The annual Bud Billiken Parade kicked off on the morning of Aug. 12, carrying on the tradition of starting the school year with a celebration. Hailed as the largest African American parade in the country—and the second largest parade in the U.S., after the Rose Parade—Bud Billiken has now had significant LGBTQ+ participation for 30 years.
Among this year's participants were newly installed Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago Commissioner Precious Brady-Davis, the Lakeside Pride Freedom Band and a reunion of the folks who in 1993 became the first openly LGBTQ+ participants in the parade. They were invited to participate by organizers of the parade—a far cry from the resistance that they felt 30 years ago.
For many of those early marchers, this was the first time they had come together again as a group, noted Janice "Jano" Layne, who added, "Most of us didn't know what the others have been doing" over the years.
Layne largely attributed the original enthusiasm to march to fellow activist Karen Hutt, with whom Layne attended Yahimba (a discussion group for Black South Side lesbians) meetings in the early '90s.
Layne first approached the group about marching in Bud Billiken in 1992. She told her fellow members that they should march the following year. Most members immediately responded that they would likely be at "camp"—the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival—at that time, except Hutt.
"Karen was from the East Coast, and said, 'Yeah!' She liked for us to hang out together," Layne said.
The following year, Hutt connected with a group of LGBTQ+ Black folks looking to undertake a project with community visibility, and invited Layne to join her—and specifically be next to her—at one of the meetings.
That group was largely composed of prominent Black LGBTQ+ activists involved in white-led organizations, Layne said, adding, "They could not rise to leadership because there still was the race issue."
When talk turned to what kind of collective action they could take to raise visibility, "Karen just stood up and said, 'Last year, Jano had this idea, and if we do it, it can bring some kind of unity.'"
Hutt brandished a parade application from the Chicago Defender, and said that she'd fill it out on behalf of an organization named the Ad Hoc Community of Proud Black Lesbians and Gays.
"The room just went up in a roar," Layne recalled. "There were people who were so afraid, many of whom considered themselves leaders. … That really broke up the meeting right there."
Hutt filled out the form and sent it in, using the name for the group she had devised. It was denied. Layne meanwhile sent another application, under the moniker "African American Role Models," which was accepted.
"They had an opportunity to change their minds, or they were going to get hit with a lawsuit," Layne said. Lambda Legal's Midwest Office was about to open, with attorney Pat Logue and Mona Noriega as the first staff, and they stood alongside activists in fighting for the right of the openly gay contingent.
The group's eagerness to march was nevertheless tempered by the uncertainty of how parade viewers that day would react to seeing an LGBTQ+ entry. Layne and Hutt visited the local police commander, who assured them that "nothing was going to happen" on their watch.
"We were thinking: 'Huh? How can you be so sure?'" Layne said. "He said [again], 'Don't worry, nothing is going to happen on my watch.' There was another guy in his office. He stretched his pants, so they came up, and he had a gun strapped to his leg. I remember thinking, 'Maybe nothing is going to happen on your watch.'"
Layne further noted that Hutt set the tone in the actual march, saying that even walking down the street with her qualified as an "out experience."
"It's like walking with the queeniest queen you have ever seen in your life," she said. "People are going to be watching you next to them and think you are just like they are. … It was all so liberating."
The reaction from the crowd was overwhelmingly positive. Layne was told some folks turned their backs as the contingent passed by, but Layne never saw it.
"It was a big deal to know somebody in the parade," Layne said. "Even if they didn't know what [the group] was about, it was exciting." One marcher's co-worker came through the crowd and embraced and kissed her. Another marcher, activist Lisa Marie Pickens, later received an encouraging postcard from her dentist, which he'd enclosed along with her bill.
"We didn't know what the reception would be," said another marcher in 1993, activist W. Robert Schultz III. "It was positive, but we had the security detail. Thirty years hence, we had a hundred-piece marching band."
Schultz was one of the co-founders of that band, the Lakeside Pride Freedom Band (which is part of the Lakeside Pride Music Ensembles organization), in the mid-'90s. He marched with Lakeside Pride Aug. 12, and said that it was important for him to help maintain a historical arc—being one of the first openly gay participants in 1993 and taking part in a marching band that's now an integral part of the Bud Billiken Parade.
"I'm 68 and I still do parades," he said with a laugh. "When young people see a marching band go by, it's a double thrill to do that."
Schultz further noted that one of the original marchers, Shelton Watson, gave the original donation in 1997 that allowed Lakeside Pride Co-Founder Jon Dallas to begin searching for fellow members. Watson took part Aug. 12, as did Pickens and other 1993 participants Stephanie Betts, Evelyn Johnson, Israel Wright, Alden Bell, Darryl Gordon and Robert Castillo.
Layne said the Aug. 12 parade was mainly "just about us talking to each other, dancing and singing off-key, in the end, just having conversations. … In reflection, it was like, 'Wow, we made it—and we lived to tell about it.'"
The parade started at 39th Street and King Drive and traveled to 55th Street in Washington Park, ending with a festival there. Grammy-winning Chicago native J. Ivy served as grand marshal.
The parade started in 1929 and was created by Chicago Defender Creator and Founder Robert Sangstacke Abbott and Executive Director Lucious Harper as a way to thank Black youth for selling copies of the paper on the street. The fictional Bud Billiken was the mascot of the Defender's Junior Page, which was devoted to children and ultimately inspired a club. That club attracted children from all over the United States and Africa, and became an alternative to the Boy Scouts in response to the pervasive segregation of the time.
—Tracy Baim also contributed to this article.
