There was a sense of disbelief that a riot of queer people had not just fought back against the police but made them run Indeed, at that time no form of same-sex relationship was legally recognised anywhere in the world. Legal prohibitions on sodomy remained on the books in every US jurisdiction except Illinois breaking these laws carried penalties of up to 15 years in prison. Listen: Chris Parkes explores the background to the Stonewall riots and shows how the episode became a pivotal moment in LGBTQ+ history Love in the shadowsįor the most part, life as a queer person in the 1960s was not a riot. “The fairies were not supposed to riot.” But they did – and for two nights and days “Christopher Street belonged to the queens”. “Everybody in America who had a beef had already rioted,” one witness recalled. There was a sense of disbelief that a riot of queer people had not just fought back against the police but made them run. The crowd finally dispersed around 4am, but returned the following night, joined by thrilled and fascinated onlookers. “There was never any time that I felt more scared than I felt that night,” Pine – a veteran of the Second World War – later recalled. The throng grew larger and began throwing Molotov cocktails, scurrying up and down Greenwich Village’s tangle of side streets and alleyways to evade the riot police who arrived to provide reinforcements. Unnerved, the police retreated into the club and called for backup.
Soon the crowd began pelting the officers with coins, bottles, bricks and cobblestones.
This moment was, as gay activist Dick Leitsch described it, “the hairpin drop heard around the world” – the phrase ‘hairpin drop’ being commonly employed to subtly indicate that its user was homosexual.Īs the police frogmarched handcuffed clubgoers into paddywagons, the mood quickly changed from “skittish hilarity” to anger. The events that unfolded over the following hours and days transformed the social, political and cultural landscape for sexual minorities in the United States, and reverberated across borders and down generations. (Image by New York Post Archives/Getty Images) Stonewall Inn, New York City, where spontaneous demonstrations by members of the LGBT community were sparked by a police raid during the early morning hours of June 28, 1969.