Early in the morning of June 28, 1969, the habitual bar raids continued to occur in the streets of New York. However, one raid soon took a different turn compared to all the previous raids. The LGBT community had enough and decided to take a stand against the unjust acts of the New York Police Department, which would forever change LGBT history. The Stonewall Riots were preceded by several years of mistreatment, and began when a beloved gay bar was raided; this created a major impact on LGBT rights and activism. LGBT Americans have been prejudiced against long before the Stonewall Riots. Those who identified as a person in this community would be sent to mental institutions and affectionate acts between these individuals often led to …show more content…
In addition, Stonewall had many problems, including a nonexistent fire exit and extremely watered down drinks. Despite this, the Stonewall Inn was still cherished by many. The Saturday morning the Stonewall Inn was raided ignited the LGBT individuals’ anger. The owners were not notified of the raid and employees that illegally sold alcohol proceeded to be arrested by police. Bar patrons were being beaten and arrested by police due to their sexual orientations and wearing what was not deemed gender appropriate. A total of thirteen people were arrested that morning. Instead of leaving the area, furious onlookers decided to take action. As officers forced a lesbian into a police van she shouted, “Why don’t you guys do something!” Then, crowds began to form and throw objects at police, which included bottles and rocks. In addition to that, pennies were thrown at police by the crowd to mock the corrupt police officers. To protect themselves from debris, officers barricaded themselves in the bar and called for reinforcements. This was futile because the mob repeatedly broke through the barricade and set fire to the bar. When reinforcements arrived, they were able to take out the fire but were unable to stop the riot. Every time they dispersed the crowd in front of them, a new one would form behind them in minutes. The riots persisted for six days:
The Stonewall became "home" to these kids. When it was raided, they fought for it. That, and
At the time, homosexuality was still considered to be taboo. The Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in New York, was raided and shut down by police quite frequently. The members of the bar had eventually grown sick of the harassment, so they began to fight back. The next day, over a thousand people were back. The Stonewall Riots began to inspire activists to form various gay rights advocacy groups. One year after the Stonewall Riots, the very first documented pride parades in the United States began to take place. They occurred in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and by the Stonewall Inn, the same bar that the riots had occurred at one year
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.
In the book Gay Rights it states, “In 1969, the year the stonewall rebellion occurred, there were only 50 gays and lesbian organizations with a few thousands of members in the entire country.” It means that they were finally taking a stand and ready to fight back. What happened in the Stonewall is in June 28 1969 there was a gay club called the Stonewall. Police started to attack the gay and lesbians. Then after that the crowd of people started to throw bottles at the police. If I was there I would have done so much worse than that. There is one of the main events in the 1960’s Gay
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
Before continuing onto an analysis of how the Stonewall Riots happened and what came of them, one must first take a closer look at the events and opinions that came before and brought upon the anger and frustration that many LGBT individuals felt on that fateful night. According to many historians, the years before Stonewall were considered a “dark age” for LGBT individuals, where their very existence was
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.
In the early morning of June 28th 1969, the Stonewall Inn was raided by police -specifically the mayor’s “Public Morals Squad”- under the pretense of maintaining alcohol sales laws, this time, without warning (Staff). Raids were common, enough so that a man who was present at the Stonewall Riots later wrote, “Like other patrons, I had taken in stride the occasional raids…[after signal lights went off]...dancing and touching of any kind instantly stopped, and the police stalked arrogantly through, glaring from side to side…”(Duberman). However, this night was different.
Stonewall Riots: the Events that Sparked the LGBTQ+ Rights Movement When most think of the gay rights movement of today, most realize that it is all very progressive, and many people, regardless of gender or sexuality, fully support the movement. Although this is the case now, things for the LGBTQ+ community have not always this accepting. According to a popular news website, "[The LGBTQ+ community] were viewed as some kind of freak show," said Tommy Lanigan-Schmidt. "Something to be avoided." (cbsnews.com) Around the mid 20th century and before, anyone who did not identify, or was suspected of not identifying as straight was highly discriminated against, and, in most cases, persecuted.
Stonewall is known as the riot that kickstarted the movement for gay rights in America in 1969. Throughout the 1960’s the gay community was targeted for their homosexual activities because this went against the common beliefs of the people. Most of the population had the Christian belief that being interested in the same sex was against God’s will. This caused discrimination throughout the nation between members of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender plus (LGBT+) community and the rest of the country. Due to this discrimination, many LGBT+ members felt like their rights were being violated by the government. On June 28, 1969 at the Stonewall Inn in Manhattan, New York City, the community decided to fight back for their rights. They
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