Police Raids to Pride Parades: 50 Years after Stonewall
At 1:20 in the morning on Saturday, June 28, 1969, eight police officers entered the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village, New York City and shouted “We’re taking the place!” The bar was full of patrons - about 205 were inside at the time of the raid, and this was not the first time most of them had been in this situation.
In 1960s New York City, gay culture was relegated almost entirely to bars and other discreet places within the city. The books were still filled with antiquated “moral decency” laws that all but outlawed being gay. Tides were beginning to turn slowly with groups like Harry Hay’s Mattachine Society beginning to advocate for gay rights around the country, but most officials sill considered the city’s growing cultural shift as a stain on the reputation of the city.
New York Mayor Robert F. Wagner ordered a campaign to rid the city of gay bars in the early 1960s in advance of New York’s hosting the World’s Fair in 1964. The campaign was officially revoked by the time of the raid at the Stonewall Inn, but attitudes of ‘unlawful homosexuality’ still permeated New York law enforcement. As a result of being driven to criminal underground status, almost all of New York’s gay bars weren’t owned by members of the community, but rather organized crime families - who treated patrons badly, but paid off police officers in an effort to control the raids, or tip off bar staff in advance, who were then able to control the damage by hiding liquor or moving patrons out
Rumors give any number of reasons why police chose that night to close the Stonewall (there had been a raid there the previous Tuesday that allowed business as usual to continue), but the most probable answer to that question is likely that corrupt police were angry about not being able to collect a piece of the money the mafia was collecting by extorting wealthier patrons of the bar. Whatever the reason, tensions boiled over that Saturday night.
The exercise turned from a standard raid to something bigger quickly. Patrons who were released from the bar and not arrested did not leave quickly as they usually would, causing a crowd to begin to gather outside the bar. Before long, exhausted bar patrons and others in the community began to fight back, flinging pennies, beer bottles, and eventually bricks at police cars and through the windows of the now occupied Stonewall. The Stonewall Riots, as they came to be known, lasted most of the next two days, drawing thousands of supporters of what was now a full-fledged movement onto the streets.
In the next year, the gay rights movement took on a life of its own. Supporters no longer hid in the darkness of bar corners, but organized protests and built coalitions such as the Gay Liberation Front and Gay Activists Alliance.
On June 28th, 1970 - the one year anniversary of the raid at the Stonewall, activists and supporters in New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago walked their cities in the first U.S. Gay Pride marches. By 1972, there were marches all over the country, including in the midwest and deep south.
In the chaos surrounding the riots, a community driven to the shadows had found the courage to step out into the light.
Y’all means all.