Stonewall: The Uprising That Started It All
"The hairpin drop heard around the world"
The day was June 28th, 1969 and the place was the Stonewall Inn, a small dive bar in the Greenwich Village district of New York City that catered to the LGBTQ+ community that was under seige by law enforcement. At the time there existed outdated “masquerade” or “cross-dressing” laws that suggested a “man” or a “woman” must be wearing a certain number of clothing items that matched the gender on their state-issued ID. Additionally homosexuality, or any same-sex relationship, was considered illegal and grounds for arrest.
Just after midnight police raided Stonewall Inn, as they had many times in the past, looking for transgender and gender-nonconforming patrons who would be arrested under these “masquerade” laws. However unlike previous raids, this night would be different and patrons would fight back.
Like many gay establishments at the time, the Stonewall Inn was owned by the Mafia, and as long as they continued to make a profit, they cared very little what happened to their clientele. Because the owners were still making a profit, they simply adjusted to the raids, and were often tipped off about them ahead of time.The Stonewall was raided on average once a month leading up to the raid on June 28, 1969, and had been raided once already that same week.
The Stonewall Inn was also not the only bar in town being frequently raided. “… In the last three weeks five gay bars in the Village area that I know of have been hit by the police” (The Summer of Gay Power and the Village Voice Exposed, COME OUT, 1969). Police raids and harassment were a common occurrence across the U.S. during this time, and amid the growing political activism of the 1960s,LGBTQ+ people began to mobilize and fight back.
When police raided the Stonewall Inn in the wee hours of June 28th, 1969 on trumped-up liquor license charges they were wholly unprepared for what was to happen next. As they pushed customers and staff of the Stonewall into vans, a crowd of onlookers swelled as tourists and local residents gathered to investigate. But instead of dispersing as they had during past routine raids, those who hadn’t been grabbed by police began cheering those who had.
The air grew thick with tension as the crowd began taunting police with chants. Accounts differ as to who threw the first brick or the first bottle, but most credit Marsha P. Johnson, a Black transgender activist, with throwing the first brick after Stormé DeLarverie, a gender non-conforming woman, shouted “Why don’t you do something? Why are you just standing there?” as they were being loaded into a police van.
What happened next could accurately be described as mayhem. Police found themselves vastly outnumbered by an angry and hostile crowd that was growing more violent, and were forced to barricade themselves into the establishment that they had just raided to call for backup. Violence continued throughout the night and lasted several days before finally dying down.
While the events of Stonewall are often referred to as "riots," Stonewall veterans have explicitly stated that they prefer the term Stonewall uprising or rebellion. The reference to these events as riots was initially used by police to justify their use of force.
It is important to note that there were a number of uprisings against police & state brutality, harassment and entrapment of the LGBT+ communities in the U.S. in the years before Stonewall. These events and the people involved have not received as much historical attention as Stonewall, but are just as central to understandings of U.S. LGBTQIA+ histories. Some of the pre-Stonewall uprisings included:
Pepper Hill Club Raid, Baltimore, Maryland in 1955. Over 162 people arrested.
Hazel's (Hazel's Inn), Sharp Park, California February 1956
Coopers Do-Nut Raid, Los Angeles, California, 1959
Black Nite Brawl, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, August 5, 1961
Compton's Cafeteria Raid, San Francisco, California, 1966
Black Cat Raid, Los Angeles, California, 1967
See also: Before Stonewall: 5 Events That Paved the Way for LGBTQ+ Rights
The events of June 28th, 1969, the “hairpin drop that was heard around the world”, came during a time of intense civil disobedience and protests about the Vietnam War, Black civil rights, and gender equality. Wrote Michael Bronski, Harvard professor of the practice in media and activism in Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality, “It was really like direct action. It was like the radical feminists invading the Miss America contest, or the Black Panthers standing in front of Oakland City Hall with rifles. And it ran completely counter to the approach of groups such as the Mattachine Society, one of the nation’s earliest gay-rights organizations, that preferred to press for change through legal and political channels.
Not long after the Stonewall raid, a message appeared on the boarded-up window of the bar, pleading for the return of “peaceful and quiet conduct on the streets of the village.” It was signed “Mattachine.”
What followed, however, was a more radical and confrontational approach from queer people, fed up with losing their jobs, homes, and livelihoods for simply existing. The Gay Liberation Front formed in the aftermath of Stonewall, first in New York City then spreading rapidly throughout the nation and into Canada, Australia, and the UK. During the Eastern Regional Conference of Homophile Organizations in 1969, a young activist called for nationwide demonstrations each June in honor of Stonewall.
New York’s first demonstration, named the Christopher Street Liberation Day, was held in June of 1970, one year after Stonewall. The march began on Christopher Street where the bar — now a historic landmark — was located, and it ended in Central Park. The event attracted thousands and signaled another important milestone. In the years that followed more cities and towns organized parades in support of gay and queer rights.
Thus Pride was born.