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’.”

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.’