On Friday evening, June 27, 1969, the New York City tactical police force raided a popular Greenwich Village gay bar, the Stonewall Inn. Raids were not unusual in 1969; in fact, they were conducted regularly without much resistance. However, that night the street erupted into violent protest as the crowds in the bar fought back. The backlash and several nights of protest that followed have come to be known as the Stonewall Riots.

Prior to that summer there was little public expression of the lives and experiences of gays and lesbians. The Stonewall Riots marked the beginning of the gay liberation movement that has transformed the oppression of gays and lesbians into calls for pride and action. In the past twenty-five years we have all been witness to an astonishing flowering of gay culture that has changed this country and beyond, forever.

Featured here are clippings from the local New York City press reporting the "melee" in 1969, along with firsthand accounts published in later years about that night.



Case Displays













June 29, 1969









Martin Duberman. Cures: A Gay Man's Odyssey. New York: Penguin, 1991.

Martin Duberman. Stonewall. New York: Penguin, 1993.







From: Duberman, Cures, p. 161



Chant sung "Rockette style" by a "chorus line of mocking queens." Duberman, Stonewall, p. 200.









June 30, 1969













NY Post, June 28, 1969







"At this point I had already discovered the bars. I suppose my gay life pretty much revolved around going to the bars, even though there was always the threat of bar raids--everyone heard about them. But the only raid where I was actually inside the bar was at the Stonewall. That was in late June 1969. The Stonewall was my favorite place. It was a dive. It was shabby, ..." (Click for more ...) Eric Marcus. Making History: The Struggle for Gay and Lesbian Equal Rights, 1945-1990. New York: HarperCollins, 1992.











July 3, 1969







July 3, 1969 "Gay Power Comes to Sheridan Square," (View from Outside) by Lucian Truscott IV, Village Voice, 7/3/69: "Sheriden Square this weekend looked like something from a William Burroughs novel, as the sudden specter of 'gay power' raised its brazen head and spat out a fairy tale the likes of which the area has never seen ..." Page Images -- Transcription Photos from p. 1 of the Village Voice, 7/3/69



"Full Moon over the Stonewall," (View from Inside) by Howard Smith, Village Voice, 7/3/69: "During the 'gay power' riots at the Stonewall last Friday night I found myself on what seemed to me the wrong side of the blue line. Very scary. Very enlightening..." (More)











Gay Freedom 1970: A Commemorative Pictorial Essay of the First Anniversary of the Gay Liberation Movement. By the Editors of QQ Magazine. New York: Queen's Quarterly Publishing Co., 1970.





