A June 1969 police raid of the New York bar erupted into a days-long rebellion that lit a fire under the fight for LGBTQ rights.
Stonewall Inn is draped with a sign declaring"Pride is a riot!" — a reminder the first Pride began with the Stonewall Riots of 1969 and ushered in the LGBTQ rights movement.
Each June, Pride Month honors the history of Stonewall with parades and events. In the years since the uprising, LGBTQ activists pushed for—and largely achieved—a broad expansion of their legal rights, and in June 2015, the Supreme Court issued a landmark ruling guaranteeing same-sex couples the right to marry.LGBTQ people had long been subject to social sanction and legal harassment for their sexual orientation, which had been criminalized on the pretexts of religion and morality.
The Stonewall Inn was grubby and barely legal. Located in Greenwich Village, the heart of gay life in New York at the time, its patrons were among the most marginalized members of New York’s LGBTQ community—including underaged and unhoused individuals, people of color, and drag performers.Dick Leitsch, the first gay journalist to document the events. “It catered largely to a group of people who are not welcome in, or cannot afford, other places of homosexual social gathering.
Regardless of who started the uprising, the police raid did not go according to plan. As violence flared outside the bar, officers retreated inside and barricaded themselves in the building. Protesters burst through the barricade, exchanged blows with police, and lit a fire in the club. It took hours for officers to clear the streets. The next night, thousands came to the Stonewall Inn to taunt the police. Clashes broke out again that night and sporadically in the days that followed.
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