For Gary Pavlic and countless other young gay men coming of age in the 1960s, finding acceptance was a constant struggle.

“It was very difficult. I spent most of my time trying to hide what I was and make sure people didn’t find out that I was gay,” said Pavlic, who grew up in Schenectady County. “We had to walk home with a friend because we would get beat up on the walk back from the bars, not by bystanders, but by the police.”

Following decades of persecution and unrest, a 1969 riot at New York City’s Stonewall Inn officially sparked the gay rights movement. Pavlic and others closely watched from a few hours north in the Capital Region.

“That was the beginning of standing up, fighting back, fighting for our rights, because we didn’t have any rights back then,” said Pavlic, who now calls Troy home.

“Stonewall could’ve happened in any number of places,” said Vince Quackenbush, a Capital Region native. “For some reason, it just caught everybody’s imagination.”

Formed the year after Stonewall in 1970, Pavlic and Quackenbush were among the earliest members of the Capital District Gay and Lesbian Community Council.

“One of the missions was to staff a phone hotline seven nights a week,” Quackenbush said. “It was to tell people who have a problem coming out it was ok and also tell them all the resources available.”

“We were just giving people support and letting them know there are other people in the community who were like them and there to support them,” Pavlic said.

Over the following five decades, the Community Council expanded to include the entire LGBTQ movement. Now known as the Pride Center of the Capital Region, it is recognized as the nation’s oldest continuously run LGBTQ community center.

“Certainly things are different now than they were in 1970, but not really. It is still a lot of the same challenges,” said Martha Harvey, who’s in her fourth year as the center’s executive director and CEO.

Through support groups, mental health counseling, and other events, most of which continue online during the COVID-19 pandemic, Harvey says the Pride Center is now a resource for about 40,000 people a year in the 10-county region.

“It does not sound like a lot in the grand scheme of things, but if we are able to help one person, that makes everything feel meaningful and important,” Harvey said.

First held in the late 1970s, the center’s biggest annual event and fundraiser is June’s Pride Festival and Parade.

“Albany was a closeted town, and suddenly it became queer as hell,” said Quackenbush, who recalled the earliest parades were held to mark the 10th anniversary of Stonewall.

Harvey says the parade has evolved from a march for rights to a full-scale celebration bringing more than 30,000 people to Albany’s Washington Park.

“It’s an enormous celebration,” Harvey said. “It’s LGBTQ; it is young people and old people; it is our straight allies; it is families; it is everybody.”

“It is very moving, for me especially, because when we first started, we didn’t have this kind of thing,” Pavlic said.

While the rainbow pride flag still waves over city hall, Albany’s streets will be strangely quiet as the community celebrates LGBTQ Pride Month this June. The parade and festival have been postponed due to the spread of the coronavirus.

“The celebrations will be abbreviated this year, but we still have to celebrate, and we’ll find a way,” Quackenbush said.

Even as victories like marriage equality have been won, the Pride Center’s work continues.

“If it wasn’t necessary, it wouldn’t exist,” Pavlic said. “We still have a ways to go to get equal rights.”

Pavlic says he takes great pride in the fact the organization remains a pillar of strength for many struggling with their identity to this day.

“For us to lay that foundation to build on just feels really, really good,” Pavlic said. “I think we accomplished something really positive.”