The Stonewall Riots Essay examples

Although most people who know about the Stonewall Riots see the riots as the “birthday

“The Mafia had apparently ;earned of the men’s sexual orientation and, knowing that the revelation of this secret would result in job dismissals, had begun blackmailing them.” (Bausum, Ann) Pine and Smythe were told to shut it down in order to eliminate the blackmailing. The Stonewall also had no license to sell liquor. In order to open the bar without one, the owners decided to open it as a bottle club, which meant that it was public and only members could get in. (Bausum, Ann) In order to restrict the type of people that were let in, they had to pass by the club’s bouncer, which just meant that they had to pay a little fee and sign a registration in order to get in. (Bausum, Ann) The Stonewall’s managers also paid police officers in order to provide protection from raids. While times were changing, the Stonewall was also. They added go-go dancers to add elements of the booming culture. On Tuesday, June 24th, Pine and Smythe raided the bar peacefully. The purpose of the raid was to collect information against Stonewall. They collected liquor and some employees. The began to gather information on the case that the bar wasn’t actually

Crime groups used the fragile times and division of the people to solicit money from gay clientele, and by the mid 60’s the Genovese crime family controlled more than half of the Greenwich Village gay bar including Stonewall Inn. Like some of the other inns Stonewall was a registered “bottle bar” or a bar that did not require a liquor license because its audience were to bring their own liquor. To keep the Inns false exclusivity and privacy the Genovese family would bribe the Sixth Precinct to keep quiet about what happens or more over what doesn’t happen at the Inn. Without the police the crime family could cut costs and blackmail those of a higher status for more money to keep their secret. Stonewall eventually became a very important part of Greenwich culture being cheap, large, and a place for runaway and homeless gay youth. Nevertheless, riots were still a part of the Greenwich lifestyle, usually the cops would tip off Mafia-ran bars, but in the case of the Stonewall Inn time wasn’t on their

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.

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

The conflict was between the police of New York City and Gay Right actives outside of the Stonewall Inn, a bar were the gay rights movement was born. In 1969, homosexual relationships was illegal in New York City. The gay bars were where gay men and lesbians could socialize in safe place away from the public harassment, but many of those bars were subject to regular police harassment. A gathering location for many young gay men, lesbians, and transgender individual was Stonewall Inn, in Greenwich Village, which was an establishment which would run without a liquor

General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson is best known for being a war hero and one of the South’s most outstanding figures of the Civil War. His war tactics, leadership, and success in battle cemented him as one of the most significant generals of early American history. Thomas was born on January 21, 1824, in Clarksburg, Virginia. Throughout his life he faced much adversity especially within his family with his older sister and father passing when he was of young age. In his late teens (1842) he enrolled at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. He graduated in 1846 after finding his way academically with much hard work. As Jackson was leaving West Point, the Mexican War was starting and he was sent to Mexico. During the war he was quickly recognized

The 1960’s was a decade of great change in America, from civil rights for African Americans to equal rights for women, the American people were rising up and discovering that their voice in the political discourse was just as important as those they elected to office. One other such group that awakened and challenged the existing status quo that kept them silent and scared were the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) communities across the country. From the first large-scale associations of LGBT individuals that formed in San Francisco in the 1950’s to the political and social groups that came to be following the Stonewall Riots of 1969, they would speak out and not allow themselves to be kept down anymore. The aim of this paper is to establish the events and opinions that led up to the uprising at the Stonewall Inn such as perceived and real discrimination by police, medical professionals, and society itself, what actually happened at Stonewall, and how they sparked the modern LGBT movement in the United States over the next half century to the present day.

Armed with a warrant, the police entered Stonewall looking for the illegal selling of alcohol. The police arrested employees and told the customers to leave. Unlike the other gay bars that were recently raided, the public did not go home quietly. Customers from the Stonewall Inn gathered on the streets and were soon joined by other village residents waiting to fight back. The crowd was extremely unhappy with what was going on so they retaliated. Coins, beer bottles, rocks, bricks, even parking meters were thrown at police officers. The crowd also shouted things like "pigs" and "faggot cops." The cops retreated inside the bar, which was then set afire by the crowd. In order for the police to show that they were still in control, they dragged

The Stonewall Riots highlighted a key issue in the late 1960s American society. Homosexuality was often seen as an illness and a sin to most people. For example, in April 1952 homosexuality was deemed a sociopathic mental disorder by the American Psychiatric Association (CNN). This idea was heightened in American society because it was being taught that being gay was one of the worst things an American can be; showing videos such as “Boys Beware”. This all changed after the conflict at the Stonewall Inn; located in New York on Christopher Street. The Stonewall Inn was the place where gays and lesbians would flock to, to feel accepted for once in their lives as many of them ran away or were disowned by their own families. Even though Stonewall was a place of freedom, it was also a place for fear as the police would constantly raid the bar to make sure that alcohol was not being served to gays, as the New York State Liquor Authority deemed it illegal to serve homosexuals. Lasting only three days, the riots were able to help start the transformation of American society to become what it is today. The lack of a formal compromise between the nation and the LGBT community was an advantage for the effects of Stonewall to spread as the conflict was able to bring a wave of acceptance and pushed many of history's gay role models to feel inspired to stand up.

Fifty years ago, in the early sixties, being gay was illegal in every providence in Canada, and in every single state in the United States. In the 1950’s, many gay individuals saw the men who had devoted their lives to being out and they knew what a horrible life that made for those men. This caused many gay men to “pass,” or live their entire lives in the closet. They would marry women for the soul purpose of protecting their secret. Before the stonewall riots, many Americans did not even believe gay people existed. Due to the lack of education and bigotry amongst Americans, being gay was very dangerous. Sexual acts in the gay community were commonly done in unsafe places and in public because they simply had nowhere else to go. Homosexuality was not just criminalized it was medicalized (Bawer). If you were gay, you could be subject to go into hospitals and were viewed by society as having a disability and a disease. In April of 1965, the very first gay protest took place in Washington DC. This protest was revolutionary and it began to pave the way for the future of gay men and women and reshape gay culture. In 1969, not long after the first gay protests of 1965, Canada decriminalized homosexual sexual acts in the privacy of one’s own home (Guerre). This was groundbreaking and gave the gay community hope that change was coming. Also, taking place in 1969 were the historic stonewall

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

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

The Stonewall Riots took place in Greenwich Village, New York in 1969. Police raided the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar run by the mafia, which outraged its many patrons and the people of the village. The patrons of the bar was not the only reason the Stonewall Inn got raided. Since it was illegal to sell alcohol to homosexuals, it was done illegally. The SLA, the state liquor authority, would not give liquor licenses to those who would sell to homosexuals. The Stonewall Inn owner, Fat Tony, combated this problem by saying the bar was a bottle club. A bottle club was where the patrons would bring their own bottles and get their alcohol from their privately owned stock. Violence broke out after 13 people were arrested and put into a wagon. "People in the crowd yelled at the police to stop. The officers responded by telling them to get off the street. Someone started throwing pocket change at the officers, and others began rocking the wagon" (Rede). Other villagers and patrons threw objects at the police, such as bricks and bottles, and chanted protests to the

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.