Some 41 years ago, on the night of June 27, 1969, a fairly routine police raid on New York City's Stonewall Inn, a popular queer bar on Christopher Street in Greenwich Village, turned into open rebellion. Police raids on queer bars were a matter of course, and this particular dive, a mafia-owned business, had a regular warning system in place involving a change in lights. The Stonewall opened in spring 1967 and was the only bar in New York City where men could dance with each other. Mostly the police turned up to harass cross-dressers, deliberately targeting the professional drag queens who performed in shows at nearby clubs, and the dykes, dressed in suits and trousers—technically illegal under the dress code.

But on this particular hot June night, the patrons fought back, not only verbally resisting arrest, but hurling beer bottles, rocks and pretty much anything else that wasn't nailed down—including at one point, the actual paddy wagon. The police responded with verbal abuse and body searches as well as beatings, and by arresting everyone they could. Many patrons fled out the back and took to the streets, but many bystanders also became involved. The usual practice was to line up the patrons, have them produce identification, and then have a policewoman remove those wearing "female" clothing to a bathroom to verify sex. Men dressed as women would then be arrested. But this time, for whatever reason, people refused to be body-searched, and refused to show I.D.

The police decided to arrest everyone in the bar, though they released some who, instead of leaving the premises, stayed outside. A crowd began to gather. Some of the patrons complained that the police were groping the women. Several people were beaten badly; newspaper accounts refer to one man losing two fingers when a police car door was shut on his hand. Another had his knee broken, and required stitches. An eye-witness report refers to "a dyke," wearing masculine attire, being hand-cuffed, and then struck from behind with a police baton. She started struggling, and swearing, and escaped from the police several times as they attempted to stow her in a police transport. At one point, according to historian Martin Duberman, she turned to the crowd and asked "Why don't you guys do something?"

Shortly thereafter, the increasing crowd outside erupted in anger. Bottles were thrown, pennies were tossed at the police vehicles, and onlookers from nearby buildings began to jeer at the police. Similar unrest followed on the three (or six nights after the raid; the length of the protests depends very much depends on who you ask) with people taking to the streets in protest, rather than silently succumbing to arrests for "indecently" cross-dressing. In David Heilbroner's documentary film, Stonewall Uprising, an eye witness notes that:

"All of a sudden the police faced something they had never seen before. Gay people were never supposed to be threats to police officers. They were supposed to be weak men, limp-wristed, not able to do anything. And here they were lifting things up and fighting them and attacking them and beating them."

In broad terms, Gay Pride was conceived on that night. In addition to Heilbroner's documentary film, two book-length studies are especially worth checking. Martin Duberman's 1993 study, Stonewall from Penguin Books, and David Carter's 2004 Stonewall: The Riots that Sparked the Gay Revolution, from St. Martin's Press. You can find clippings from New York City papers reporting on the uprising at the time it happened here. You can see police records of the event here. The New York Times has released images from the final night of protest; most of these were not published at the time.

Before the Stonewall uprising, being gay meant being closeted for all but a very few—often the cross-dressing queens, and the can't-pass-don't-want-to dykes in their natty suits and ties. These were people who subverted and transgressed heteronormative gender expectations, and who were visibly marked as different by their clothing. These were the people who were, quite literally, in the forefront of the queer rights movement, as well as in the front lines at Stonewall. So when you read about the various Gay Pride parades and events all over the world, spare a moment for the Stonewall rebels.

Image Credit: dbking