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Causes Of The Stonewall Riots

Decent Essays

For many years, the LGBT community, standing for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender, in America has suffered injustice after injustice at the hands of those who choose to discriminate against them. But the aggression towards homosexuals came to a boiling point in New York in the late 1960s. One of the most well known of these homophobic events were the riots just outside the Stonewall Inn on Christopher Street in New York. Many historians, such as Duberman and Deitcher, would place the blame solely on the police force however, the police raids were responsible for the Stonewall riots in 1969 to a small extent because other factors such as the legal discrimination of homosexuals, and the media’s censorship of the gay movement had a much stronger impact leading to the most influential gay rights riot in US history.
The Stonewall riots were a series of riots that occurred in late June of 1969 when the New York City Police entered the Stonewall Inn, a popular gay bar located in what is known as the Village, with the intent to arrest the employees for serving alcohol without the proper liquor license. The Village is a combination of Greenwich Village and Harlem where a considerable homosexual population stayed. It is a staple in the Stonewall riots because this is where Stonewall Inn resided and where the eventual Stonewall Riots occurred. Not having a license was often used as an excuse by the NYPD to raid local gay bars, such as the Checkerboard or the Stonewall Inn.

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