Warning: This page discusses queerphobia, mentions of prostitution, and violent police forces. Please keep yourself safe while reading this page.
The Stonewall Riots, also known as The First Pride Parade was a six day long protest started by transgender women of color in New York after a police raid on the Stonewall Inn and was one of the major catalysts for the LGBT+ rights movement.
After a police raid on the Stonewall Inn on June 28th 1969, a Stonewall uprising began where they protested outside for almost a week. The bar patrons would protest outside the bar and in nearby parks and streets, throwing bricks, pennies, bottles and other objects at police officers.
Stonewall History
LGBT+ Americans in the 1950s - 1960s faced an anti-gay legal system (which is still an issue within the U.S., however it is less intense compared to the past.) Early LGBT+ groups in the U.S. sought to prove that queer individuals could be assimilated into society and favored non-confrontational education for queer individuals and cishets alike. The last years of the 1960s, however, were contentious, as many social/political movements were active, including the civil rights movement, the counterculture of the 1960s and the anti-Vietnam War movement. Among these influences, along with the progressive environment of Greenwich Village, served as catalysts for the Stonewall riots.
Very few establishments welcomed queer individuals in the 1950s and 1960s. Those that did were most often bars, although bar owners and managers were rarely queer. During the time, the Stonewall Inn was owned by the Mafia, and was known to be popular among the poorest and most marginalized individuals in the LGBT+ community: most commonly butch lesbians, effeminate young men, drag queens, male prostitutes, transgender individuals, and homeless youth. While police raids on gay bars were routine in the 1960s, officers quickly lost control of the situation at the Stonewall Inn on June 28, 1969. Tensions between New York City police and queer residents of Greenwich Village erupted into more protests the next evening, and again several nights later. Within weeks, Village residents quickly organized into activist groups to concentrate efforts on establishing places for queer individuals to be open about their identity and existence without fear of being arrested.
Life after Stonewall
On the one year anniversary of the Stonewall riots the first ever peaceful pride parade was held in New York streets. The protest was the start of a new era of awareness for the LGBT+ community, and since then pride and the queer rights movement has been going on since (however queerphobia is still a prevalent issue.)