Before Stonewall: 5 Events That Paved the Way for LGBTQ+ Rights
Tired of being persecuted, brave activists stood up for the civil rights of LGBTQ+ people in America
In this era of rising anti-LGBTQ+ hate being fomented by Conservatives today it’s important to remember the events that led up to the Stonewall Riots. The 1950’s was an era of severe social and cultural repression, especially for queer people. Laws against sodomy and homosexual behavior, as well as laws policing gender expression were strictly enforced. The queer community was forced to live in the shadows under the threat of arrest, imprisonment, or even death at the hands of homophobes and transphobes everywhere. All that was about to change in the turbulent 1960’s.
Cooper’s Do-Nuts Riot: Los Angeles, 1959
Cooper’s Do-Nuts was a 24 hour doughnut shop located between two gay bars near 5th and Main Streets in downtown Los Angeles. As crossdressing was illegal at the time, police would use the presence of drag queens and gender non-conforming people as an excuse to raid the shop and arrest anybody whose ID’s did not match their outward gender expression.
Late one night in May of 1959 uniformed LAPD officers began harassing a group of gay men and drag queens for public indecency. As they were being loaded into vehicles, other patrons and decided they’d had enough of the discrimination, and customers from Cooper’s and the neighboring gay bars began flooding into the street.
One of those facing arrest was novelist John Rechy, who wrote about the incident in his now-classic debut novel City of Night. In an interview with historian Lillian Faderman, Rechy recalled onlookers throwing coffee cups, doughnuts, and trash at the police until he and the other detainees were able to escape.
Officers were forced to retreat and call for backup while Main Street was blockaded for most of the night during the ensuing riot.
The police officers “fled into their car and called backups and soon the street was bustling with disobedience,” Rechy wrote. “Gay people danced about the cars.”
Reminder Day Pickets: Philadelphia, 1965-1969
On July 4th, 1965, 40 gay and lesbian activists gathered in front of Independence Hall in Philadelphia to protest discrimination against gay and lesbian people in America.
After tens of thousand gay and lesbians lost their government jobs due to the national fear of Communism and the “Lavender Scare” of the 1950’s, gay rights activists picketed for two hours and demanded equal treatment under the law. They wore suits and dresses, clothing deemed “conservative” to show that they belonged in society and not shunned for their sexual orientation.
The Reminder Pickets reflected broader trends in civil rights activism in their organization, evolution, and eventual dissolution. While the pickets were peaceful, they were a step up from sit-ins such as the Dewey’s Lunch Counter sit-in by gender-variant teenagers just months earlier, in May 1965. In the mid to late 1960s, civil rights demonstrations became more overt and confrontational, a trend that culminated for the homosexual movement with the Stonewall Uprising on June 28, 1969, in New York City.
The final Reminder Day protest occurred that year on July 4. Although forty-five individuals participated, the organizers concluded that the course of queer activism had been changed with the events of Stonewall and so the Reminders were put aside in favor of events that evolved into the Pride parades that continued into the twenty-first century.
Dewey’s Lunch Counter Sit-in: Philadelphia, 1965
Dewey’s, a chain of hamburger lunch counters in Philadelphia, was the site of a civil-rights inspired sit-in that happened on April 25th, 1965 when a group of teenagers who refused to conform to the rigid gender policing of the time were refused service by Dewey’s management.
The teenagers joined forces with the Janus Society, a local LGBTQ+ rights organization, and a total of 150 gay, lesbian, transgender and other gender-nonconforming people were refused service at the Seventeenth Street Dewey’s location. Three teens plus the President of the Janus Society were arrested for disorderly conduct.
After the arrests, the Janus Society demonstrated outside of this Dewey’s location, distributing 1,500 leaflets over the course of five days. On May 2, 1965, another small sit-in took place. Though police were present, there were no arrests, and subsequently Dewey’s discontinued its policy of denying service to those who appeared homosexual.
