This Day in History

 In honor of Pride Month and the season of protest we currently find ourselves in, fighting still for equal rights....

June 28, 1969

Gay clubs had long been a target for police, with raids happening at least once a month.  Patrons would be lined up and arrested if in drag - this included women who were required to be wearing three pieces of feminine clothing.  Typically, bar owners received a tip off and the raids occurred early enough in the day that business could carry on.

This time was different.  Undercover officers entered without warning, and later in the evening.  Once the police announced themselves, there was too much confusion and running around.  They were not able to line up the patrons, and many in drag refused to go with officers to have their genitals checked, refusing identification, so the police intended to arrest them all.

As they waited for transport, the crowd outside grew.  As the employees were loaded up, someone shouted "Gay Power!"  A man in drag was shoved and a woman was hit with a baton for complaining about her cuffs being too tight.  She then asked the crowd, "Why don't you guys do something?"

And the mob erupted, pushing and throwing coins as well as beer cans before they found the bags of bricks at a nearby construction site.  Folk singer Dave Van Ronk had joined the crowd not because he was gay, but because he had experienced police violence at antiwar demonstrations.

The only known photograph from the night, taken by photographer Joseph Ambrosini, showing street kids.  They would come to fight for the Stonewall because, "It catered largely to a group of people who were not welcome in, or cannot afford, other places of homosexual social gathering."  It was a home to these kids.

Police had barricaded themselves inside the building so the Tactical Force showed up.  It is now around 2am and that's when Marsha P. Johnson arrived, joining the pushback.  The streets eventually cleared out around 4am, but riots and demonstrations would continue for days and activism would increase over the next few months.

In 1970, New York's first official gay pride parade set off from Stonewall and headed up 6th Ave.