Harriet Hancock, organiser of South Carolina’s first Pride march, dies aged 89
Harriet Daniels Hancock (The Harriet Hancock Center)
Harriet Hancock, a key figure in South Carolina’s LGBTQ+ rights movement who helped organise the state’s first Pride march, has died aged 89. The Harriet Hancock Center announced her death in a Harriet Hancock Center Facebook post shared on Wednesday night.
Hancock contributed to local groups across the Midlands for more than 40 years, and died days before her 90th birthday.
In its statement, the Harriet Hancock Center said: “Harriet lived long enough to see a South Carolina that changed in ways that would have been difficult to imagine when she first began this work. She also knew that the work was unfinished,”
Hancock is also remembered for helping organise South Carolina’s first Pride march. In 1990, she helped lead more than 2,000 people down Main Street to the State House in Columbia, and she was considered “the Mother of SC Pride”.
Building South Carolina’s early support networks
Hancock’s activism began with her family. After her son, Greg, came out to her in 1980, she founded the Columbia chapter of Parents, Families, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG) in 1982.
In 1985, she also cofounded Palmetto AIDS Life Support Services (PALSS) during the height of the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s.
The Harriet Hancock Center’s work continues
The Harriet Hancock Center is described as the first LGBT+ resource centre in South Carolina and the only LGBTQ+ community centre in the state to serve all ages.
PFLAG is a long-running US organisation supporting LGBTQ+ people and their families, with local chapters that often provide peer support and advocacy. The AIDS crisis of the 1980s also spurred community-led support services and mutual aid amid widespread stigma and government inaction.
The centre is also directing supporters to a donation page to help fund its ongoing work.
