Things are different this time for Starkville Pride.

Starkville Pride, a grassroots lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) group, will host its second pride parade on Saturday, with several events to kick off the weekend leading up to it.

Last year, Starkville Pride and the city of Starkville found themselves in national headlines after aldermen shot down an initial request to hold the parade. The board ultimately allowed the vote after the initial refusal sparked a federal lawsuit.

In December, the board approved a request for this year’s parade with limited discussion. That has, in turn, allowed Starkville Pride to focus on the events themselves, rather than fighting the city to get permission to host them.

Starkville Pride weekend will kick off tonight at 8 with a concert at Rick’s Cafe. There will be a queer art market that will feature 32 vendors from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Fire Station Park on Saturday, and the pride parade is scheduled for 11 a.m. to noon Saturday. The parade will begin on Lampkin Street near Fire Station Park, turn north onto Main Street at South Montgomery Street, continue to South Washington Street where it will turn south to Lampkin Street and return to Fire Station Park.

At 4 p.m. on Saturday, Starkville Pride will host a screening of the movie “Call Me by Your Name” in Taylor Auditorium in McCool Hall and a drag show is scheduled for 8:30 p.m. that night at Rick’s Cafe.

The weekend’s events will conclude with a panel discussion on religion and queer identity from 5-6:30 p.m. Sunday in McCool Hall’s Fowlkes Auditorium.

Sam Calvert, a junior at MSU and Starkville Pride board member, said the group is expecting strong turnout for Starkville Pride this year, even if it is less than the 3,000 people that showed up last year. She said the community has, by and large, been supportive and the time to focus on Pride itself has made it easier to get everything organized.

“People have been overwhelmingly supportive,” Calvert said. “We’ve gotten a lot of sponsors, people are wanting to help out. We’ve got a lot of people doing booths at the art market. It’s been a lot easier to get going this year.”

Growing support

Some of Starkville Pride’s members sat under a tent with LGBT-themed baked goods and popcorn arrayed on a table before them as spring winds buffeted Mississippi State’s Drill Field on Thursday.

Grey Garris, a senior at MSU and Starkville Pride Board member, said last year’s pride event, and the fight surrounding it, has sparked a change in Starkville. While he said the community has always been generally-supportive, it’s changed from silent support to something more visible.

“(Rick Welch) hosted a lot of drag shows and still hosts a lot of drag shows at his bar (Rick’s Cafe),” Garris said. “A lot of people would go in silent support of them or donate to different queer causes, but not many people were very vocal about it. After last year’s Pride, more people have become very vocal about what they thought and about helping out and doing what they can do to promote the interests of everybody.”

Welch told The Dispatch that Starkville Pride asked for his restaurant’s support with last year’s event, and he “gladly agreed.” Events at Rick’s Cafe drew great turnout, he said, and he’s expecting the same this year.

Welch said he thinks Starkville’s broad acceptance stems from it being a college town, and as such, more progressive than most Mississippi communities.

“I think the community as a whole — I know there are people that don’t agree with the parade — but the community as a whole is supportive in what other people believe, whether they believe it or not,” he said.

“I’m not here to judge people, I’m here to entertain people,” Welch added. “Starkville Pride has a great lineup of entertainment scheduled for this weekend and I encourage everyone to come out and enjoy themselves.”

Garris said vocal support matters, especially for young students who might be away from home for the first time and still working to find themselves. He said Starkville Pride has had discussions with young LGBTQ students who have felt they’re alone.

Pride, and a vocally-supportive, welcoming community, he said, can show them that’s not the case.

“Pride is open to everyone, but it’s for queer people,” Garris said. “A lot of the time, especially in this area of the South, a lot of people — specifically young, queer individuals — don’t feel like they have a place and Pride is the one day, or for us the one week, where they can have a home other than where they grew up in. For a lot of people, it is the only place because where they grew up is not accepting.

“Pride is essentially giving people a community and a home that they didn’t think they had,” Garris added.

Mayor Lynn Spruill said Starkville has shown itself to be welcoming, and she hopes to see that continue.

“That’s my goal, to make sure we have a place where people want to be,” she said. “That means we need to embrace diversity and appreciate the differences that make us a community of fascinating, creative, interesting, productive — all those kinds of adjectives that make Starkville the best place to live.”

Alex Holloway was formerly a reporter with The Dispatch.

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