Protests Ignite a Revolution

The fight for gay rights intensified in the early hours of June 28, 1969, when New York City police raided Greenwich Village’s Stonewall Inn. They’d done it before. But this time, the gender-variant patrons and street youth fought back. Fists, bottles, and beer cans flew. The riot lasted six nights.

The last Annual Reminder at Independence Hall was held in Philadelphia on July 4, 1969. A few weeks later, at the Eastern Regional Conference of Homophile Organizations (ECHO) meeting in Philadelphia, organizers resolved to shift the focus of their activism to New York City. On June 28, 1970, the first Christopher Street Liberation Day in New York marked the one-year anniversary of Stonewall. Thousands of people attended.

“Homo Nest Raided, Queen Bees Are Stinging Mad”

—headline in the New York Daily News, July 6, 1969

Photograph from the front page of the New York Daily News taken outside the Stonewall Inn on Sunday, June 29, 1969

Photograph from the front page of the New York Daily News taken outside the Stonewall Inn on Sunday, June 29, 1969

The Stonewall riots were a series of spontaneous and violent clashes sparked by a police raid of the popular Greenwich Village bar in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969. Police raids were not uncommon among New York’s gay bars, but this one did not go according to plan. In the process of rounding up arrested customers a large crowd gathered outside and a scuffle turned into a brawl, which turned into a riot. The fighting would last for several nights.

Stonewall has become an emblem of power and liberation for the LGBT community. It was the night when the community fought back. Those responsible for the protest were not well-heeled professionals in suits and skirts, but included homeless youth and gender non-conforming people of color. Chief among those in the vanguard of the riots was Marsha P. Johnson. She as well as Sylvia Rivera, both self-identified drag queens of color, became leaders in the burgeoning gay liberation movement and would go on to found their own organization, Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR).

Sylvia Ray Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson at City Hall rally for gay rights, 1973. Photograph by Diana Davies. Courtesy of New York Public Library

Sylvia Ray Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson at City Hall rally for gay rights, 1973. Photograph by Diana Davies. Courtesy of New York Public Library

Some participants in the fifth and final Annual Reminder challenged the long-standing rule not to hold hands. Photograph by Nancy Tucker, 1969. Barbara Gittings and Kay Tobin Lahusen Collection, John J. Wilcox, Jr. Archives

Some participants in the fifth and final Annual Reminder challenged the long-standing rule not to hold hands. Photograph by Nancy Tucker, 1969. Barbara Gittings and Kay Tobin Lahusen Collection, John J. Wilcox, Jr. Archives

Although still a conservative demonstration, in the last year of the Annual Reminders and just weeks after Stonewall, you can see change afoot: younger protesters challenge organizers’ ban on holding hands while picketing.

The two following films by activist Lilli Vincenz capture the seismic change that followed the Stonewall uprising. Vincenz created these films in a time when no television stations, networks or film exhibitors would broadcast or screen them; she made them available through the US mail, private screenings and independent film festivals.

In the first, protestors in the 1968 Annual Reminder, facing tremendous risks to their livelihood and reputations, march purposefully but politely. They dress conservatively and according to strict rules.

The Second Largest Minority (the July 4, 1968 Annual Reminder picket, Philadelphia). Film by Lilli Vincenz, used by permission of Charles Francis, President of the Mattachine Society of Washington, DC, and by the Library of Congress

Two years later, participants in the 1970 Christopher Street Liberation Day Parade are proudly defiant and openly celebratory. The move of yearly protests to New York after 1969 had launched a new phase in the gay rights movement. The parade would blossom into the annual LGBT Pride parades held around the world.

Gay and Proud (the 1970 Christopher Street Liberation Day Parade, New York City). Film by Lilli Vincenz, used by permission of Charles Francis, President of the Mattachine Society of Washington, DC, and by the Library of Congress

“Watch out. The liberation is underway.”

—the Village Voice, reporting on the Stonewall riots, July 3, 1969