[2] Deacon Maccubbin, owner of the LGBT bookstore Lambda Rising, organized the city's first annual gay pride event.

Gay Pride Day (as the festival was then known) moved that year to Francis Junior High School at 24th and N Streets NW, next to Rock Creek Park.

[4][8] 1983 was the year the first woman and person of color was named Grand Marshal of the Gay Pride Day parade.

In 1984, festival organizers began bestowing the "Heroes of Pride" award to members of racial and ethnic minorities who made a difference in their communities.

[8] By 1984, the one-day festival had become a week-long series of meetings, speeches, dances, art exhibits, and parties.

Organizers shifted the event to the week prior to Father's Day to give people a chance to spend the holiday with their families.

The parade made national headlines when U.S. Air Force Captain Greg Greeley, who led the active-duty group, was later questioned by military security officers and told his pending discharge was on hold because of his participation in Gay Pride day.

[16] One In Ten moved the street festival from Francis Junior High to Freedom Plaza near the White House on Pennsylvania Avenue NW.

[16] However, the financial and organizational strain of producing the event proved too heavy for the small arts group.

In 1997, Whitman-Walker Clinic joined One In Ten as a co-sponsor of the festival, and the event was renamed Capital Pride.

Sponsored by the Youth Pride Alliance, an umbrella group of LGBT organizations supporting the sexual orientation and gender expression needs of young people, the event was held first held in late April (although after 2010 it moved to a date closer to Capital Pride).

The clinic had also asked D.C. Mayor Anthony A. Williams to waive more than $40,000 in street closing and police overtime fees.

Unnamed sources quoted by the Washington Blade, a local LGBT newspaper, said Whitman-Walker's financial problems had spilled over into Capital Pride planning.

Whitman-Walker officials strongly disputed the claims about the organization's finances, but did not deny that the financial requests had been made.

[27] Financial difficulties at Whitman-Walker Clinic led to speculation that the healthcare organization would spin off Capital Pride as an independent body or permit another group to take it over.

The Washington Blade quoted unnamed Whitman-Walker staffers as saying that Capital Pride consumed a significant amount of the clinic's time, resources, and staff but did not generate large revenues in return.

Organized by the D.C. Trans Coalition, an umbrella group of organizations and activists supporting the needs of transgender people, the addition of Trans Pride to Capital Pride was a direct outcome of the expanded organizational planning group.

[33] On January 11, 2008, Whitman-Walker Clinic disclosed, for the first time in years, the financial status of Capital Pride.

The clinic also reported that this included reimbursing itself for $100,000 in "up-front money" to pay for festival-related expenses occurred far in advance of the festival.

Capital Pride Alliance won the bid over The Center, Westminster Presbyterian Church, and Jansi LLC (the parent company of the local LGBT newsweekly, Metro Weekly).

Per policy, city officials and police declined to provide a crowd estimate in 2011, but event organizers said 200,000 to 250,000 people attended both the parade and the street festival.

A group of 11 organizations questioned the Latino LGBT History Project's control over and use of the event as a fundraising mechanism.

It was the first time in American history that an officially sanctioned United States Armed Forces color guard marched in a gay pride parade.

[51] On June 8, 2019, reports of gunfire at the parade in Dupont Circle caused people to flee through the streets in a panic.

Police responded to the scene but determined that no shots were fired; the sounds of gunshots were most likely falling crowd-control barriers.

[53] No Capital Pride was held in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic in Washington, D.C., and the event was conducted virtually in 2021.

Capital Pride resumed in-person events in 2022, including a parade,[54] and a festival where Vice President Kamala Harris surprised the audience.

Maccubbin and Lambda Rising hosted the event for the first five years of its existence, until it grew to 10,000 attendees and spread over three blocks.

Further financial problems led Pride of Washington to transfer the event to a local LGBT arts organization, One In Ten, in 1995.

[56] In 2006, Capital Pride was featured in the comedy film Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.