In 1969 homosexuality was illegal in all states except Illinois. That summer the New York City police raided the Stonewall Inn, a popular gay bar in Greenwich Village often. You had to have identification ready but if you were smart it was false. You also would run from the police. This was a time of the Civil Rights movement. The Women's Movement. The Anti-War Movement. People were standing up to the cops and the homosexuals were running from the cops. On June 28, 1969, the cops ran from them.
The 1960s were a dark time for homosexuals. The medical authorities said that it was a mental defect or a kind of psychopathy. They believed that people talked you into becoming homosexuals and "turned you". They also believed they could turn you back into a heterosexual by aversive conditioning where they showed you pornographic pictures and gave you electric shocks. They also sterilized you, castrated you, and sometimes even lobotomized you. Just to make you a heterosexual and "fix|" you. One place, known as the Dachau of institutes drowned you, in essence, waterboarding the patient. You were supposed to marry and have kids. Not be with your own kind.
While people of color were protected by laws, gays were not. If the cops caught a homosexual with another homosexual doing anything "wrong" their names and addresses would be published in the newspaper. If you were a teacher the school board would know and fire you. You would not be able to practice law with a criminal record or be a doctor. Hell, you wouldn't even be able to be a beautician because that required a license and to have that you needed a clean criminal record.
Greenwich Village was an openly gay place to be and you could go where you wanted to go. The Stonewall Inn was just one of many bars that catered to homosexuals in the area. Christopher Street was the street where gays could hang out with each other and just be. It was theirs. And the Stonewall was on that street. As their visibility increased so did the people's need to terrorize them. Shop windows were smashed. You could be beaten. Have your head smashed into a toilet. Wind up in wheelchairs. They were being hunted.
When the World's Fair came to New York City in 1964 the mayor pushed for a campaign to clean up the "weirdness" or the homosexuals away from the city. In New York, there were many laws that gays could be charged with. One was the 1845 law of masquerading which was dressing in more than three items of clothing from a gender not your own. The cops would dress in drag and try to get men to hit on them and sometimes they dressed in plain clothes. Entrapment was a reality. The cops would hide behind the walls of the urinals of the subway station to try to catch people having sex. They arrested 300-500 for crimes against nature and 3,000--5,000 for solicitation or loitering a year in New York City. Gay people were not powerful politically and there were a series of escalating skirmishes. Eventually, something was going to blow.
In a gay bar when the light came on you knew to stop what you were doing and separate. The Stonewall didn't have a liquor license and were raided by the cops regularly. The Mafia owned the jukeboxes. They owned the cigarette machines. They owned the watered-down liquor. They decided to go ahead and own the gay bars too and make some money. The Mafia paid off the cops. The Stonewall was a down at the heels kind of place that street kids, designers, and boxers went to. The bar was a toilet but it was a refuge from the streets. First, you go to the door and a small window opens up and the guy at the door decides whether or not you get to come in. In the front part of the bar was where the "regular" gays were and toward the back where the jukebox was, you could find the drag queens such as Mary Queen of the Scotch, Conga Woman, Captain Faggot, and Miss Twiggy. You could see a show there and find love.
What was so good about the Stonewall was that you could slow dance there. Because you couldn't show affection out on the street. Heterosexuals had so many outlets. Such as lover's lanes, hotels, motels, and drive-ins. Gays were told they had no right to any of that. With the exception of some mob owned bars to meet in they had nothing. The only other thing they had were these meat trucks that when they weren't' being used to haul meat were being rented out to gays to meet in to have sex in. And they still got raided. And when the police arrested you they sometimes used billy clubs on you and beat you.
The Mattachine Society was the first Gay Rights Organization. They talked with the mayor and finally got them to stop with the entrapment. However, Mayor John Lindsey wanted to get reelected in 1969 and in June he started his campaign to clean up the streets of the "weirdos". They raided The Checkerboard, a very popular gay bar a week before they raided Stonewall. There was also vigilantism. Straights were using walkie talkies to gather their forces together against the gays. Gays were being shot, strangled, thrown in the river, being blackmailed and losing employment.
It was a perfect storm that night on June 28, 1969. The Stonewall had been raided that previous Tuesday night. Raids generally took place on a weeknight early in the evening so it wasn't too crowded and the mafia paid them off and didn't lose too much business. But that night it was unusual because it was jam-packed and neither the mob nor the sixth precinct had been alerted that there was going to be a raid. There were only six cops because they felt they had the nearby precinct for backup if need be. They turned the lights out and started asking for IDs. Outside people are asking "What's going on?|" People come out of the Stonewall with their arms raised in the V is for Victory sign. More people start to show up and to congregate.
A rather tough lesbian was fighting the cops and not going quietly and the more she fought the more they beat her. This caused more people to gather and grow alarmed. People started shouting "Pigs" and "Cops" and throwing pennies for copper or that is what they were worth. They were calling the cops names and grabbing their buts and telling them how good looking they were. The cops barricaded themselves with some of the gays inside the Stonewall along with two members of the Village Voice newspaper. Things were being thrown against the plywood covered window and incendiary devices were being thrown inside, but the cops took the fire extinguisher from the wall and put them out.
One of the drag queens, Miss New Orleans, grabbed a parking meter from the ground and was helped by others to pound it into the door of the Stonewall. By this time there were several thousand outside compared to the six cops standing inside. The cops radio signal kept cutting out so they couldn't get a message to the precinct. The head cop, as Howard Smith the editor of the Village Voice recalls it he went to every single man and said his name and said if you fire before I say to you will be walking the beat at Statton Island for the rest of your life. That cop believed that the first shot that was fired meant that all the shots would be fired and people would be killed and it would make things worse. They did find a secret way out.
The cops did arrive with tactical gear. They marched down Christopher Street pushing the gays in front of them. The gays pushed back. And then they circled around the street and came at the police from behind. They chased the cops around the blocks for hours. Gays were supposed to be weak and here they were picking things up and throwing them and coming at the cops not afraid anymore. The drag queens were doing Rockette kicklines and singing. They went into the Stonewall with baseball bats and destroyed it beating it to death. They lit trashcans on fire and slashed police cars tires. They were mad as hell and they weren't going to take it anymore.
The next day the Stonewall opened up for business and it wasn't just the gays who showed up but the Black Panthers and Anti-War Movement people eager to fight the police. And while some still got a nightstick to the head it wasn't as many and they fought back. The cops broke open the tear gas in front of the Stonewall. There were more anger and more fight the second night. They had found their voice. There was no going back into the closet. "It really should have been called an Uprising. They were objecting to how they were being treated. That's more of an Uprising than a Riot," Howard Smith said of the time.
They decided they couldn't just let it go like that. That they needed something to mark the occasion and someone suggested a march. And thus was born the first Gay Pride March. Of course, there were bomb threats and people had threatened to shoot them so at first, it was more of a run than a march, but after a while, more and more people joined in and over 2,000 people marched in that first parade that was a parade for everyone. And every year in cities across the globe they have a Gay Pride March to mark the occasion of The Stonewall Inn's Uprising.
After fifty years a lot has changed in America for gays. They are no longer barred from work. They can adopt a child. They can even marry. They have come so far and it has taken so long and so much blood, sweat and tears to do so. The people of Stonewall were brave to finally stand up and say "NO MORE!" to laws that prohibited them from being who they were. To laws that kept them from being with who they wanted to be with. To laws that said that there was something wrong with them. I for one am glad they did. As a bisexual, they were standing up for me. And I am grateful.
