Stonewall Rises: Gay Liberation Movement Ignites

Police raided a Greenwich Village bar at 1:20 AM, and for the first time, the patrons fought back. On June 28, 1969, plainclothes officers from the New York City Police Department’s Public Morals Division entered the Stonewall Inn on Christopher Street to enforce liquor licensing laws, beginning what they expected to be a routine shakedown. Instead, the bar’s patrons, many of them drag queens, transgender women, and homeless gay youth, resisted arrest and sparked six nights of protests that launched the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement. Police raids on gay bars were standard procedure in 1969. Homosexuality was illegal in every state except Illinois, and the New York State Liquor Authority routinely revoked licenses from bars known to serve gay customers. The Stonewall Inn was a Mafia-run establishment that paid off police for protection, making it one of the few places where gay men and transgender people could socialize openly. Even so, raids happened regularly, and patrons were typically arrested without resistance. Something broke that night. Accounts differ on exactly what triggered the eruption: some witnesses point to a woman in handcuffs who fought with officers and shouted at the crowd to act; others credit Marsha P. Johnson, a Black transgender woman, with throwing the first object. Within minutes, a crowd of several hundred surrounded the officers, who barricaded themselves inside the bar. Protesters threw bottles, bricks, and a parking meter used as a battering ram. The Tactical Patrol Force, New York’s riot police, arrived but could not disperse the crowd. Protests continued nightly through July 3, growing larger and more organized each evening. Within months, the Gay Liberation Front and the Gay Activists Alliance were founded, and the first Gay Pride marches were held in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Chicago on the first anniversary of the raid. Before Stonewall, roughly fifty gay rights organizations existed in the United States; within two years, there were more than four hundred.