Stonewall
June 28, 1969

The Stonewall Riots were a series of spontaneous and violent demonstrations by members of the LGBTQIA+ community against a police raid that took place in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, at the Stonewall Inn in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City. While not the first of such demonstrations, these riots are widely considered to be a pivotal event in the fight for LGBTQIA+ rights and the modern LGBTQIA+ liberation movement.
  • The original Stonewall was Bonnie’s Stone Wall (or Bonnie’s Stonewall) located at 91 Seventh Avenue South, opened in 1930 by Vincent Bonavia.  Theories state that it may have been named after Mary Casel’s autobiography The Stone Wall, which is the first known autobiography of a lesbian published in the United States.  Historian David Carter wrote that this was possibly an attempt to subtly welcome queer women.  Bonnie’s Stonewall was a speakeasy that illegally sold alcohol during prohibition and after prohibition was repealed, Bonavia relocated to 51-53 Christopher Street in 1934.

    At its new location, it became one of the most notorious tearooms in Greenwich Village during the early 1930s. The location hosted various weddings, banquets, and other events, including a dinner for the Greenwich Village Association in 1935.  By the 1940s, the name had been changed to Bonnie’s Stonewall Inn and then the Stonewall Inn Restaurant by the 1960s.  However, the block was sold in 1965 and the Stonewall Inn Restaurant was closed by the following year.

    After its closure, Tony Lauria (aka “Fat Tony”) a member of the Genovese crime family, bought the location in 1966 with the intent of turning it into a gay bar.  Stonewall was one of several gay bars operated by the Genovese crime family in New York and since the 1930s, Greenwich Village had been a safe haven for queer individuals.  But, since New York state law in 1960 did now allow bartenders to serve alcohol to queer people, the owners of Stonewall did not purchase a liquor license.  State law did, however, allow members of private “bottle clubs” to bring their own alcoholic beverages, so the owners acquired a private club's license from the New York State Liquor Authority (NYSLA).  At the time, the NYSLA considered any queer person in a bar as engaging in disorderly conduct and those arrested risked losing their jobs, housing, and family.  Police raids often forced gay bars to close, except those run by the mobsters that paid off police officers to generally leave them alone.

    Stonewall was officially opened as a gay bar on March 18, 1967.  The owners had renovated the location, blacking out the windows for privacy and reinforcing the wooden front doors with steel plates in anticipation of police raids.  They also added peepholes and several locks to the doors, and put 2x4s in the windows to prevent police from coming through.  The bouncers at the door would only admit those that “looked gay”, had visited the club before, or had someone who could vouch for them.  Most of the patrons were men in their teens or early twenties, though Stonewall did allow in women and transgender individuals.  To maintain the illusion that the bar was a members-only “bottle club”, patrons were required to sign their names in a book upon entry, but real names were rarely used.  This led to a book full of names like Donald Duck, Elizabeth Taylor, and Judy Garland. 

    The location quickly became one of the more popular gay bars in New York City, being in a good location, and the only one to allow dancing.  But remember - Stonewall was a bar run by the mafia to make money by taking advantage of those with nowhere else to go.  There was no running water behind the bars, so glasses were rinsed off in tubs of dirty water and immediately reused.  There were no fire exits, and the toilets often backed up.  The drinks were overpriced and watered down (and made of alcohol that was likely stolen), and management regularly blackmailed the more wealthy patrons. 

    Even though the mafia paid off the local police around $1,200 a month (about $11,285 today), Stonewall was raided about once a month, but the bar was usually notified ahead of time.  Raids typically occurred earlier enough in the evening that business could commence once the police had left, replacing any confiscated alcohol with bottles that had been hidden nearby.  The bar was equipped with white flood lights and during raids, the lights were turned on and customers were lined up with their identification cards ready to be checked. Anyone without identification was often arrested, as well as people who did not wear at least three pieces of “gender-conforming clothing”, such as men in full drag.  Those arrested during raids were typically released after a few hours, so the staff was unconcerned about being detained.

    Raids often increased during election seasons and the mayoral campaign during June of 1969 saw a rise in not only raids on gay bars, but also straight bars frequented by minorities.  This caused several clubs in Greenwich Village to close.
  • During the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, the NYPD’s 6th Precinct acted upon a warrant to raid the bar because it was illegally serving liquor, with later accounts stating that the raid was caused by an anonymous tip that the Mafia was trading stolen bonds.  It was the first time the NYPD did not give the managers advance notice of a raid and around 1:20 a.m, a team of eight undercover officers raided the bar.  The police lined up the patrons as usual, but the raid did not continue as planned.  Patrons refused to show their IDs, so the police decided to take most everyone there to the station.   However, patrol wagons took longer to arrive than expected, resulting in people waiting in line for about 15 minutes.  The people not being taken to the station were released, but did not leave.  Instead, they gathered outside the bar, and a crowd began to grow.   

