetler)
Youth Pride
“I think we have made tremendous progress,” Millner says. “[But] no matter how far you get, there’s going to be more to do.”
From health care restrictions to “Don’t Say LGBTQ+” laws that censor topics related to sexual and gender minorities in schools, discriminatory policies are impacting LGBTQ+ communities — and especially trans and gender nonconforming people — in almost every sphere of their lives. According to the American Civil Liberties Union, from January to early August 2025, 598 anti-LGBTQ+ bills were proposed in 49 states — including 17 in Virginia. LGBTQ+ communities across the country have also been deeply affected by an avalanche of executive orders by President Donald Trump that aim to discriminate against them or minimize their roles in historic and contemporary America. These include attempts to expel trans military servicemembers; opposition to gender-affirming care for trans youth that eliminates such care at federally funded institutions, which has led hospital systems like VCU to discontinue services; and the removal of references to LGBTQ+ people from federal websites, including the Stonewall National Monument.
“That is what [trans youth] are up against today — this world where everyone’s trying to take away their rights toward medical care, toward existing,” says Shannon McKay, executive director of He She Ze and We and a former Virginia Pride board member.
As the parent of a trans youth, McKay cofounded He She Ze and We in 2012 to provide support to trans young people and their loved ones. In 2014, she got a call from Virginia Pride asking if she’d help create a “kid zone” at Pridefest.
“I was willing to volunteer to do this but insisted it not be called ‘kid zone’ with bouncy houses and activities geared only toward little kids,” McKay says. She convinced the team to let her and other volunteers create an RVA Youth Pride Village instead.
The “village” took over the helipad area on Brown’s Island and included interactive booths and a small stage that hosted musicians, an improv group, a dance contest, and Jonathan Austin, a local jack-of-all-trades who juggled, told jokes and did magic tricks.
“I had zero budget, and everyone I asked to participate said yes, and they did it for free, which was incredible,” McKay says.
Although McKay is no longer on the Virginia Pride Committee, she is thrilled that Pridefest still hosts a Youth Pride Pavilion. He She Ze and We also participates in Pridefest each year. There, they connect with trans youth, trans adults and their loved ones — and describe the wide array of resources the group offers, such as peer-led support meetings, summer swim parties and the organization’s new Trans Wellness Fund, which offers microgrants to trans people seeking gender-affirming medical care.
To McKay, events like Pridefest and those hosted by He She Ze and We are more important than ever. “This community is so beautiful, and if people would just let them be and see how strong and resilient and capable they are — that’s what we want,” McKay says. “We want them to bring all of that joy into all of the spaces they go. But for now, if at this moment it’s only Pridefest, then we’ll take it, right?”
Pridefest 2024 (Photo by Michael Hostetler)
Current Culture
James Millner can see how far the LGBTQ+ community has come since he first arrived in Richmond. “The LGBTQ community is a vibrant thread in the fabric of the greater Richmond community — and I think that Virginia Pride has helped achieve that.”
Drag artist Alvion Davenport performing at Pridefest 2024 (Photo by Michael Hostetler)
Alvion Davenport sees the change, as well. Growing up in Richmond, he didn’t see many people like himself — and that’s one reason why he serves on the Pride Committee. “Pride is a joyful expression for people like the little boy on the North Side of Richmond to see that there are people like him, her or them,” he says. “And so, seeing a big festival, or a big celebration, or a big gathering of people that makes you feel comfortable lets you know that not only do you have a place in the world, but you have a place in this city. You have a place in this state.”
Yet, as attacks on LGBTQ+ communities increase, Pride events, including Virginia Pridefest, have lost corporate sponsorships and other funders. They face steep challenges as they navigate a hostile sociopolitical landscape. Millner isn’t naming the sponsors who have withdrawn from Virginia Pridefest, but across the country, Pride groups have reported losing hundreds of thousands of dollars in support.
For example, according to The Advocate, Anheuser-Busch withdrew from sponsoring Pride in its home base of St. Louis after more than 30 years of supporting the event, leaving St. Louis Pride with a $150,000 budget shortfall. The Associated Press reported that San Francisco Pride lost the support of five major corporate donors, including Comcast, Anheuser-Busch and Diageo. Other corporate sponsors are choosing to make their donations anonymously.
“It’s been a really emotional year of dealing with all of the adversity and the administration that we’re in,” Davenport says. “It’s been a lot of long nights of planning and financial struggles of trying to balance budgets, and, ‘How’re we gonna get this to work?’ and, ‘How can we pay for this?’”
As corporate sponsors retreat, however, Davenport says the community has “stepped up to the plate.” Individual and major donors have offered financial support because “they understand the need, they understand what we do ... people have really poured out their hearts and made this possible.”
Seeing a big festival, or a big celebration, or a big gathering of people that makes you feel comfortable lets you know that not only do you have a place in the world, but you have a place in this city.
—Alvion Davenport, member of the Virginia Pride Committee and award-winning drag performer
The current culture reminds Millner of the Pride work he did in the 1990s. He explains that, while big festivals with big names can increase the LGBTQ+ community’s visibility, a new model may be needed for future Pride events — possibly one reminiscent of the past. “I think that there is a real need and value in going back to the idea that Pride is a protest,” Millner says. “And a parade doesn’t have to be perfect, with a hundred contingents and big corporate floats. A parade can be people marching down the street.”
Yet, Davenport and McKay both note that LGBTQ+ folks celebrating their existence is, in itself, a form of resistance. As Davenport says, “We don’t have to throw bricks like Marsha [P. Johnson] did [at Stonewall]. We don’t have to yell on bullhorns. Our existence alone is a protest.”
And so, Virginia Pridefest marches on, celebrating LGBTQ+ lives and cultivating joy at a time when, for many in the community, joy is hard to find.
“Coming together in a show of solidarity and in community — all in one place, at one time — is important,” Millner says. “Because it sends a statement that says, ‘We’re not going anywhere. We’re not backing down. And you can lob all the attacks you want at us, but we are powerful.’”
