Police crowded the Stonewall Inn, beating the bar’s patrons with nightsticks and brandishing their guns. In 1969, it was common practice for police officers in New York and other cities to harass owners and patrons of bars that they suspected of providing safe harbor for gay people.

At the time, the NYPD was engaged in a broad effort to crack down on gay bars for supposed liquor license violations.The Stonewall Inn’s patrons—drag queens, homeless youth, openly gay men—were accustomed to being hassled by the police because of their sexual orientation.

Most gay bars and clubs in New York at the time were operated by the Mafia, who paid corruptible police officers to look the other way and blackmailed wealthy gay patrons by threatening to “out” them. Here, protesters demonstrate outside the New York gay bar, Christopher's End.

Stonewall Riots — During the early hours of June 28, 1969, the Stonewall Inn was raided by police with no warning. Armed with a warrant, police officers roughed up patrons and arrested people for bootlegged alcohol and other violations, including criminal mischief and disorderly conduct. More police arrived and the crowd erupted after police roughed up a woman dressed in masculine attire who had complained that her handcuffs were too tight.

The Stonewall Riots — People started taunting the officers, yelling “Pigs!” and “Copper!” and throwing pennies at them, followed by bottles. Some in the crowd slashed the tires of the police vehicles. As the mob grew, NYPD officers retreated into Stonewall, barricading themselves inside. Some rioters used a parking meter as a battering ram to break through the door; others threw beer bottles, trash and other objects, or made impromptu firebombs with bottles, matches and lighter fluid.

Two transgender women of color, Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera (far left) were said to have resisted arrest and were among those who threw bottles (or bricks or stones) at the police. They are pictured at a 1973 rally for gay rights in New York City.

Marsha P. Johnson was a black transgender woman and revolutionary LGBTQ rights activist. She later established the Street Transvestite (now Transgender) Action Revolutionaries (STAR), a group committed to helping homeless transgender youth in New York City.

Sylvia Rivera was a Latina-American drag queen who became one of the most radical gay and transgender activists of the 1960s and '70s. As co-founder of the Gay Liberation Front, Rivera was known for participating in the Stonewall Riots and establishing the political organization STAR (Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries).

The Stonewall Inn — After the Stonewall Riots, a message was painted on the outside of the boarded-up bar reading, "We homosexuals plead with out people to please help maintain peaceful and quiet conduct on the streets of the village." This sign was written by the Mattachine Society–an early organization dedicated to fighting for gay rights.

In reporting the events, The New York Daily News resorted to homophobic slurs in its detailed coverage, running the headline: “Homo Nest Raided, Queen Bees Are Stinging Mad.” The framed newspaper article hangs in near the entrance of Stonewall Inn to this day.

Over the next several nights, gay activists continued to gather near the Stonewall, taking advantage of the moment to spread information and build the community that would fuel the growth of the gay rights movement. The Gay Liberation Front was formed in the years after the riots. They are pictured here marching in Times Square, 1969.

Here, Sylvia Ray Rivera (front) and Arthur Bell are seen at a gay liberation demonstration, New York University, 1970

Marsha P. Johnson is seen at a Gay Liberation Front demonstration at City Hall in New York City.

Here, a large crowd commemorates the 2nd anniversary of the Stonewall riots in Greenwich Village of New York City in 1971. Fifty years after the riots, the NYPD made a formal apology on June 6, 2019, stating the police at that time enforced discriminatory laws. "The actions taken by the N.Y.P.D. were wrong — plain and simple,” said NYPD police commissioner James P. O’Neill.

1 / 14: Redux

Tonight, though, they fought back. The Stonewall Riots became a landmark in LGBTQ history, setting the stage for decades of struggle for civil rights. And now, nearly 50 years after the historic uprising, the New York Police Department has apologized for its role both in the events at Stonewall and the actions it took to uphold laws that discriminated against gay people.

NYPD police commissioner James P. O’Neill made the apology at a June 6 safety briefing. “The actions taken by the N.Y.P.D. were wrong — plain and simple,” he said, according to Reuters.

O’Neill’s statements—made after years of NYPD refusal to address police violence toward LGBTQ people during the 1960s—mark the first time the NYPD has apologized for its actions during an era of widespread discrimination against people who engaged in same-sex relationships. At the time of the Stonewall riots, homosexuality was considered perverted, pathological and even un-American.

During the 1950s, the State Department purged its ranks of gay and lesbian people, and anti-sodomy laws made sex between men illegal in most states. The American Psychology Association listed homosexuality as a mental disorder, and public displays of homosexuality were punished.

New York police officers had a long history of targeting LGBTQ people, and regularly raided gay bars using liquor licensing as a pretext. Like many other gay bars in New York, the Stonewall Inn was Mafia-owned. For many patrons, this provided a sense of protection, as the Mafia was widely known to bribe the NYPD in exchange for the right to operate without harassment.

But on June 28, 1969, law enforcement did raid the bar as part of a wider attempt to shut down gay bars. The Stonewall Inn’s proprietors were usually aware of upcoming raids thanks to their bribes, but this raid was a surprise. A crowd gathered as police seized liquor and attempted to arrest Stonewall patrons, many of whom resisted arrest.

When violence broke out among the crowd, police brandished their weapons and escalated the chaos. “The cops were, you know, they just panicked,” recalled Sylvia Rivera, a drag queen who was on the front lines of the uprising. “Inspector [Seymour] Pine…did not expect any of the retaliation that the gay community gave him at that point.”

In the wake of that retaliation, police ended up barricading themselves inside the bar until backup arrived. A full-scale riot ensued.

Out of that riot emerged the first glimpse of gay liberation in the United States. The uprising not only catalyzed the movement for LGBTQ equality, but gave unprecedented visibility to gay people fighting for their rights. Today, the site of the Stonewall Inn is the United States’ first national monument to gay rights.

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