In many ways, the Dewey’s sit-in exemplified political trends of the mid-1960s. Yet, it also represented the beginning of a more radical approach to LGBT activism, which became more fully realized in the years immediately following the 1969 Stonewall Uprising in New York. In contrast to earlier LGBT activism, which sought access to legal protection and freedom from harassment and discrimination, by the late 1960s some LGBT activists were beginning to challenge the very structure of society. People who did not conform to established gender roles—many of them still teenagers—were at the forefront of this shift. Dewey’s was possibly the first action where an established gay rights organization explicitly defended the rights of people to defy gender conventions and still be treated with dignity. Although the Dewey’s sit-in did not generate national media coverage in 1965, later historians recognized it as an important event in the history of LGBT activism.
Julius’ Sip-in: New York City, 1966
Inspired by the fight for civil rights that happened in the early 1960’s, LGBTQ+ rights activists engaged in a series of “Sit-ins” during a time when serving alcohol to queer people was illegal.
Founded by gay men in Los Angeles in 1950, the Mattachine Society rapidly expanded into a national organization that spawned several other gay and lesbian civil rights organizations.
In the spring of 1966, several men from the New York chapter decided to push back against the unfair and unconstitutional law singling out queer people for denial of service and for the revoking of liquor licenses for serving LGBTQ+ people. After being served drinks at several other establishments, they entered Julius’, a tavern located in Greenwich Village, and announced their intention to order drinks while gay.
Julius had just been raided by police several nights previous so the men were denied service. The “Sip-In” was covered in the New York Times and the Village Voice, with the former publication running the story as “3 Deviates Invite Exclusion by Bars.”
The State Liquor Authority denied the discrimination claim, responding that the decision to serve or refrain from serving individuals was up to bartenders. Soon after, the Commission on Human Rights got involved, claiming that homosexuals had the right to be served in bars, and the discriminatory policy by the State Liquor Authority no longer viewed homosexuals as “disorderly.” Afterwards, gay patrons were allowed a freedom that they hadn’t experienced before.
Julius’ still exists today as a gay bar in Greenwich Village and it is celebrated with a plaque by the National Parks Service.
Compton’s Cafeteria Riot: San Francisco, 1966
In historical terms a “tenderloin district”, first used in New York City, refers to an area of a major city with a large amount of theaters, hotels, and other places of “amusement” that are routinely preyed upon by corrupt police officers who ignore illegal activity in exchange for money (ie. the “tenderloin” or “juiciest” part of the service). In San Francisco, the Tenderloin was occupied by queer people that had been pushed out of other districts by urban renewal projects in downtown San Francisco in the 1960’s.
Facing job discrimination, family abandonment, and societal marginalization for wanting to live authentically, many transgender women worked as street prostitutes in the Tenderloin. Compton’s Cafeteria, a chain of cafeterias throughout San Francisco, was a popular hangout for transgender women who were unwelcome in gay clubs due to their transphobia at the time.
As a result, police would often show up to arrest transgender women and drag queens on the crime of “female impersonation.” Since crossdressing was illegal police would often use this as justification to close the cafeteria for the rest of the night.
In August 1966, however, the trans women who frequented Compton’s stood up to police harassment and a riot broke out after hot coffee was thrown in their direction.
In the documentary Screaming Queens, the women who were involved talked about being arrested for all kinds of “crimes”, including “female impersonation” and “obstructing the sidewalk”. Their anger at the abuse and persecution erupted in the 1966 riot, prompted by an officer putting his hand on a woman at Compton’s. The women recalled throwing sugar shakers through the glass windows and drag queens beating police with their purses.
The night ended with overturned tables, a destroyed police car, a newsstand set on fire, and the women hauled off in officers’ paddy wagons.
The fight for LGBTQ+ rights, and specifically trans rights is especially potent right now as the Right Wing Bigot Brigade is going after any corporation that expresses support for Pride or even acknowledges the simple existence of LGBTQ+ people. By a whopping 64% to 10% (with 25% having no opinion), Americans favor protecting trans people from discrimination. Just because a few Conservative snowflakes are having public meltdowns at Pride displays in Target stores does not mean this is a widespread anti-LGBTQ+ movement at all. In fact quite the opposite is true.
Happy Pride!