Stonewall was Mafia run, which meant the owners made pay offs regularly to ensure that the bar was left open by the police. Nevertheless it was necessary that the police made token raids from time to time, to save face. The usual procedure was for the police to provide advance notice to the bar’s proprietors. ID checks were made of all the patrons and one or two ordinary gays might find themselves arrested for public drunkenness or lewd behavior, but it was usually only the drag queens, regarded as the most vulnerable of the helpless, who were detained.
For whatever reason someone failed to give the advance warning that Saturday morning, June 28, 1969, when a modest raiding party—two detectives, two uniformed patrolmen and two policewomen—showed up for a token raid and inadvertently set history in motion.
The timing couldn’t have been worse. Judy Garland, the gay icon, had been buried just the day before and emotions were running strong. It was the second raid in just a few days and it was one o”clock in the morning, the very height of madness for those out on the town.
The lights went up, the signal for the male couples on the dance floor to separate. The always resented ID checks began. One by one the customers were released onto the street outside, though as usual the drag queens were held back. On any other night, those outside would probably just have drifted to another bar or headed for home. This time, however, they hung around and a crowd began to form.
At first the atmosphere was festive. Gays can generally be counted on to find the humor in any situation and this was no different. Campy remarks flew back and forth, poses were struck and a few brave souls flirted with the detectives.
When the paddy wagon arrived, however, the mood began to change. There were boos and catcalls while the bartender and the doorman and three drag queens in full regalia were loaded inside. The paddy wagon departed quickly, perhaps the driver sensing that something was afoot. In its wake an ominous silence descended.
The uniformed officers reappeared struggling with a butch lesbian who, in a startling departure from the usual routine, was resisting arrest. When they tried to force her into a police car, the lesbian threw a punch.
This was decidedly not the usual thing to do. According to one reliable source it was Marshall Olds (the only heterosexual member of the legendary performing group, the Cockettes) who threw the first beer bottle. “That’ll radicalize ’em,” he is alleged to have said.
The crowd was indeed radicalized. They began to throw more bottles and coins at the police; even, as it was termed in one newspaper report, “canine feces.” Dog poop to you and me. The officers fled back inside the bar but the crowd pursued them. Someone ignited a fire. Outside the crowd was growing, numbering in the thousands as news of this unheard of resistance spread.
Backup arrived and the terrified police were eventually able to put out the fire and escape but the melée was far from over. The Tactical Patrol Force, who had certainly never before faced, or imagined facing, a crowd of gay rioters, marched up Christopher Street in wedge formation. The retreating crowd continued to pelt them with whatever they could find to throw.
At the Stonewall itself a chorus line of queens kicked their heels and sang, “We are the Stonewall girls. We wear our hair in curls, We wear no underwear, We show our pubic hair.” All right, it’s not Rogers and Hart, but rehearsal time was limited and there was no piano.
The Force broke up the crowd brutally but within hours the entire Village—indeed much of New York City—knew of the raid and its aftermath. By Saturday night a crowd of thousands gathered outside the Stonewall bearing gay placards and chanting a heretofore undreamed of chant; “Gay Power.” The rally lasted through Sunday and into the early hours of Monday morning.
The gay world would never be the same.
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