The Night the Stonewall Inn Became a Proud Shrine

From a marketing perspective, I'm glad they rioted at the Stonewall Inn and not The Sewer.

While I do not discount the effect the Stonewall riots had on the American conscience, I have to wonder at people's sense of proportion. June 28 is also the anniversary of the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, which started the road to WW One, killing uncounted millions of people and fundamentally altering the political map of Europe. It is also the anniversary ot the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, which ended that war and set the stage for the rise of Nazi Germany and the second World War, leading to an even greater number of deaths. I see an entire newsletter devoted to Stonewall, and not even one article to either of the above. The triumph, I suppose, of the sensational over the historic.

Every oppressive regime has a due date! I wonder what outrageous action will convince the American people to rise up and take to the streets against the madness of "king" trump and say: Enough! Disparagement of war heroes: Nothing! Disgusting comments and abuses of women: Nothing! Blatant racism: Nothing! Children forced to live in squalor at the border: Nothing! Babies die trying to escape to a better life: Nothing! Credible allegations of rape: Nothing! What will it take for the American people to wake up and realize they are being fed a con job by the most despicable president (and his entire family of grifters) to ever occupy the WH?

I waa living in. New York at the. The year before “Hair” had summed up oue disgust with the rotten system unde LBJ. As now, many were tired of the political ch atades. My family had disowned me and I was afraid of being drafted. Gkermany had thenrescinded 😄 Praragraph 175 ,..of the penal code I was anle to hand over a letter whicih I had translated into German, thanking them for their progressivke stance.s

This article appears fundamentally dishonest. First, it completely ignores the extensive accounts by Stonewall patrons me other gay men and women, and trans people, of the grotesquely predatory and corrupt treatment they received from NYPD officers. The entire policy of raiding gay bars was part of a strategy to marginalize and beat down that population. These accounts are well-documented, and these severe civil rights violations fueled the riot/uprising. To read this article, one could think that Stonewall was all about a bunch of patrons angry because their unlicenced bar was raised for liquor law violations. Absurd. Second, the article completely ignores more recent, widely-discussed allegations that the role of Black and Latinx patrons played in leading the Stonewall uprising has been whitewashed. This issue has also been widely discussed. By simply ignoring these issues, this article and its author have outed themselves as simply not credible on this subject.

The key role played by black and brown LGTBQ at Stonewall has been diminished and marginalized. And they can't hide their color aka race in any closet.

I feel that today, an uprising of this kind, would be met with a less restrained attitude from the police. Inspector Pine's "not to shoot" order is near-impossible to envision, replaced instead with all manners of anti-riot tactics and the potential for real violence to erupt, and real harm done to those involved. Given the social and political climate of the 1960s, it is indeed amazing that things went down as they did. Long live the spirit of Stonewall!

It's very interesting how history is told. I was a teenager growing up in NY soon after this. The stories I recall are about police humiliation of the patrons. Everyone just got sick of it and started throwing punches. Remember, back in those days summer in the city could be very unpleasant. I never heard about the Mob connection until recently. But that all makes sense, including the stories of unpaid brides/police extortion. That's how the city worked in those days. The stories I heard often included a very young, confused kid,"Puerto Rican", who the cops, mostly out of a personal sense of revulsion, started knocking around in front of everybody. Perhaps this is the "woman" in the patrol car. Anyway, the older patrons felt rather protective of the younger, struggling, ones. At this point the crowd exploded. The Dave Van Ronk connection is new to me. He was a acquaintance of my Dad, also a patron of the Lion's Head. I'd love to know what became of the Puerto Rican kid.

David Carter's book explains that the nefarious manager of the bar - Eddie Murphy - was running a gay blackmail ring our of the bar. The targets of the blackmail were well-to-do Wall Streeters and other closeted business types. When the ring tried to entrap a guy with City Hall connections, the police were ordered to go into the bar and get the into the office, for either the records or for other documentation that would let them shut the ring down. So - again - it's ironic: if it hadn't been for a well-to-do gay white guy, that raid might never have taken place.

I'm very confused... According to this article, the police raided the Stonewall because the Mafia-run bar was selling illegal liquor and they wanted to crack down on a mob-owned business. Then, the crowd that had been ushered across the street decided to riot and started throwing things at the cops and turning over their cars. The cops ended up hiding inside the bar to avoid being injured by the unruly crowd outside. Someone in the crowd tried to burn them out, but the cops restrained themselves and a no-shoot order was issued. Then, the riot squad showed up. How is this in any way, shape, or form the story of a liberation movement? This is the story of a bunch of drunks rioting and trying to kill cops. And yet, the cops apologized? Really? This isn't the history I've been led to believe, nor is it the history conveyed in most of the comment accompanying this article. This is the history of an anti-police riot, where people starting attacking cops who were just doing their job. Again: The cops were after the Mafia and illegal liquor. And, if people believe this was the moment the gay rights movement was born, then the cops should be thanked, not vilified. This is all very confusing to me.

