Detroit Black Gay Pride to celebrate 10 years in July

DETROIT – There's no doubt about it. Organizers of Hotter Than July, Detroit Black Gay Pride, are excited about planning their 10th annual celebration. Scheduled for July 27-31 and subtitled Family Re:Union, this year's HTJ promises to kick the heat up a notch.
To help fan the flames, DBG Pride has added four additional seats to their board this year to help increase their organizing capacity.
"The board was too small to do the kinds of things that we wanted to do," said Hank Millbourne, III, DBG Pride's president. "We needed more people and we also wanted more diversity on the board. I'm still looking to increase the board even more. I'd like to add two more seats. I think as the organization evolves we need a larger board and people who bring different expertise to the board."
Some of the new faces are obviously fresh and forward thinkers, as this year's HTJ is shaping up a little differently from years past. The board has creatively adjusted some existing events, brought back an old one or two and, of course, added to the event's traditional schedule.
How? Glad you asked. Here's a peek:
– The Genesis Summit. A conference has always been considered a crucial component of the HTJ schedule by organizers. But with Saturday blocked off for the Pride Picnic, that has forced the conference, called the Genesis Summit for the past several years, to be scheduled during the work week. Attendance has fluctuated through the years and, though it was up last year, has never quite reached the goal organizers had in mind. This year, though, they may have found the solution. "The genesis conference will be spread out over the course of Pride," said Millbourne. "We'll run a workshop or two every day."
– The Jazz Bash. This has long been one of HTJ's most popular events, but it was absent from last year's schedule because the organization that had traditionally sponsored it, Men of Color, decided for various reasons to discontinue it. Enter the Jazz Brunch. DBG Pride has decided to sponsor the event itself, in its usual Sunday afternoon time slot, and make it a core event. "Nobody was doing it," said Millbourne. "So we are partnering with the Rhino in terms of doing that."
– Entertainment. Early installments of HTJ saw several national names on the events schedule, most noticeably The Lady Chablis, who gave a special show after the screening of her film, "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil," in 1998. In recent years, though, the events schedule has been more subdued and the talent at the Pride Picnic has not always been stellar. But this year, HTJ's got something for ya. "We're definitely bringing in a national act," said Robert Clark, one of those fresh faces on the board and the chair of the entertainment committee. "With this being the 10th anniversary we're looking to really make this a special entertainment event." Clark's enthusiasm is contagious when he speaks about this year's picnic. "I think that it's going to be a lot bigger," he said. "Our permit is going to include more land so we're looking to expand some things and do things a lot bigger. We want to have more than one stage, we want to have a dance floor – those are some of things that we're looking at for this time around."
There are other additions to the HTJ schedule coming this year as well, such as a Womyn's Film Festival, the Karibu Komedy Klub and others. And as if all that were not enough, this year's HTJ will also introduce a new host hotel, the Hilton Garden Inn in downtown Detroit. For all the latest details on the Midwest's largest black gay Pride celebration, visit http://www.hotterthanjuly.com.