Barbato1 Carole Barbato Professor Meritta Cullinan Cor 390 02 17/10/2013 STONEWALL

The Stonewall Riots were a series of violent protests and street demonstrations that began in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, and centered around a gay bar in the Greenwich Village section of New York City. These riots are widely credited with being the motivating force in the transformation of the gay political movement (Carter). Just after midnight, a police raid of the Stonewall Inn, a gay club located on New York City's Christopher Street turns violent as patrons and local sympathizers begin rioting against the police. Although the police were legally justified in raiding the club, which was serving liquor without a license among other violations, New York's gay community had grown weary of the police department targeting gay clubs, a majority of which had already been closed (Carter). The crowd on the street watched quietly as Stonewalls employees were arrested, but when a few drag queens and a lesbian were forced into the paddy wagon, the crowd began throwing bottles at the police. The officers were forced to take shelter inside the establishment, and two policemen were slightly injured before reinforcements arrived to disperse the mob (Wright). The protest, however, spilled over into the neighboring streets, and order was not restored until the

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deployment of New York's riot police. The so-called Stonewall Riot was followed by several days of demonstrations in New York and was the catalyst for the formation of the Gay Liberation Front as well as other gay, lesbian, and bisexual civil rights organizations. It is also regarded by many as history's first major protest on behalf of equal rights for homosexuals (Stonewall Uprising). The conflict over the next six days played out as a very gay variant of a classic New York street rebellion. It would see, fire hoses turned on people in the street, thrown barricades, gay cheerleaders chanting vulgar variants of New York City schoolgirl songs, Rockette style kick lines in front of the police, the throwing of a firebomb into the bar, a police officer throwing his gun at the mob, cries of "Fag power," and "Liberate the bar!", and smashed windows, uprooted parking meters, thrown pennies (at the officers because they took bribes), frightened and angry policemen, arrested mobsters, thrown cobblestones and bottles, the singing of "We Shall Overcome" and a drag queen hitting a police officer on the head with her purse (Carter). Why the Stonewall? It has been stated that is was the unique nature of the Stonewall. This club was more than a dance bar, more than just a gay gathering place. It catered largely to a group of people who are not welcome in, or cannot afford, other places of homosexual social gathering. The "drags" and the "queens", two groups which would find a chilly reception or a barred door at most of the other gay bars and clubs, formed the "regulars" at the Stonewall. Another group was even more dependent on the Stonewall, the very young homosexuals and those with no other homes. You've got to be 18 to buy a drink in a bar, and gay life revolved

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around bars. Where do you go if you are 17 and gay? The legal bars won't let you in the place, and gay restaurants and the streets aren't very sociable. Then too, there were hundreds of young homosexuals in New York who literally had no home. Most of them are between 16 and 25, and came here from other places without jobs or money (Wright). Many of them are running away from unhappy homes (one boy stated that, "My father called me cocksucker so many times, he thought it was his name.") (Carter). Some got thrown out of school or the service for being gay and couldn't face going home. Some were even thrown out of their homes with only the clothes on their backs by ignorant, narrow-minded parents who'd rather see their kid dead than homosexual. They came to New York with the clothes on their backs. Some of them hustled, or had skills enough to get a job. Others weren't attractive enough to hustle, and didn't manage to fall in with people who could help them. Some of them, excited at the openness of gay life in New York, got caught up in it and some were on pills and drugs. Some were still wearing the clothes in which they came here a year or more ago (Stonewall Uprising). Jobless and without skills, without decent clothes to wear to a job interview, they live in the streets, panhandling or shoplifting for the price of admission to the Stonewall. That was the one advantage to the place, for a small admission, one could stay inside, out of the winter's cold or the summer heat, all night long. Not only was the Stonewall better climatically, but it also saved the kids from spending the night in a doorway or from getting arrested as vagrants. A few dollars isn't too hard to get panhandling, and nobody hustled drinks in the Stonewall. Once the

Barbato4 admission price was paid, one could drink or not, as he chose. The Stonewall became "home" to these kids. When it was raided, they fought for it because they had nothing to lose (Wright). The true legacy of the Stonewall Riots is the ongoing struggle for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender equality. While this fight is far from over, it is now a worldwide movement that has won many significant victories (N.J. same sex marriage legalized today!!), most of them flowing from those six days in the summer of 1969 when gay people found the courage to stand up for themselves on the streets of Greenwich Village. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlVBg7_08n0 This is a video released this past summer I think you will enjoy, maybe you heard the song already.

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Work Cited

Carter, David. Stonewall The Riots That Sparked The Gay Revolution. 1st. New York, New York: St. Martin's Press, 2004. Print. Stonewall Uprising. Pbs, Film. 20 Oct 2013. <www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/stonewall>. Wright, Lionel. "The Stonewall Riots-1969 A Turning Point in the struggle for Gay and Lesbian Liberation." Social Alternatives.org. N.p.. Web. 20 Oct 2013. <http://socialistalternative.org/literature/stonewall.html>.