    By the time the first police wagon arrived, the crowd outside had grown to about 10 times the number of people that were being arrested.  As mafia members were loaded into the first police wagon, the crowd reacted with general good humor mixed with growing hostility.  A person in drag hit an officer on the head with her purse after being shoved, and the officer reacted by clubbing her over the head with his baton.  The crowd began to boo, and author Edmund White, who had been walking by, later stated, "Everyone's restless, angry, and high-spirited. No one has a slogan, no one even has an attitude, but something's brewing.”

    A scuffle broke out when a butch lesbian in handcuffs was escorted from the door of the bar to the waiting police wagon, escaping repeatedly and fighting with four police officers.  While reports vary, the woman may have been Stormé DeLarverie, and she encouraged the crowd to fight by yelling to the bystanders “Why don’t you guys do something?!” 

    The police tried to restrain some of the crowd and ended up knocking a few people down, which angered bystanders even more.   A rumor began to spread through the crowd that bar patrons were still inside the bar, being beaten by the police.  Soon pennies, then beer bottles, were thrown at the wagon. The police began to lash out, attacking some of the crowd. 

    Some of the people already in handcuffs escaped when they were left unattended, and the crowd tried to overturn one of the police wagons.  The police eventually barricaded themselves, a column writer for The Village Voice, and several handcuffed detainees inside the bar for their own safety while hundreds of people rioted, breaching the barricades and attempting to set fire to the building multiple times (although some reports state that the police themselves were also trying to set fire to the building).  Eventually, the fire department put out the flames and a riot squad cleared the crowd around 4:00 a.m. 
     
    During the riots, almost everything in the Stonewall Inn was broken and what little liquor remained was given away for free afterward.  The windows were covered with boards the night of the riots, and graffitied messages in support of LGBT rights and gay bars appeared on the bar's front the next day.  Another demonstration took place on June 29 and it attracted hundreds of protesters.  Due to inclement weather, there were sporadic demonstrations all over Greenwich Village for the next few days.  Another riot took place on July 2 that ended on July 3 when the NYPD dispersed the protests.
  • On June 28, 1970, the one-year anniversary, thousands of people marched from the Stonewall Inn to Central Park in the “Christopher Street Liberation Day,” America’s first gay pride parade. The parade’s official chant was: “Say it loud, gay is proud.”

    In recognition of the area’s contribution to gay rights, Stonewall Inn, Christopher Park, and the surrounding streets and sidewalks were designated a national monument in 2016 by then-President Barack Obama.

    Shortly before the 50th anniversary of the riots in 2019, an apology was issued by James P. O’Neill, the New York City police commissioner, on behalf of the NYPD saying, “The actions taken were wrong — plain and simple.”

    Even though the Stonewall uprising wasn’t the first public outcry against queer discrimination, it became a driving force for activism, leading to the formation of a number of gay rights organizations, such as the Gay Liberation Front, Human Rights Campaign, GLAAD (formerly Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation), and PFLAG (formerly Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays).  In addition to organizing public demonstrations in protest of the lack of civil rights for gay individuals, these organizations often publicly confronted political officials and disrupted public meetings in an attempt to challenge and to change the popular opinions of the times. Rights and respect from the government were no longer being politely  requested, but angrily and loudly demanded. 

  • Judy Garland’s death caused the riots
    • False.  Even though her funeral was held the day before the riots, Judy Garland’s death had nothing to do with them.  That did not prevent the two events from being tied together for years.  On July 10, 1969, Walter Troy Spencer opened his column in the Village Voice by writing “The combination of a full moon and Judy Garland’s funeral was too much for them”.

    Marsha P. Johnson or Sylvia Rivera threw a shot glass (or a brick) into a mirror and started the riots.
    • False.  In later interviews, both Johnson and Rivera say they didn’t arrive until after the riots were well underway.  While not present at the outset, Marsha P. Johnson did on the following night, climb a lamppost to drop a bag with bricks in it onto a police car, shattering the windshield. 

    Stonewall was the beginning of the gay rights movement.
    No one really knows how many people were involved.
    • True.  Due to the fact that the bar did not keep track of how many people were in the bar at any given moment, it is impossible to say how many people were there.  Then take into account all the people that had gathered outside the bar at the beginning - there is no way to know how many had gathered, how many had left, and how many had joined in later.

    The first Pride was a Riot (that riot being Stonewall).
    • False. Craig Rodwell and Ellen Broidy were the original visionaries behind the idea of Pride. They drafted a resolution to be presented at the Eastern Regional Conference of Homophile Organizations in Philadelphia. This resolution led to the formation of the Christopher Street Gay Liberation Day committee, which organized the first Pride event one year after Stonewall.