The Stonewall Riots: A Progressive Civil Rights Movement

With reference to the Stonewall riots of 1969, it is important to understand that the riot by the Lesbian and Gay Rights Movement came at a time when the civil rights movement was in its high peak. The riots for equality by the Gay and Lesbian groups and activists came at a time when Americans minority groups were fighting for identity in the typical American culture. Then again, it is significant to note that the trends that surround the Stonewall riots were the intense hatred towards the homosexual individuals that had hit the United States in the 1950s and 1960s. The Gay and Lesbian people had to seek solace in Homosexual perceived bars and night clubs as they feared for their life due to their ‘awkward’ sexual orientation at the time (Ruta, 2013). Similarly, another trend that characterized the Stonewall riot was the Cold War policies that had earmarked Homosexual individuals and organization as security threats. With the rising tension due to the cold war, the United States government had blacklisted Gay and Lesbian groups and individuals as an easy target for blackmail by the Communist groups. As a result, they faced constant harassment from police in the 1940s all through to the Stonewall riot in 1969. The uprising is as a result of the civil rights movement that allowed for many minorities and interest groups to come out and fight for their rights.

Two sources, “Movements and Memory: The Making of the Stonewall Myth” by Elizabeth A. Armstrong and Suzanna M. Crage, and Stonewall: the Riots That Sparked the Gay Revolution by David Carter, are used to form a proper analysis. Carter effectively reflects on the monumental spirit of the riots, while Armstrong and Crage focused on the lack of lasting significance of the riots, which directly refutes the beliefs of Carter.

Despite the incessant raiding of gay bars by police in the 1960s, Stonewall Inn was the only place that subdued the officers. Since the Stonewall Inn was the major place for male prostitutes, representative of the transgender community, drag queens, and effeminate young men, they attracted a very huge crowd that provoke

The Stonewall Inn was a gay bar in New York City and it was the starting place of the Gay Liberation Movement. In the 1970s gay men and lesbians started wanting equality because they faced lots of legal discrimination. They didn’t have equal rights because they couldn’t even have consensual sex with their partners and it was illegal in almost all states. So in 1969 police raided the Stonewall Inn and gay men fought the police and proclaimed “Gay Power.” This event caused riots between the New York City police and all the gay residents.

The riot began while the bystanders were throwing bottles at the police officers; by being surrounded by approximately 400 people the police officers had no choice but to barricade them within the bar while waiting for reinforcement. Even though there were other protests by gay groups, the Stonewall riots was the first time gays, lesbians, and transgender individuals saw the value of uniting behind a common cause, which invoked similar context to the civil rights and feminist movement.

The next major event was the birth of the movement, The Stonewall Riots, which was the mother of all LGBT-themed associates and groups. There have been a large number of eyewitness accounts, articles and stories of how the riot began and ended, as well as what it immediately brought about. People began to start doing “radical” acts, one man decided to begin writing his college papers in terms of having a prominent gay

The riots started at around 3 am on June 28th, 1969, at the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village in Brooklyn, New York City when police raided the inn, on the pretense of the bar’s lack of a liquor license. They began checking identification and taking people into the bar’s bathroom to determine their sex. The patrons of the bar were held outside as police threw the bar’s unstamped alcohol into patrol wagons. A crowd of Greenwich Village residents and the area’s homeless youth gathered to watch as the bar’s patrons were arrested.

It was approximately three a.m. on the twenty-eighth of June, 1969 when outside the Stonewall Inn, a monumental riot began. On Christopher Street in New York City, a police raid had just taken place in the gay bar due to the selling of liquor without a license, and arrests were made to anyone without a minimum of three articles of gender appropriate clothing on in accordance to New York law. This was one of several police raids that occurred in a gay bar in such a small amount of time, and the LGBT community made their anger very clear that morning. The event that took place as a result of these raids known as the Stonewall Riots became the catalyst for the Gay Liberation Front, and the Gay Activist Alliance, as well as many new

Stonewall became the cornerstone of the gay rights movement and became an emblem of gay and lesbian power. There have been many milestones in the gay community since the riots at Stonewall. One of those milestones being marriage equality. Since July 9, 2015, married same-sex couples in the U.S. have equal access to all the federal benefits that married opposite-sex couples have. The U.S. supreme court ruled in Obergefell v. Hodges that state-level bans on same-sex marriage are unconstitutional.

As previously stated, there were laws governing how people could dress. There was also an event similar to the Stonewall Riots in San Francisco three years before, the Compton riot. However, Stonewall is really seen as the beginning point for the LGBT+ rights movement of the sixties and seventies. The Stonewall Riots took place in the gay bar Stonewall Inn, which is located in Greenwich Village in New York City. Following a police raid, several riots broke out, with bottles and bricks being thrown at the police, and although the police called for backup, the riots lasted for about five days.

In the past decades, the struggle for gay rights in the Unites States has taken many forms. Previously, homosexuality was viewed as immoral. Many people also viewed it as pathologic because the American Psychiatric Association classified it as a psychiatric disorder. As a result, many people remained in ‘the closet’ because they were afraid of losing their jobs or being discriminated against in the society. According to David Allyn, though most gays could pass in the heterosexual world, they tended to live in fear and lies because they could not look towards their families for support. At the same time, openly gay establishments were often shut down to keep openly gay people under close scrutiny (Allyn 146). But since the 1960s, people

Until the last half of the 20th century, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender individuals were victims of discrimination in American society and in statutory laws, which limited their basic rights. On the night of June 28, 1969, police raided the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in New York’s Greenwich Village, and arrested three drag queens by using excessive force. Bar patrons and spectators, tired of police oppression, stood up and fought back. This was the first major protest based on equal rights for homosexuals. The Stonewall Riots became a turning point for the homosexual community in the United States sparking the beginning of the gay rights movement, and encouraged lesbian, gay, bisexual and transsexual, or "LGBT," to fight for their rights.

The gay liberation movement occurred in Greenwich Village, New York. In June 1969, police invaded the Stone Wall Inn, a bar for gays. The gay people at the club became angered by the police actions, because they felt that it was unprovoked harassment. They fought for several nights, refusing to have the bar closed. This incident, generally referred to as Stonewall, has been noted as the beginning of the awakening of gays into personal and sexual liberation.

Gay Americans had enough and were no longer going to live in fear or repression that society put on them. The riots took place at the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village and are considered to be the single most important event that led to the liberation of homosexuals. Because of the police raid and the proceeding violent acts, it ignited a fire within the LGBT community that they were no longer going to stand for what they had gone through. They began building alliances with other civil rights groups and protesting in the streets. The Stonewall riots finally gave them a platform to make their voices heard and so began the start of working toward LGBT

Political movements have changed and developed over time. Many have survived the decades, and are just as alive now as they were fifty years ago. The rights of women and people of color sparked movements dating back to the 1960s and earlier, and both are back in the spotlight today. Environmental activism became an important issue in the 1970s, and is still a concern today, although to a lesser extent. Although the gay rights discussion at the national level began following the Stonewall Riots in 1969, and Pride Parades began popping up nationwide shortly thereafter, LGBT individuals had no legal rights or protections before the increased activism of this decade (Dreier, 2015). Peace movements are also found in many different time periods, reflecting an ever-prevalent anti-war sentiment that becomes visible whenever our country engages in foreign conflict.