Management typically bribed police to tip them off in advance so they could turn on the lights and interrupt dancing, which could risk arrest.īut there was no tip the night of the raid that launched the six-day uprising.īy the late 1960s, the gay rights movement was building momentum across the United States. And then they let the drag queens in," Johnson said in an interview in 1979 with Marcusīecause it served gay customers, police raids were common.
GAY PRIDE NAILS CUTE FULL
And they rarely dressed in full garb, mindful not just of street harassment, but of a law that forbade wearing more than three pieces of clothing associated with the opposite sex. Transgender people were occasional customers, but in that era, they self-identified as drag queens or transvestites, not transgender. He says most of the clientele was like him: gay, white and cisgender. Robert Bryan moved to New York in 1968 for the "dancing and cute boys" at Stonewall. The drinks were watered down and overpriced.īut none of that mattered to patrons because it was one of the few places where they could dance.
GAY PRIDE NAILS CUTE WINDOWS
It had no running water and its windows were boarded so no one could see inside. Stonewall was not the only gay bar in Greenwich Village and it wasn't the nicest. To get around state regulations that prohibited gay people from being served alcoholic beverages, mafioso "Fat Tony" Lauria operated the Stonewall Inn as a private club, taking its name from the previous bar-restaurant so he wouldn't have to change the sign. The Mafia stepped in to reap the benefits. Despite progressive winds sweeping the nation, New York was notorious for its strict enforcement of anti-homosexual laws that made it risky for gay people to congregate in public, let alone at a bar. The Stonewall Inn opened as a gay club in 1967 in the heart of Manhattan's bohemian Greenwich Village neighborhood Robert Bryan joined the crowd outside the Stonewall Inn on June 28, 1969, when a police raid took an unexpected turn. JohnsonĪnd Sylvia Rivera, pioneering transgender activists. " podcast, which includes interviews with the late Marsha P. " Eric Marcus is the creator of the " Making Gay History David Carter spent 10 years researching and interviewing witnesses for " Stonewall: The Riots That Sparked the Gay Revolution To nail down what we know, CNN spoke to three people. But many of those people are no longer around to tell us their story of what happened. In reality, Stonewall galvanized a generation of activists into forming a mass civil rights movement. In the late 1960s, it was still illegal in most states to be gay, not a single law protected gay people from discrimination and there were no openly gay politicians or pop culture icons. The media coverage of what is now called the Stonewall riots reflected the era's homophobic attitudes. It's easy to forget its solemn origins as a march that commemorated clashes between police and protesters outside a New York Pride these days is synonymous with rainbow-saturated celebrations