This is a terrible article that seems to tell the entire story from the police's point of view and leaves out important details that characterize the story. The police officers were raiding Stonewall because they used to get kickbacks/bribes from the Genovese crime family and those had stopped. That's how the employees would usually avoid capture - they usually were tipped off and new when the police were coming! The police officers usually rounded up patrons and subjected them to humiliation, harassing them for ID and forcing them to show their genitals, then arresting then for cross dressing. The woman who escaped the patrol car was hit by the cops with a baton. She charged the crowd to 'do something.' people were throwing coins because the knew the cops came because they weren't bring paid off anymore. There's more - go read one of the many actually good accounts of Stonewall. Even Wikipedia has this stuff. Most egregious is the article leaving out the reason for the riot. The patrons were extra unruly because they were TIRED of the police constantly harassing them just because they could.

"A mobster named Fat Tony with the Genovese crime family had bought the place two years earlier for a song — it had been a restaurant damaged in a fire — and reopened it as a gay bar. The mob owned most of the city’s gay bars, running them as private clubs because they could not obtain liquor licenses." The gay community was caught in the crossfire between the police and the mafia. In their ongoing raids, the police also charged people with violations of draconian anti-LGBT laws and it was a great thing that the gay community's acquiescence to these laws finally boiled over. Regulatory enforcement against the symptoms of social injustice - in this case, mafia exploitation of gay society - has a way of unintentionally spotlighting the underlying injustice. When the people seize that spotlight and insist on change, we get change. When people can't afford to take care of their medical needs, bloated for-profit insurance and hospital bureaucracies, and large pharmaceutical companies get the spotlight. The Central and South American citizens are fleeing conditions in their countries, their governments and those counties' rule of law get the spotlight. The spotlight will eventually move to those people who use and trade in illicit drugs in the world's wealthy countries, including the U.S. When the world's hotspots of military conflict boil over, the spotlight falls on those people who provide the funds to pay rank-and-file combatants - combatants who can't other work.

I was at the Stonewall ( nobody ever called it the Stonewall Inn ) the night it opened, and probably 80-100 other times. I had stopped going there about a year before the uprising. The raids were a form of negotiation between the gangsters and the police. The gangsters wanted to pay as little in bribes to the police as they could get away with, and the police wanted to get as much as they could without killing the goose that laid the golden egg. The outcome of the riots was just that. The gangsters didn't make any money from a bar which had closed, and the police didn't get bribes from the business which occupied the building next. It was a sort of Pottery Barn kind of shop. I still have some wooden bowls which I bought there.

In 1998, I was working at the NYC Dept. of Mental Health and an older co-worker said how he and his friends used to come in from Brooklyn to Manhattan to "mess with the weirdos" (queers) - to fight them, beat them up. It was a "fun". He said Stonewall changed it all. He said he never thought of the "gay weirdos" as people before Stonewall.

Great account of an important event in American history. A little background material to set the tone of the night, then what actually happened. The article was clear, concise and not to long. (we readers have a lot to read these days.)

Activist academic Playwright Dr. Larry Myers directs a tri-coastal theater foundation dedicated to helping newer & younger poets & dramatists pen works about human rights. After 40 years of university teaching (30 locally at St. John's) his is an informed perspective. Currently he' scompleted "Marsha P. Johnson Mirror" (with endorsement of Randy Wicker-Johnson advocate) & "F (l) A G" about Gilbert Baker as models for the sponsored playwrights. His extesniev research as discopvered a 69 year old African American who is one of the youths pictured in the 2 extant Stonewall photos. Most concerned with 'the day after Stonewall 50' the investigation & dramatization of pre-Stonewall activism continues.

The buried lead to me was that the raid was designed to go after the Mafia's control of the bar and apparently not primarily the gay clientele. That was news to me and puts a bit of nuance onto the events of that night. Fascinating.

So had the police not arrived, would those men have survived? Or would they have been burnt to death? I have read about Stonewall for decades, had no idea it was this violent.

