Then just a fresh-faced youth, Atlanta lesbian Charlotte Hubbard spent her early 20s attending the city’s legendary Black gay pride celebration — one of the few places where she felt she could truly exhale.

“I loved just being in a place where I’m not seeking acceptance,” Hubbard says. “Just being able to be free felt really good.”

Then something shifted. Fist fights seemed to rise. The carefree vibe seemed to diminish. Eventually, for Hubbard, it stopped feeling like home.

“The turning point was when I was at Piedmont Park and every other corner I turned, there was a fight,” says Hubbard, who at 37, hasn’t attended Black Pride in a decade. “I said, ‘I can’t do this’.”

This year marks the 25th anniversary of Atlanta Black Pride, one of the largest Black Pride celebrations in the United States. And unlike previous years, In The Life Atlanta (ITLA), the non-profit organization responsible for Black Pride programming is no longer at the helm. Instead, Atlanta Black Pride, a separate entity led by former ITLA representatives, Terence Stewart (President, Atlanta Black Pride) and Amber Moore (Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, Atlanta Black Pride), are now leading organizational efforts for all official Atlanta Black Pride events. It’s an important distinction, among others, that Stewart and Moore are being more vocal about in the days leading up to this year’s Black Pride celebration and since departing ITLA.

“For the longest, you would hear that nobody was in control of Atlanta Black Pride, especially from people that are new to Atlanta,” says Stewart. “Who is in charge? There is no cohesion,” he recalls hearing from members of the community. “But when you look at Atlanta Pride, you know who's in charge.”

For Black LGBTQ+ Atlantans, Sundays in Piedmont Park have long been an unofficial event, until 12 years ago when organizers of the first Pure Heat Community Festival turned the unofficial park gatherings into a massive cultural event. This year, the free festival is returning to Piedmont Park on Sunday, September 5, after organizers postponed it in 2020 out of safety concerns for attendees at the height of the global pandemic. A highlight among the extensive list of events offered over Labor Day Weekend during Atlanta Black Pride, the festival is a significant visual representation of the collective power and visibility of Black LGBTQ+ people, with organizers seizing the opportunity to honor and showcase the business acumen and artistic prowess of Black openly LGBTQ+ leaders and entertainers in the community.

For decades, members of the Black LGBTQ community have collectively converged upon the ‘city too busy to hate’ to experience a sort-of Black queer utopia that some would argue is unique to Atlanta Black Pride—a rite of passage; escapism from the rigid structure of corporate America, or the confines of living in a small conservative town rife with intolerance and religious bigotry. If it were any other year, the need to escape to celebrate with the community would likely be encouraged, but this is 2020. The impact of the deadly coronavirus pandemic has brought life as we once knew it to a screeching halt—well, everything but ‘Atlanta Black Pride.’