The homophobic legal system of the 1950s and 1960s prompted early homosexual groups in the US to prove gay people could be assimilated into society, and such early groups favored non-confrontational education for homosexuals and heterosexuals alike. Very few establishments welcomed gay people in the 1950s and 1960s those that did were often run by organized crime groups, due to the illegal nature of gay bars at the time, and bar owners and managers were rarely gay.
The new activist organizations concentrated on confrontational tactics, and within months three newspapers were established to promote rights for gay men and lesbians.Ī year after the uprising, to mark the anniversary on June 28, 1970, the first gay pride marches took place in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco. Within weeks, Village residents organized into activist groups demanding the right to live openly regarding their sexual orientation, and without fear of being arrested. Tensions between New York City Police and gay residents of Greenwich Village erupted into more protests the next evening and again several nights later. While police raids on gay bars were routine in the 1960s, officers quickly lost control of the situation at the Stonewall Inn on June 28, 1969. Īs was common for gay bars in the USA at the time, the Stonewall Inn was owned by the Mafia.
The riots are widely considered a watershed event that transformed the gay liberation movement and the twentieth-century fight for LGBT rights in the United States. Patrons of the Stonewall, other Village lesbian and gay bars, and neighborhood street people fought back when the police became violent. The Stonewall riots (also known as the Stonewall uprising, Stonewall rebellion, or simply Stonewall) were a series of demonstrations by members of the gay community in response to a police raid that began in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, at the Stonewall Inn in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City, New York, United States of America.
0 kommentar(er)