For a comprehensive 1 1/2 hour PBS documentary on Stonewall, with plenty of interviews, background, and still/video footage of the actual event: https://www.pbs.org/video/american-experience-stonewall-uprising/

i was 4 so it is history i knew nada. now i do. the more you know, .the sunday section on pride @50, i'm still on the 3rd page. i love this now, to see us stand up to bigotry

Great article, thanks. But a question: Was the prime motivation for the raid aimed at the Mafia or the gay clientele? I had always thought it was aimed at the gay clientele but the article suggests the purpose was to get at the mafia owners.

This article implies the raid had nothing to do with gays but solely with cracking down on illegal mafia run bars and seizing liquor, spoiling people's fun etc. Implies most customers were left alone to go home and the cops were focused on the bartenders with the money. The raid might have been partly driven by revenge for someone the night before saying "we'll be back tomorrow" but the article says nothing at all about humiliating or cracking down on gay social life. So do the Stonewall raid have anything to do with gays? This article makes it look like cops busting up any other fraternity party.

Among Stonewall's harsh lessons (listen up you who take an absolutist approach to your pacifism) is that there are indeed rare historical moments when violence is appropriate and justified.

I recall living through that summer. I was 15 and this was my neighborhood. It was about to change dramatically. I remember very soon around this time that once you crossed Greenwich Avenue heading west at 9th or 10th streets that you would see gay men in numbers out publicly for the first time. Yes, they had always been there, but not obviously - quietly maybe. But things had changed. Now they had their own place to be. In fact, especially on weekend evenings, I remember being very conscious for the first time of not being gay.

Such a great article. I hope Stonewall is landmarked.

Even more important than Stonewall for having liberated an oppressed group, the Stonewall stopped government from violating the Constitution, which meant that the people in government who were using governmental powers were found to have violated the Constitution. The Bill of Rights and the Amendments limit and restrain government from abusing its powers. It says that government can't be used as a weapon against those whom those in power don't like or wish to oppress. We didn't "get" rights, after Stonewall, we stopped the unbridled, unrestrained use of government as a weapon that was used against us. That was what was revolutionary: Law enforcement, laws, and policy decisions can't be used that way, against anybody, anymore. That's what the Religious and Alt-Right need to remember. It's okay to not approve of someone, but not okay to use the government's powers as their henchman.

Powerful liberation story. The sequence of events, who first lost control and fought back, who was there, the numbers inside the bar and the size of the crowd on the sidewalk, bricks or bats, stones or sticks -- none of that rises to the potent force and urgency that something -- enough -- happened to fire hope and grit to demand full humanity. How it happened is so less important than THAT it happened. And inevitably there were those who fought back way before that night in a different place and against different forces and using distinctly different weapons. But this battle was the one that burns still to empower and to inspire. Thanks be to God.

I lived in the Village way back then. The neighborhood was a power keg of people, so dense one had to walk in the street to get anywhere. This was a typical Friday night flare-up that erupted into History. It is a Time and Place that has vanished from New York City, and we all are the poorer for it.

As a woman with time between work and night class or other activity and no budget for dinner, I on occasion stopped for a drink at Stone wall or the Duchess. I Always felt safe and comfortable there as a straight woman as contrasted to the bars in which as a female.Just walking in felt like a piece of meat.

Early that morning I had arrived in New York from Britain to start a Summer Internship in New York and then travel the US by Greyhound bus. The student flight package included one night in a hotel and a one day orientation the next day. I had arrived, got a few hours sleep, then a few of us decided to go for a walk that night. We walked by an area which was cordoned off, with police cars and fire engines everywhere. We hung around as police tried to get us to move on, but could not find out what was happening although it was clearly huge. So, eventually we walked on. We learned what had happened in the Village Voice the next day. Since I am one of those who could have gone to Woodstock, but didn’t, this was one of the few historic events I was near to that Summer, and there were many. It did mark a positive change in society, though not enough of one yet.

I drive past the Stonewall Inn several days a week, and when I do I always think of the brave people who fought that ugly repression. So much admiration for them, even now.

I very much appreciate this stirring account of the Stonewall raid and its aftermath. I’ve known about it for years and always felt inspired by the spirit of it. Mr. Wilson does an excellent job of weaving together eyewitness reports into a coherent telling of a pivotal moment in the struggle for human rights.

I was less than a month old when this went down in 1969. Because of their efforts and those of so many brave men and women in the decades after, I've been able to live a peaceful, open, dignified life even in the mostly rural south. Their place in the history books is quite secure and very well deserved.

The greatest thing about the Stonewall Inn is that it has not been turned into a bank, skin treatment salon, or mortgage-priced entree restaurant which have overtaken what was once upon a time charming and quirky West Village.