How It All Began: A Brief History on The Stonewall Uprising and The Origin of Pride

By Mihika Vyas, Press & Written Media Team

The Stonewall Uprising

In the wee hours of June 28, 1969, nine policemen raided the Stonewall Inn, a gay pub that was located in the neighborhood of Greenwich Village in New York City. The raid catalyzed an uprising among patrons of Stonewall and Greenwich Village residents, as police entered the bar and arrested its employees for reportedly operating without a liquor license. In addition to the inn’s staff, many Stonewall frequenters were taken into custody, based on a New York criminal statute that had enabled the arrest of any individual not wearing at least three articles of “gender-appropriate clothing”.

As bar patrons were herded into police vehicles, the angered crowd outside the bar began to throw bottles and debris in protest and resistance to the actions of the police. In response to the commotion, the officers barricaded themselves in the bar as they radioed for back-up. Despite this, the barricade was breached multiple times, and the Stonewall Inn was even set on fire. The riots outside the inn continued on for the next five days and eventually came to be known as a galvanizing force in the battle for the equality of sexual minorities.

The Gay Rights Movement in America

America during the 1960s was no stranger to incidents like these, and neither were its preceding decades. In 1923, German immigrant Henry Gerber founded the first documented gay rights organization in the United States. The group, called the Society for Human Rights, was located in Chicago. It was also the birthplace of a publication for gay people. However, the society was broken up by the police just eight months after its conception, and Gerber’s home was raided.

In New York City, for example, the solicitation of same-sex relations was illegal. While gay bars, clubs and other forms of entertainment establishments existed and were peopled with members of the LGBTQIA+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer or questioning, intersex, asexual or ally and other orientations) community, the New York State Liquor Authority were known to penalize institutions that served alcohol to suspected LGBTQIA+ individuals, arguing that their gatherings were “disorderly”.

However, the 1960s saw the radicalization of gay politics due to the influence of the Black Power movement, second-wave feminism and protests against the Vietnam War.

Over in Los Angeles, a 1967 police raid on the Black Cat Tavern was protested after undercover cops tore down the bar’s decorations, assaulted its customers and arrested 14 people. The raid also motivated the creation of The Advocate, a leading national LGBTQIA+ magazine. The year 1966 brought the rioting to a cafeteria in San Francisco due to its collusion with police. While Compton’s Cafeteria was well-populated by drag queens and transgender women, the staff would often call the police in hopes of urging them to leave. One of the earliest examples of transgender individuals retaliating against police harassment took place here, when a police officer attempted to remove a drag queen from the cafeteria’s premises. The drag queen challenged the officer by throwing coffee in his face, provoking a riot between the police and Compton’s customers. People reportedly flipped tables and threw cutlery while drag queens — armed with their purses — fought off police officers. Out on the streets, the crowd had managed to set a newsstand on fire and damage a cop car.

In Washington, LGBTQIA+ veterans picketed the Pentagon with signs that would read “homosexual citizens want to serve their country too,” and made it onto national television. The New York chapter of the first national gay rights organization, the Mattachine Society (founded in 1951 in Los Angeles), achieved the right of homosexual individuals to gather in public after they coordinated a “sip-in” at Julius’ Bar in 1966. Their decision to challenge the New York Liquor Authority’s regulation with this sip-in was inspired by a tactic from the civil rights movement. The chapter even invited press to the event and went on to sue the New York Liquor Authority when bartenders refused to serve the men of the Mattachine Society. Timothy Stewart-Winter, an assistant professor of history at Rutgers University, Newark, deemed the event “one of the first high-profile gay protests.”

While Stonewall was neither the very first place homophobia was challenged, nor was it the first gay rights rebellion, the uprising was different as organizers and gay activists across the country commemorated the riot into a national event. This national realization is demonstrative of the extent to which the LGBTQIA+ movement had grown through the 1960s.

The Origin of Pride

In the beginning of 1965, LGBTQIA+ activists in Philadelphia began conducting annual pickets of the Independence Hall on the Fourth of July as a means to protest the way in which the state discriminated against homosexual individuals. Known as “Annual Reminders”, Philadelphia activists voted in 1969 to shift the picketing event to parade in the streets on the anniversary of Stonewall. After vowing to secure a parade permit in New York, calling the occasion Christopher Street Liberation Day, the organizers reached out to activist groups in Chicago and Los Angeles to do the same.

But this gathering would be different. Despite the fact that the Annual Reminders were some of the largest LGBTQIA+ rallies, they looked vastly different from the pride we know today. The Annual Reminders were somber events that occurred in silence. Participants were supposed to dress in a “non-threatening” manner and had to adhere to gender-normative dress codes. Organizers of these new marches encouraged attendees to dress as themselves. Katherine McFarland Bruce, author of “Pride Parades: How a Parade Changed the World”, wrote that most marchers donned everyday wear, while some wore “flamboyant costumes” and carried signs reading “Gay Pride”.

The march on Christopher St. Liberation Day covered around 50 blocks; it began at Washington Place, between Sheridan Square and Sixth Avenue, and ended in Central Park. With the number of attendees that attended the march in New York, and concurrent marches in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Chicago, these movements led to hundreds of Pride parades all over the world. Year by year, as more cities joined the festivities, the parades became more celebratory in nature. And while Pride has definitely looked a little different this year due to COVID-19, the legacy of these transformative movements will never fail to support members of the LGBTQIA+ community finding pride in who they are.

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