Famously Hot SC Pride

Famously Hot SC Pride is South Carolina's statewide Pride celebration in downtown Columbia, produced by the South Carolina Pride Movement. A Pride Week of events across the Midlands leads to the Get Lit nighttime parade and concert on Main Street and a free Saturday festival. Related events include the Revelry gala and the OUTfest block party.

South Carolina Pride began in the fall of 1989 at a gay and lesbian community picnic on Dreher Island, where PFLAG parent Harriet Hancock went through the crowd with a clipboard asking who would march down Columbia's Main Street. An organizing committee formed with Jim Blanton and Barbara Embick as the first march co-chairs, and they issued nine demands for reform in education, health and civil rights, including employment protections, repeal of sodomy laws, adoption rights and tracking of hate crimes.

Fear ran high at that first march, and makeup artists applied clown makeup for anyone who wanted to disguise themselves, since masks were not allowed. About 2,000 people marched to the State House and rushed up its steps for a group photo that now hangs in the Harriet Hancock Center. Hancock has credited the march with starting the conversation that led Columbia to adopt an early nondiscrimination employment policy.

The march moved to Greenville and Myrtle Beach during State House renovations in 1997 and 1998, and the organization paused in 2000 and 2001 during a transition. Today the South Carolina Pride Movement is a 501(c)(3) that works year-round on education, outreach and advocacy, and it relies on donations to keep the Saturday festival free.

Pride events celebrate LGBTQ+ people and mark the Stonewall uprising of June 1969. Most combine a parade or march with a festival of performers, community groups, vendors and food.

Famously Hot SC Pride has included night parade, concert, festival, gala and block party.

The next edition is October 16-17, 2026. It usually falls mid-October, with a Pride Week before it.