Cradle of Pride
The Stonewall Inn and the Uprising of 1969
June is a jam-packed month and not only because it’s the official start of summer. (Belated Happy Summer Solstice, b.t.w). It’s also the host month for Juneteenth (6/19) which commemorates the emancipation of enslaved African Americans and Pride, which honors the cultural contributions of LGBTQ+ Americans and remembers the 1969 Stonewall Uprising in Manhattan.1
Living adjacent to the Greenwich Village, I routinely walk by the Stonewall Inn at 53 Christopher Street, the site of the uprising and a major milestone in the modern gay rights movement.
In 1930, Vincent Bonavia opened a tearoom, Bonnie’s Stonewall Inn,2 at 91 Seven Avenue South.3 Bonnie’s was in fact a speakeasy. In December 1930, Prohibition agents raided the Inn along with several other Village nightspots.4
Once Prohibition ended, Bonavia quickly pivoted. In 1934, he moved his business to the current location at 51–53 Christopher Street (a former nineteenth century stables) and reopened as a bar and restaurant.
By the mid-1960s, the Genovese crime family controlled the majority of gay bars in Greenwich Village, a hub for the city's burgeoning gay community. In 1966, a Genovese family member, Tony Lauria aka "Fat Tony," purchased the Stonewall Inn, turning it into a gay bar and adding a jukebox and dance floor.5 To maximize profits, the club served watered-down drinks, collected “protection” money, operated as a private club to forgo the need for a liquor license,6 and blackmailed wealthy closeted patrons, who had to sign in on arrival. Club goers quickly cottoned on and gave false names. Judy Garland and Donald Duck were favorites.7
Despite gay bars being illegal in New York City until 1967, the speakeasy culture of Prohibition had fostered a vibrant underground club culture where patrons of diverse backgrounds, socioeconomic statuses and sexual preferences could come together not only to drink but also to enjoy jazz music and other live entertainments. Drag performers known as “pansy performers” experienced a surge in popularity in major U.S. cities such as New York.8
The end of World War II (1945) brought a return to traditional mores. In New York, local government clamped down on gay culture whenever possible, reviving the Masquerade Laws, which punished those who painted or concealed their face9 and arresting cross-dressers for violating the “Three-Article Rule.”10 Police raids of Stonewall were so frequent that the bar developed a signal — turning up the house lights — to alert dancing couples to break apart.11
Around 1:20 am on June 28, 1969, police officers with the New York City Vice Squad Public Morals Division once again raided Stonewall. Vice and four other officers joined forces with two male and two female undercover police officers already stationed inside the bar. The lights on the dance floor flashed, and the bar quickly emptied. But rather than flee as in previous raids, around 150 patrons stuck around as bystanders. Delays in the arrival of the patrol wagons for transporting the arrested as well as alcohol from the bar ratcheted tensions. As the night dragged on, the crowd swelled to 600.12
Peace prevailed until a woman was taken out in handcuffs to a waiting police wagon. She repeatedly slipped free and fought with four of the police, shouting to onlookers, "Why don’t you guys do something?!" When one officer picked her up and threw her into the back of the wagon, the outraged crowd exploded.13 Rioters threw pennies, beer bottles, and bricks at the police wagons and Inn.14 One furious patron hurled a parking meter. Afraid for their lives, police barricaded themselves inside the bar.15
Amid the violence, there were moments of levity. And pride. Some rioters joined arms and tried to recreate a Rockettes’ style kickline,16 belting out “We Are the Village Girls” while kicking out in the air.
A fire broke out in the bar but was soon extinguished.17 By 2am, The Tactical Police Force (TPF) of the New York City Police Department arrived to free the police officers still inside. It took another two hours to clear the streets. By then, ten bar patrons had been arrested and seven policeman had sustained minor injuries.1819
The unrest continued for the next six days. Through July 3rd, there were demonstrations and scuffles with law enforcement outside the bar, in nearby Christopher Park, and along neighboring streets. At peak, the crowds swelled to several thousand people.20
Contemporaneous media coverage was rarely kind to the protestors. For a taste of the vociferous homophobia expressed at the time, one need look no farther than the poison pen of Jerry Lisker. Lisker, who died in 1993, was a sports editor for the FOX TV Network and wasn’t on site for the riots. That didn’t keep him from covering the event in his now infamous feature article for the July 6, 1969 Daily News.21
A year later, what would become the first Pride Parade, Christopher Street Gay Liberation Day, was held on Sunday, June 29, 1970. Between 15,000 and 20,000 marchers from New York and around the country made their way from Christopher Street in Greenwich Village to Sheep Meadow in Central Park, where a huge rally was held.22 23
Within a year of the riots, The Stonewall shuttered. Over the next two decades, the storied space housed a bagel shop, a Chinese restaurant, and a clothing store.24 In 1990, a new gay bar, New Jimmy’s at Stonewall Place, opened in the west half of the original Stonewall Inn. Also that year, the block of Christopher Street between Sixth and Seventh Avenues was co-named “Stonewall Place.”25 In 1991, the name was changed back to “Stonewall Inn.”
