The Stonewall raid broke the usual rules, and the crowd pushed back
Police raids on gay bars were routine in 1960s New York, usually on quiet weeknights with a tip-off beforehand. The raid on the Stonewall Inn in the early hours of June 28, 1969, came late on a Friday without warning. Officers lost control, and nights of protest followed.
The postwar years were hard for gay Americans. The FBI and police kept lists of known homosexuals and the places they gathered, the Post Office tracked addresses receiving gay material, and cities swept parks, bars and beaches. In 1952 the American Psychiatric Association listed homosexuality as a mental disorder, although psychologist Evelyn Hooker's 1956 study compared the wellbeing of gay men with heterosexual men. Early groups such as the Mattachine Society, founded in 1950 in Harry Hay's home, mostly chose respectability and quiet education.
Pressure slowly grew. In 1958 the Supreme Court allowed the magazine ONE to be mailed after the Postal Service had refused an issue as obscene. Frank Kameny, fired from the Army Map Service for being gay, founded a Washington branch of Mattachine, and in 1965 activists picketed the White House and the United Nations. People who defied gender norms fought back even earlier, at Cooper Do-nuts in Los Angeles in 1959 and Compton's Cafeteria in San Francisco in 1966.
Few businesses welcomed openly gay customers, and the Stonewall, owned by the Mafia, drew the most marginalised: drag queens, trans people, effeminate young men, hustlers and homeless youth. Neither the Mafia nor the local precinct was warned about that Friday raid, the crowd was at its largest, and anger spilled onto the street. Protests flared again the next evening and several nights later.
Within weeks Greenwich Village residents had formed activist groups and started publications arguing openly for gay and trans rights, although divisions of gender, class and age persisted. The first anniversary brought peaceful marches in several American cities, the beginnings of pride parades now held around the world each June. The site became the Stonewall National Monument in 2016.
Source: Stonewall riots
