We’re “Defying Gravity”
this year!
April 27 - May 3, 2025
Special Announcement
While all Pride events will take place as scheduled, university leadership has directed the Sarah Isom Center and other university entities to step back from their institutional involvement with the 2025 Oxford Pride Parade, while they study the new HB 1193 law and await guidance from IHL on how we can continue to support everyone in our campus. The student group Outgrads and UM PRIDE Network are now the organizers of the Pride parade.
This last-minute change has brought some logistical challenges. We ask our community for help with three things:
Vehicles in the parade. University leadership has informed parade organizers that no university resources can be used to support the parade, including university golf carts. This is a challenge, since we have used borrowed golf carts to help parade attendees who have mobility issues or who require assistance during the parade. If you know anyone with a golf cart, convertible, or truck with a trailer (safe to transport people) who might be willing to join the parade or let Outgrads and UM PRIDE Network borrow their vehicle, please contact us at admin@oxfordmspride.rocks.
Resources for Oxford Pride Week. University leadership has also informed us that no university accounts may be used to support Oxford Pride Week. We ask those who are able to donate to our GoFundMe: https://gofund.me/e313b690
Participation in Pride. UM student groups may organize and march, and individual members of UM faculty and staff may march, but the university has advised that no department, school, division, college, or center may march as an official university group in the parade. We are concerned about the effect this last-minute change may have on our LGBTQ+ students. We invite any community group and all interested faculty, staff, and students to join Outgrads, UM PRIDE Network and the community on Saturday, May 3, either to march or to cheer on the Square. That support can make a big difference with queer youth.
Please share widely. Thank you for your help in this transition.
In 2016, UM student Matt Kessler came to members of the Sarah Isom Center with a dream of organizing a Pride parade in Oxford, Mississippi. As we do when students come to us with ideas, we collaborated with him to organize the parade.
Since 2016, many community partners have created events during Oxford Pride Week, including churches, nonprofit organizations, and local businesses. Every event at Oxford Pride is open to all members of the community; the parade has always included those who do not identify as queer but love those who do.
Oxford Pride does not promote any particular ideology. It acknowledges a simple fact: queer Mississippians are tax-paying citizens of this state, and like all citizens, queer Mississippians have the inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. As citizens, queer Mississippians enjoy the right of free assembly and expression. Queer Mississippians are our neighbors, our students, our brothers and sisters, our aunts and uncles, our cousins, and our children, and during this week, we acknowledge and show our appreciation for the many ways queer Mississippians make our state a better place.
The Isom Center lives within one of Mississippi’s public universities, and that means we serve the people of Mississippi–all the people of Mississippi. We welcome all our fellow Mississippians to Oxford Pride, and we are grateful that all of us, with our many beliefs and value systems, have the right to exist as we are and allow others to exist as they are.
“The parade gave me hope for the future in the South. I never could have imagined that many people in Mississippi cheering us on.”
Nathan Adams, UM alum (Art)
2022 Grand Marshal:
UM Alumna and Oxonian Mary Anne Adams
“LOU Pride meant that the Oxford LGBTQ community and allies could finally openly show their bravery and love together.”
Kendrick Wallace, UM student (Exercise Science)
“The highlight for me was coming around the Abner’s corner and seeing all the rainbow-colored people hanging off balconies and filling the streets. I got chill bumps and tears from that and the realization that so many people that I love who have felt marginalized could physically see their support in the town they lived in.”
Claire Whitehurst, UM alum (Art)