By the mid-1990s, the New York media had mostly changed its tune. On July 3, 1994 an open air theatrical spectacular, Stonewall: Night Variations, opened at Manhattan’s Pier 25 to rave reviews from New York Times theater critic Ben Brantley. Directed by Tina Landau and set in the fictional amusement park of “Gay World,” the play looked back on queer life in 1960s Greenwich Village and the Stonewall Uprising.26
Such is the ingeniously metaphoric preface to a play about liberation. What follows, on a vast open-air stage that stretches into the Hudson, tells the story of how each of the characters introduced in the carnival is sprung from social captivity in June of 1969 by the fabled Stonewall uprising… Ms. Landau correctly takes a democratic view of the epochal uprising, which was started by a police raid on the Stonewall Inn, presenting it as a multiplicity of tales of the oppressed.”
– Ben Brantley, The New York Times
On June 27, 2016, the Stonewall Inn became the first National Historic Landmark to commemorate LGBTQ history.27 The NHL encompasses the bar, Christopher Park, and the streets where the events of June 28-July 3, 1969 occurred.28
In June 2019, activists unveiled a National LGBTQ Wall of Honor at the Stonewall Inn. The rainbow memorial honors fifty "LGBTQ trailblazers, pioneers and s/heroes,” with five additional names to be added each year.29
In Other News…
Like just about everyone, I’d been following the recovery operation for Titan, the OceanGate Expeditions submersible that went missing on Sunday, June 18th on a tourism trip to view the Titanic wreckage in the North Atlantic. (I wrote about the Titanic exhibit in New York back in March). Sadly, discovery of debris from the imploded vessel ended the search.
As reported in a recent Wall Street Journal article (Wednesday, June 21, 2023), submersibles operate outside the boundaries that regulate other vessels. OceanGate founder and CEO, Stockton Rush, one of the five passengers aboard the Titan, had criticized regulations in the submersible industry for slowing innovation.30
The sinking of the Titanic, which contrary to popular lore did meet the safety standards of its day, was the catalyst for changes in laws governing maritime safety procedures and distress signal requirements. One can only hope this latest disaster will inspire a similar mandate to bring submersibles on par with the safety regulations for other seacraft.
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https://www.loc.gov/lgbt-pride-month/about/
Daily News, 11 Oct 1934, Thu · Page 235 via newspapers.com
The Eighteenth Amendment prohibited the sale and/or distribution of alcoholic beverages, hence “Prohibition” (1920 - 1933). Tearooms serving tea and light refreshments flourished.
https://untappedcities.com/2021/06/21/secrets-stonewall-inn/
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/stonewall-why-did-mafia-own-bar/
In the early 1960s, the State Liquor Authority refused to issue liquor licenses to many gay bars, and several popular establishments had licenses suspended or revoked for "indecent conduct." https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/stonewall-why-did-mafia-own-bar/
https://untappedcities.com/2021/06/21/secrets-stonewall-inn/4/
The term “pansy craze,” was coined by the historian George Chauncey in the book "Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940" (Basic Books, 1994).
The U.S. government created these laws in 1845 after farmers disguised themselves as Native Americans to avoid tax collectors. https://untappedcities.com/2021/06/21/secrets-stonewall-inn/?displayall=true
Persons wearing fewer than three articles of clothing were subject to arrest. The Three-Article law stayed on the books until 2020 when New York State Attorney General Laeticia James supported its repeal, in connection to public health mandates in the coronavirus pandemic. https://untappedcities.com/2021/06/21/secrets-stonewall-inn/?displayall=true
https://www.nyclgbtsites.org/site/stonewall-inn-christopher-park/
Eli Rosenberg (June 24, 2016). "Stonewall Inn Named National Monument, a First for the Gay Rights Movement". The New York Times. Retrieved June 25, 2016.
Carter, David (2004). Stonewall: The Riots that Sparked the Gay Revolution. St. Martin's Press. pp. 152–156. ISBN 0-312-34269-1.
Eli Rosenberg (June 24, 2016). “Stonewall Inn Named National Monument, a First for the Gay Rights Movement.” The New York Times.
Ibid.
The Rockettes are an all-female precision dance company performing at Radio City Music Hall since 1932.
“7 Patrolmen Hurt in Raid on Bar,” The Herald Statesman, Sat., 28 Jun 1969, page 2.
Star-Gazette, “7 Cops Hurt,” Sun., 29 June 1969, page 2
Another contemporary account by columnist Robert Mayer puts the arrests at 18 and the crowd size at 1,000. Newsday (Nassau Edition), “A Hot Weekend in the Village,” Monday, 30 Jun 1969, page 133
https://www.nps.gov/places/stonewall.htm
Daily News, “Homo Nest Raided, Queen Bees Are Stinging Mad,” Sun., 06 Jul 1969, page 113.
https://www.boweryboyshistory.com/2017/06/revisiting-stonewall-riots-evolving-legacy-violent-night.html
“20,000 March in NY for Sex Freedom,” The Miami Herald, Monday, 29 Jun 1970, page 2
https://untappedcities.com/2021/06/21/secrets-stonewall-inn/9/
Daily News, Fri., 16 Mar 1990, page 409 via newspapers.com.
https://engardearts.org/stonewall/ and https://variety.com/1994/film/reviews/stonewall-night-variations-1200437446/
“Carved. Gay Rights Site Joins Family.” Daily News, Tues., 28 Jun 2016, page 14
https://www.nps.gov/places/stonewall.htm
https://www.metro.us/national-lgbtq-wall-of-honor-unveiled-at-stonewall-inn/
The Wall Street Journal, “Search for Titanic Explorers Races Clock,” Wed., June 21, 2032, p. A3.
Wonderful article.