June 28, 1969: The Stonewall Uprising

June 28, 1969, 50 years ago: New York City policemen raid the Stonewall Inn at 51 Christopher Street, off Sheridan Square in Greenwich Village, Manhattan. It starts out as a typical raid of a bar for permitting homosexual activity.

It doesn't end that way. The "paddy wagons" take too long to get there, preventing a mass arrest. This allowed a crowd to gather outside, angry that what would eventually be called "the gay community," which had long had a major presence in "The Village," was being picked on again. They had long been an easy target, since mainstream America had no desire to support them, viewing homosexual activity as sinful. Finally, as one newspaper put it, "This time, the fairies fought back."

For years, the pro-police New York media called it "The Stonewall Riot." Eventually, it became better known as "The Stonewall Uprising," and is often considered the birth of the modern gay rights movement. This is a bit unfair to the people who had already been in that movement, so it's better to say that it was the event that moved the movement into the mainstream of American life, much as the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955 took the Civil Rights Movement for African-Americans into the mainstream.

The original Stonewall Inn opened in 1930, at 91 7th Avenue South, as a speakeasy during Prohibition, so it had been regularly raided from the beginning. In 1934, with Prohibition ended, it moved to its more familiar location. A fire ended this establishment in 1964.

In 1966, 3 organized crime figures (The Village had previously been known as an Italian neighborhood, and Mafia activity was rampant there) bought the property, and turned it into a gay bar, thinking they could blackmail closeted wealthy patrons. It probably wouldn't be remembered today if it wasn't raided 3 years later, but it also hosted drug sales, and that was really what got the vice squad sent in.

The owners never reopened the bar after the Uprising. The space was used over the next few years by a deli, a Chinese restaurant, and a shoe store. In 1991, new owners opened a gay bar, and named it "Stonewall." The name had not only survived the original bar, but had surpassed it in importance.

The bar was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1999, and declared a National Historic Landmark in 2000. It closed again in 2006, due to mismanagement. New owners renovated it and reopened it in 2007, and they embrace its historic significance.

On June 28, 1970, the 1st Gay Pride parade marched from the Stonewall site to Sheep Meadow in Central Park. As a result, the parade is annually held on the last Saturday in June, and gay Americans now celebrate June as Pride Month. This was aided by the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, striking down all State bans on same-sex marriage, announced on June 26, 2015, right before the anniversary.