Stonewall riots

The Stonewall riots were a series of street confrontations that began in the early hours of 28 June 1969, when police raided the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in the Greenwich Village district of New York. Patrons and onlookers resisted the raid, and protests continued on several nights. The uprising is widely regarded as a turning point for gay rights in the United States and far beyond, and its anniversary is marked by pride events around the world.

In the 1950s and 1960s gay men and lesbians in the United States faced harsh legal and social pressure. During the anti-communist panic of the early Cold War they were labelled security risks, and many lost government jobs or were discharged from the army. Police kept lists of gay bars and their customers, and in 1952 the American Psychiatric Association classified homosexuality as a mental disorder. Early "homophile" groups such as the Mattachine Society, founded in Los Angeles in 1950, and the lesbian Daughters of Bilitis generally sought acceptance through quiet persuasion. By the late 1960s, however, the civil rights movement and protests against the Vietnam War had made confrontation with the authorities more common, and smaller riots had already broken out in Los Angeles in 1959 and at Compton's Cafeteria in San Francisco in 1966.

The bar, at 51 and 53 Christopher Street, was run by the Genovese crime family and had no liquor licence; police were paid off to tolerate it. It drew some of the most marginalised members of the city's gay community, including drag queens, effeminate young men, hustlers and homeless youths, and it was the only gay men's bar in the city that allowed dancing. Raids on such bars were routine, but they usually came early in the evening and with advance warning.

At about 1:20 a.m. on Saturday 28 June 1969, officers led by Deputy Inspector Seymour Pine entered the bar, where around 200 people were present. Many customers refused to show identification or submit to checks, and a crowd gathered outside as people were released. When a handcuffed woman resisted being put into a police wagon, the mood turned. Coins, bottles and bricks were thrown, and the outnumbered officers barricaded themselves inside the bar until the Tactical Patrol Force arrived. Thirteen people were arrested and four officers were injured. Thousands gathered again the following night, and a further clash came on 2 July after unflattering press coverage. Marsha P. Johnson was among those later named as prominent in the resistance.

Within weeks new and more militant groups formed. The Gay Liberation Front was the first organisation to use the word "gay" in its name, and the Gay Activists Alliance followed in December 1969. Sylvia Rivera and Johnson set up STAR to support transgender youth. On 28 June 1970, Christopher Street Liberation Day marked the first anniversary, alongside marches in Los Angeles and Chicago; in 1971 marches were also held in London, Paris, West Berlin and Stockholm. Frank Kameny later estimated that some fifty to sixty gay groups existed in the country at the time of the riots, rising to around 2,500 within two years.

Historians caution that gay activism did not begin with Stonewall, but its scale, duration, press coverage and annual commemoration gave it unique symbolic weight. In December 1973 the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from its diagnostic manual. The site became a National Historic Landmark in 2000, and in 2016 the Stonewall National Monument was created around it. In 2019 the New York police commissioner apologised for the department's conduct during the raid.

Our 1960 and 1985 maps show the United States in the decades before and after the riots.