Timeline
- During the 1950s and 1960s people were not allowed to be openly gay
- It was illegal to serve Gay people alcohol or for Gays to dance with each other
- Gay establishments were shut down and raided on a regular basis
- Individuals without identification or dressed full drag, were arrested during raids
- On June 28, 1969 at 1:20 AM the police raided the Stonewall Inn bar in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City
- Gay customers had finally grown tired of the harassment from police and started to resist
- While waiting on the police wagon over 1,000 people gathered just outside the bar
- The last straw was a policeman who hit a lesbian on the head with a club after she complained her hand cuffs were to tight. Policemen then pick her up and heaved her to the wagon
- Gay men and women started throwing objects at policemen shouting “gay power”
- The police officers barricaded themselves in the Stonewall Inn
- Only after the Tactical Police Force of the New York City Police Department finally arrived
- Order was only restored after the New York riot police were deployed
- lasted 7 days
- Regarded by many as history’s first major protest on behalf of equal rights for homosexuals
- Led to the short lived Gay Liberation Front which was the first organization to use the word “Gay” in its name
- On first anniversary of the Stonewall event, the first gay pride parades in US history took place in LA, Chicago, San Francisco, and New York
- This stated gay support groups in major cities in the US