Stonewall and Beyond:  Lesbian and Gay Culture
Cover illustration from: 'Martin Duberman. Stonewall. New York: Penguin, 1993.'

From a '70s Gay Liberation Front Poster
(Used on the jacket cover of: Duberman, Stonewall, 1993.)

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The Stonewall Riot and Its Aftermath

Guest Curator (Cases 1 & 2): Ken Harlin, Starr East Asian Library, Columbia University


On Friday evening, June 27, 1969, the New York City tactical police force raided a popular Greenwich Village gay bar, the Stonewall Inn. Raids were not unusual in 1969; in fact, they were conducted regularly without much resistance. However, that night the street erupted into violent protest as the crowds in the bar fought back. The backlash and several nights of protest that followed have come to be known as the Stonewall Riots.

Prior to that summer there was little public expression of the lives and experiences of gays and lesbians. The Stonewall Riots marked the beginning of the gay liberation movement that has transformed the oppression of gays and lesbians into calls for pride and action. In the past twenty-five years we have all been witness to an astonishing flowering of gay culture that has changed this country and beyond, forever.

Featured here are clippings from the local New York City press reporting the "melee" in 1969, along with firsthand accounts published in later years about that night.



Case Displays

Rutledge cover illustration

Leigh W. Rutledge. The Gay Decades: From Stonewall to the Present: The People and Events that Shaped Gay Lives. New York: Penguin, 1992.


 
 




Excerpt from New York Times, June 29, 1969

June 29, 1969





 Cover illustration, Duberman: Cures

Martin Duberman. Cures: A Gay Man's Odyssey. New York: Penguin, 1991.


Cover illustration Duberman / Stonewall

Martin Duberman. Stonewall. New York: Penguin, 1993.


Duberman, Cures, p. 161
From: Duberman, Cures, p. 161
police raid on the Artists' Exotic Carnival
and Ball at the Manhattan Center, Halloween, 1962

 'We are the Stonewall girls / We wear our hair in curls / We wear no underwear / We show our public hair / We wear our dungarees / Above our nelly kneew!'

Chant sung "Rockette style" by a "chorus line of mocking queens." Duberman, Stonewall, p. 200.  

 




New York Times logo

June 30, 1969







Banner illustration, New York Post

NY Post, June 28, 1969




 

Excerpt from Laud Humphreys' Out from Christopher Street

"At this point I had already discovered the bars. I suppose my gay life pretty much revolved around going to the bars, even though there was always the threat of bar raids--everyone heard about them. But the only raid where I was actually inside the bar was at the Stonewall. That was in late June 1969. The Stonewall was my favorite place. It was a dive. It was shabby, ..." (Click for more ...)

Eric Marcus. Making History: The Struggle for Gay and Lesbian Equal Rights, 1945-1990. New York: HarperCollins, 1992.







New York Times

July 3, 1969




The Village Voice, July 3, 1969

July 3, 1969 "Gay Power Comes to Sheridan Square," (View from Outside) by Lucian Truscott IV, Village Voice, 7/3/69:  

"Sheriden Square this weekend looked like something from a William Burroughs novel, as the sudden specter of 'gay power' raised its brazen head and spat out a fairy tale the likes of which the area has never seen ..." Page Images -- Transcription


 

Photos from p. 1 of the Village Voice, 7/3/69

"Full Moon over the Stonewall," (View from Inside) by Howard Smith, Village Voice, 7/3/69:

"During the 'gay power' riots at the Stonewall last Friday night I found myself on what seemed to me the wrong side of the blue line. Very scary. Very enlightening..."  (More)







Gay Freedom 1970: A Commemorative Pictorial Essay of the First Anniversary of the Gay Liberation Movement.
By the Editors of QQ Magazine. New York: Queen's Quarterly Publishing Co., 1970.






Humpreys cover illustration

Laud Humphreys. Out of the Closets: The Sociology of Homosexual Liberation. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1972.

 



Humphreys, Out of the Closets, p. 5







Donn Teal.
The Gay Militants. New York: Stein and Day, 1971.

Cover illustration ,Teal: The Gay Militants


The Gay Militants, jacket photograph of the June 1970 Christopher Street Liberation Day
celebration in Central Park by Diana Davies/Bethel Agency.


Teal, The Gay Militants, cover photo






ADDENDUM

Stonewall Inn Designation as National Historic Landmark, 2/16/2000

 


For information or comments, please email sw25@libraries.cul.columbia.edu

Last revision: 2011-08-24