Stonewall Was a Riot: How One Night in 1969 Changed Everything
- U I Team
- 2 days ago
- 5 min read
It started with a raid. The kind of thing that had happened a hundred times before. But something snapped that night. Maybe it was the heat, the end-of-June humidity thick in the Greenwich Village air. Maybe it was the woman in cuffs yelling, “Why don’t you guys do something?” Maybe it was just a sense—shared in the bones of the most marginalised people in the room—that enough was enough. Whatever it was, when the police barged into the Stonewall Inn in the early hours of Saturday 28 June 1969, the community pushed back. And in doing so, they lit the fuse on a global movement.
A Bar Like No Other
The Stonewall Inn, tucked away on Christopher Street in Lower Manhattan, wasn’t exactly glamorous. It had no fire exits. No liquor licence. Its glasses were rinsed in tubs of murky water and reused. It was run by the Mafia, specifically, the Genovese crime family, who supposedly paid off the police weekly in return for being left alone. The drinks were overpriced and watered down. But crucially, it was one of the only bars in New York where you could dance with someone of the same sex. And that made it a sanctuary.
Not that it catered to everyone. The Stonewall was especially known as a haven for those on the fringes, even within their own community. Drag queens, trans people, homeless youths, hustlers, effeminate men, lesbians, and street kids. For many, it was more than a bar. It was a place to be seen.
Before the Fire
To understand the scale of what happened at Stonewall, it helps to understand what came before. The 1950s and 60s in America were a bleak time for sexual minorities.
Homosexuality was still classified as a mental illness by the American Psychiatric Association, and the FBI kept lists of known homosexuals. Gay bars were regularly raided. People lost jobs, were outed in newspapers, arrested, even institutionalised. Cross-dressing was illegal in many states. You could be arrested for wearing the “wrong” clothes.
Homophile organisations like the Mattachine Society and the Daughters of Bilitis aimed to prove that gay people could be upstanding citizens—no trouble, just good old-fashioned conformity. But by the end of the 60s, the quiet approach was wearing thin, especially among a younger generation influenced by civil rights activism, antiwar protests, and the counterculture. Greenwich Village, already known for its artists and radicals, became a crucible.
When the Police Came
On most occasions, police would quietly alert the bar in advance of a raid. This time, they didn’t. Around 1:20am on 28 June, a squad of officers burst through the door with the familiar call: “Police! We’re taking the place!”
What followed wasn’t the usual subdued, fearful compliance. Patrons refused to show ID. Drag queens resisted arrest. The women wouldn’t follow the officers to the toilets to “verify” their sex. Some were groped and manhandled. As police began arresting patrons, a crowd formed outside—at first confused, then amused, then angry.
When did you ever see a fag fight back? ... Now, times were a-changin'. Tuesday night was the last night for bullshit ... Predominantly, the theme [w]as, "this shit has got to stop!"
—Ronnie Di Brienza
What lit the spark was a woman, likely Stormé DeLarverie, who broke free from police multiple times before being beaten and thrown into the back of a van. “Why don’t you do something?” she shouted to the onlookers. They did.
Pennies were thrown. Then beer bottles. Then bricks.
The police, unprepared and outnumbered, retreated into the bar. Rubbish bins were set alight. A parking meter was uprooted and used as a battering ram. The Tactical Patrol Force arrived to restore order, but the “fairies,” as some cops reportedly mocked, didn’t retreat—they fought. Some formed a kickline and sang mockingly as the police advanced.
As activist Bob Kohler later put it,
“They were angrier than I guess they had ever been … but the fairies were not supposed to riot.”
The Days After
Word spread fast. The next night, the crowd returned, bigger this time. So did the police. Fires were lit, windows smashed, people arrested. Protesters danced in the streets, held impromptu rallies, and shouted “Gay Power!” The third and fourth nights saw more violence, chants, and arrests. A sense of defiant joy pulsed through it all. Beat poet Allen Ginsberg showed up and declared,
“The guys there were so beautiful, they’ve lost that wounded look that fags all had 10 years ago.”
The Mattachine Society handed out thousands of flyers demanding gay people run their own bars and end Mafia exploitation. And from within the chaos, new groups formed—ones with a more radical voice. The Gay Liberation Front, soon followed by the Gay Activists Alliance, demanded not tolerance, but rights.
From Riot to Pride
A year later, on 28 June 1970, the first Christopher Street Liberation Day march was held to mark the anniversary of the uprising. Thousands marched through Manhattan, carrying signs, holding hands, and chanting slogans. Similar events took place in Los Angeles and Chicago. It was the beginning of what we now call Pride.
The movement spread quickly. Within two years of Stonewall, there were gay rights groups in every major US city, as well as in Canada, the UK, Australia, and Western Europe. The Stonewall riots became a symbol, a turning point when the LGBTQ community went from shadow to street, from whisper to rally cry.
Complicated Legacies
Stonewall wasn’t the first uprising. There had been the Cooper Do-nuts riot in 1959, the Compton’s Cafeteria riot in 1966. But Stonewall got the headlines. It drew thousands. It sparked lasting organisation.
It also had its fractures. Not everyone welcomed the flamboyant resistance. Some older activists felt embarrassed. Feminist Jean O’Leary tried to ban drag queens from future rallies, sparking fierce backlash from trans activists like Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson, both of whom had been on the front lines at Stonewall.
But history has since cast Stonewall as a shared origin point, a moment of unity forged in resistance. In 2016, the Stonewall Inn became a designated US National Monument, the first LGBTQ site to receive such recognition.
Stonewall Lives On
Every June, Pride events are held across the world to remember those six days in New York. It’s easy to forget how spontaneous it all was. No one planned a revolution. It wasn’t orchestrated by a committee. It was drag queens and street kids. People with nothing to lose. People whose backs were against the wall, who’d had enough of being told to sit down and stay quiet.
As one witness put it: “It was not an organized demonstration. It was just kind of like everything over the years had come to a head on that one particular night.”
Stonewall was messy, noisy, joyful, and angry. But it changed the world.
