Special Features
- Biography: Stonewall Participants
- Primary Resources: Queen Bees are Stinging Mad
- Photo Gallery: Stonewall Uprising Images
- Bonus Video: Boys Beware
- Further Reading: Related Books and Websites
- Primary Resources: Leaflet Distributed by the Homophile Youth Movement
When police raided the Stonewall Inn, a popular gay bar in the Greenwich Village section of New York City on June 28, 1969, the street erupted into violent protests that lasted for the next six days. The Stonewall riots, as they came to be known, marked a major turning point in the modern gay civil rights movement in the United States and around the world.
My American Experience
Share Your Story
What do the Stonewall riots mean to you? Were you in New York in late June, 1969? Did the riots impact your life? How do you think America changed after the Stonewall riots?
Series Blog
LGBT's New Media Strategy
Pioneers of the Gay Rights Movement used the riots at the Stonewall Inn to propel their own civil rights movement in 1969. Today, the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender movement is utilizing social media to fuel that same agenda. At the time of the uprising the American Psychiatric Association still classified homosexuality as a mental disorder, and the act of homosexual sex -- even in private homes -- was considered a crime. Since those riots in front of the Stonewall Inn and the subsequent establishment of the annual Gay Pride Parade, the LGBT community (like the racial and religious groups before it) has sought the right to receive equal treatment under the law.
