The city’s gay establishment did not participate, however, and distanced themselves from the transgender and street youths and their political organization, Vanguard, behind the “violent” protest.
In 1966, again in San Francisco, LGBTQ people rioted at Compton’s Cafeteria, smashing all the windows of a police car, setting fires, and picketing the restaurant for its collusion with police. This New Year’s Eve raid attracted wide media attention, garnered heterosexual support, and is credited with galvanizing local activists, but it was subsequently forgotten.
Crage detail four previous police raids on gay bars in cities across the United States that prompted activist responses-and local gains-but that either faded from local memory, did not inspire commemorations that lasted, or did not motivate activists in other cities.įor example, San Francisco activists mobilized in response to police raids on gay bars in the early 1960s, which came to a head during a raid on a New Year’s Eve ball in 1965 that eventually brought down the police commissioner. The story of how this particular night and this particular bar came to signify global gay rebellion is a story of how collective memory works and how social movements organize to commemorate their gains. Those nationally coordinated activist commemorations were evidence of an LGBTQ movement that had rapidly grown in strength during the 1960s, not a movement sparked by a single riot. It was not the first rebellion, but it was the first to be called “the first,” and that act of naming mattered. What was different about Stonewall was that gay activists around the country were prepared to commemorate it publicly. British activists can join Stonewall UK, for example, while pride parades in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland are called “Christopher Street Day,” after the street in New York City on which the Stonewall Inn still sits.īut there were gay activists before that early morning of June 28, 1969, previous rebellions of LGBTQ people against police, earlier calls for “gay power,” and earlier riots. In fact it is conventional to date LGBTQ history into “before Stonewall” and “after Stonewall” periods-not just in the United States, but in Europe as well.
The story is well known: A routine police raid of a mafia-owned gay bar in New York City sparked three nights of riots and, with them, the global gay rights movement. That said, we’ll still be there to ensure traffic safety and good order during this huge, complex event.Despite what you may hear during this year’s fiftieth anniversary commemorations, Stonewall was not the spark that ignited the gay rights movement. She added: “The idea of officers being excluded is disheartening and runs counter to our shared values of inclusion and tolerance. The New York police department commissioner apologised for the raid during a briefing in 2019, calling it “wrong, plain and simple”.ĭetective Sophia Mason, a spokesperson for the NYPD, said on Saturday the department’s “annual work to ensure a safe, enjoyable Pride season has been increasingly embraced by its participants”. The Queer Liberation march aimed for a protest vibe, saying the main Pride march was too heavily policed by the same department that raided Stonewall a half century earlier. In 2019, there were two marches in Manhattan after some in the community concluded that the annual parade had become too commercialised. Pride NYC’s announcement Saturday follows a division among organisers in recent years in planning for celebrations of LGBTQ+ pride in New York City. Pride season occurs this year amid activism inspired by the response to racial injustice and police brutality in the wake of George Floyd’s death last year at the hands of police in Minneapolis. The uprising is largely credited with fuelling the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement. Those marches came a year after the 1969 uprising outside Manhattan’s Stonewall Inn, a gay bar, in response to a police raid. The disruptions frustrated activists, who had hoped to collectively mark the 50th anniversary of the first Gay Pride parades and marches in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco in 1970.