The uprising at the Stonewall Inn
In 1969, a raid on a New York bar becomes a turning point for the queer movement worldwide.
On 28 June 1969, shortly after midnight, plain-clothes police officers stormed the Stonewall Inn on Christopher Street in New York's Greenwich Village. Raids on bars with a homosexual clientele were routine at the time: sex between men was a criminal offence in almost every US state, and a New York law allowed the arrest of anyone not wearing at least three items of clothing matching the sex assigned at birth. The Stonewall Inn, run by the Mafia and operating without a liquor licence, was one of the few places where gay men, lesbians, drag queens and homeless queer young people could come together and dance.
That night, however, the raid went differently. Instead of dispersing as usual, the patrons stayed outside the bar. When the police forced those arrested into a van and acted brutally in doing so, the mood turned. The crowd began throwing coins, bottles and stones. Within minutes a riot with hundreds of participants had developed. The officers barricaded themselves inside the bar, and the crowd tried to set the place on fire. Only a riot squad was able to calm the situation temporarily at around four in the morning.
But the resistance was not over. For five more days, protests flared up in the neighbourhood, some involving thousands of people. Figures such as the trans activists Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera were among the faces of this revolt. Within a year, numerous new organisations had been founded, such as the Gay Liberation Front and the Gay Activists Alliance.
Historians stress that Stonewall neither founded the queer movement nor was the first resistance to police brutality. But the event became the catalyst for a new, more radical form of activism. On the first anniversary, 28 June 1970, thousands marched in New York from the Stonewall Inn to Central Park: the first Pride march and the forerunner of all today's Pride parades. In 2016 President Barack Obama declared the site a national monument. In 2019, shortly before the 50th anniversary, New York's police commissioner officially apologised for the raid.