Stonewall was actually called the Stonewall Inn. Located at 53 Christopher Street in Greenwich Village, it was sort of a private club. You could not just go in, you had to be admitted by someone at the door who could recognize you as being part of the gay scene. There was a bar and a dance floor in front (with a jukebox), and a separate quieter bar in back with tables where you could sit and talk. It wasn't spectacular. Some people called it shabby, some called it a dive. And yet it attracted cllege students,
radicals, and conservative-looking, well-dressed men with their dates. It was -not- a drag queen bar, although a handful of well-known queens were allowed in on a regular basis. By the way, in those days, you could get arrested for dressing in drag, so it was not a common sight on the street. There were seldom any lesbians (or other "real women") in the bar.
The famous riot took place Friday night, June 27, 1969. The place had been raided earlier in the week on Tuesday. One of the usual premises for such raids was to look for the illegal sale of alcohol (or the breaking of some other NYC licensing law or regulation). So the gay crowd was getting tired of being harassed (not just for that Tuesday night, but for many such raids). The police (plainclothes) came in
at 2 a.m. Saturday morning. Two hundred people were lined up, their I.D.s checked, and they were told to leave, except for the underaged or those who did not have I.D.s and five queens.
According to "Out in All Directions: The Almanac of Gay and Lesbian America", the crowd outside grew to 400 while those who emerged from the bar waited to see if their friends were getting out without being arrested. Gay guys were camping it up as they exited the building, and the crowd was cheering them on, in a festive mood. Then they brought out a dyke, and she... SHE.... resisted the officers. The police could not keep her in their patrol car. She got out three times, and three times they put her back in. The last time, they used bodily force and the crowd started yelling "Police brutality!" They started throwing beer cans and bottles at the bar and the police, and the cops took refuge inside the building.
The single uniformed officer was hit by a flying object and his head was bloodied. That was when the cops got mad (and maybe a little scared) and they pulled a queen into the bar with them. It should be noted that, even though someone threw lighter fluid into the building and tossed in a match, the police did not fire on the gay crowd. They heard sirens and knew that help was coming, so they waited. Three policemen suffered minor injuries and thirteen "civilians" were arrested.
The importance of Stonewall was not the defiance demonstrated by gays that night, but the defiance it generated in the months and years that followed. Gay people knew they could fight back, and the Gay Liberation Front was founded. The gay movement took lessons from the women's movement, theory, rhetoric, etc. and applied it to their own case, used it to analyze their own lives and movement.
Ever since that night, the word "Stonewall" has represented the lesbian and gay community's quest for respectful treatment, dignity, and equal rights. Gay people all over the world know about Stonewall and its significance in their lives.
Linda White