The Stonewall Riots took place on June 28th, 1969, at the time Stonewall was one of the most famous gay clubs in New York city. It was open in a time were a lot of homosexual acts were illegal in many American states. New York was particularly strict, thousands of gay people were arrested each year for homosexual acts deemed ‘crimes against nature’. These laws meant members of the LGBTQ+ community hid in bars, restaurants, clubs and more, that allowed homosexual behaviour. For the most part these venues were run down, they had overflowing toilets and all the glasses would be washed in one large bucket. People would have to put up with this as there were few places they could go. At the time, many of the gay bars or clubs in New York such at Stonewall were run by the Mafia, Stonewall was run by the ‘Genovese Crime Family’. They would earn a lot of money by overcharging for entry and drink which they got away with because they provided a relatively safe space. Stonewall was a hub for the LGBTQ+ community in New York, it stood out because it had a dance floor which was rare, as dancing with a member of the opposite sex was illegal. The family would pay of police officers to warn them when a raid was coming, this would give the bars time to hide anything that may be deemed ‘homosexual’, hide alcohol as it was almost always being sold without a licence and stop any of the guests participating in ‘unnatural behaviour’ such as holding hands, (I checked this fact a lot, and yes, it was illegal to hold hands with someone of the same gender). Places that were suspected of allowing homosexual and illegal acts would be frequently raided by the police. Different techniques were used to see if people were participating in illegal behaviour, a common method of raiding an establishment would be to; Enter without warning, check behind the bar to see if alcohol was being served, make everyone inside line up, if you had ID you were allowed to leave, if you didn’t have an ID you might be arrested, if you were deemed to be wearing an item of clothing of the ‘opposite sex’ you might be taken into a bathroom and a female officer would confirm your gender (on occasion this would be done by a male officer in front of people), if you were not conforming to stereotypes of what they perceived your gender to be you would be arrested.
On the 28th of June 1969 at around 1am the police made an unexpected raid at Stonewall, with the aim to clear the neighbourhood of ‘sexual deviants’. Undercover police officers were already in the building, so people selling illegal alcohol and engaging in homosexual acts had already been noted. There was over 200 people in the club at the time, on entering the police threw around 200 people out. When people were first thrown out, they were laughing at the police and making fun of the situation, but this soon changed. Most resources I found stated that a woman named Stormé DeLarverie who was a lesbian, was being aggressively handled by the police as they took her from the club to a police van, she shouted ‘why don’t you guys do something?’, this is where the riot began. The police quickly barricaded themselves into the building as they waited for back up. People who had been kicked out began fighting, they threw pennies, stones and even things set on fire into the building, at one point they used a parking meter as a battering ram to break down the doors. When reinforcements arrived they used extreme forces including tear gas to control the rioters. The riot lasted around 4 hours, but for the next 4-6 days people came back to Stonewall to protest. The Stonewall riot was covered by a newspaper called ‘Village Voices’ under the title ‘The Forces of Fagatory’, this led to a small riot taking place at the newspapers offices.
The Stonewall riots weren’t the start of the ‘Pride’ movement in America but they undoubtably helped to kick things off. Many Gay Rights activist groups such as the ‘Gay Liberation Front’ say the Stonewall riots motivated them to start and to carry on. Exactly one year after the Stonewall Riots the first large scale American Gay Pride took place, the marchers walked from Stonewall to Central Park, and they started to change the world.
My two cents:
Something to note when reading this short summery is how brave the rioters and activists must have been. It was illegal to show any display of ‘homophobic behaviour’ yet they stood up and publicly fought back. I am in awe of the strength that must have taken. The people fighting at Stonewall, and in other places, not only risked being put in jail but also risked losing their jobs, family and friends; all in the hope that they might one day help future LGBTQ+ members to live freely. We still have a long way to go in relation to LGBTQ+ rights and discrimination, but we should never forget the people who kicked it off.
Resources and references:
A book by Chick Stewart ‘Homosexuality and the Law: A dictionary’
A book by David A. Schultz ‘The Encyclopaedia of American Law’
Stonewall ‘The Stonewall Uprising; 50 years of LGBTQ history’, by Irene Lorenzo:
History.com, ‘Stonewall riots’:
BBC News, Stonewall: A riot that changed millions of lives’, by Tom Geoghegan:
history.com, history stories, ‘What happened at the Stonewall Riots? A timeline of the 1969 Uprising’ by Sarah Pruitt:
Socialist action, ‘Stormé DeLarverie: The Lesbian spark in the Stonewall Uprising’ by Ann Montague:
A timeline of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender History in the United States:
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