headline: 3 cops hurt as bar raid riles crowd
picture caption: crowd attempts to impede police arrests outside the stonewall inn, christopher street
June 26, 1969
On the night of June 26, 1969, along with a few nights afterwards, police raided the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village, New York, in an attempt to disperse the gay crowd that the bar attracted and sheltered. The police were acting on information that the Stonewall Inn did not possess the proper New York State Liquor License, which made selling alcohol to the bar patrons illegal.
The gay, lesbian, and transgender patrons of all ethnicities resisted the police which led to 13 arrests. A riot immediately broke out, complete with fighting the cops to trying to tip over the police vehicle. A kick line began (a representation of chorus girls from Broadway), complete with baudy lyrics in an effort to taunt the police.
Michael Fader, a participant in the riot, later said, "We all had a collective feeling like we'd had enough of this kind of shit. It wasn't anything tangible anybody said to anyone else, it was just kind of like everything over the years had come to a head on that one particular night in the one particular place, and it was not an organized demonstration.... Everyone in the crowd felt that we were never going to go back."
The picture above was taken on the night of the Stonewall Riots and featured on the front page of the New York Daily News newspaper. Notice the headline and caption reference the newspaper editors put on the page in reference to the police injuries.
The gay, lesbian, and transgender patrons of all ethnicities resisted the police which led to 13 arrests. A riot immediately broke out, complete with fighting the cops to trying to tip over the police vehicle. A kick line began (a representation of chorus girls from Broadway), complete with baudy lyrics in an effort to taunt the police.
Michael Fader, a participant in the riot, later said, "We all had a collective feeling like we'd had enough of this kind of shit. It wasn't anything tangible anybody said to anyone else, it was just kind of like everything over the years had come to a head on that one particular night in the one particular place, and it was not an organized demonstration.... Everyone in the crowd felt that we were never going to go back."
The picture above was taken on the night of the Stonewall Riots and featured on the front page of the New York Daily News newspaper. Notice the headline and caption reference the newspaper editors put on the page in reference to the police injuries.
Riots and police raids had become so commonplace that the Stonewall Riots initially did not receive much newspaper coverage or national attention. It was only when a year after the riot, in 1970, that a group of 5,000 gay, lesbian, and transvestite supporters gathered together and marched up New York City's Sixth Avenue in order to draw nationwide attention to the riots. Stonewall is now seen as a modern-day turning point in the gay activism community, which finally led the community to openly say, "No more persecution!" The march down Sixth Avenue paved the way for Pride parades, which have become commonplace demonstrations of LGBT support.
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