On the night of the Stonewall Riots, police barricaded themselves insideĪfter midnight on an unseasonably hot Friday night in 1969, the Stonewall Inn in New York City’s Greenwich Village was packed when police officers entered the bar. In New York, a law commonly used against the LGBTQ community dates to 1845 and was originally intended to punish rural farmers, who had taken to dressing like Native Americans to fight off tax collectors.Ħ. The problem is, the law technically never existed!!! Instead, accounts suggest that police generally used old, often unrelated laws to target LGBT people.
![is june gay pride month is june gay pride month](https://sanmateopride.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/pride-month.jpg)
It was referenced everywhere-including in reports about arrests in Greenwich Village in the weeks and months leading up to the 1969 Stonewall Riots. The rule stipulated that a person was required to wear at least three gender-appropriate articles of clothing to avoid arrest for cross-dressing. In the 1940s, ‘50s and ‘60s, LGBTQ people were regularly arrested for violating what became known as the three-article rule-or the three-piece law. Police and detectives herded the costumed guests into police wagons in front of the ball. Many men dressed as women were locked up on charges of masquerading and indecent exposure at the National Variety Artists’ Exotic Carnival and Ball held at the Manhattan Center in 1962. Police used a 19th-century masquerade law to arrest people dressed in drag. They also blackmailed wealthy gay patrons by threatening to “out” them.ĥ. To operate the Stonewall and its other gay bars, the Mafia bribed the NYPD to turn a blind eye to the “indecent conduct” occurring behind closed doors.
![is june gay pride month is june gay pride month](https://cdn.gobankingrates.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Gay-Pride-Festival-shutterstock_653429179.jpg)
“Fat Tony,” purchased the Stonewall Inn in 1966 and transformed it into a gay bar and nightclub. A member of the Genovese family, Tony Lauria, a.k.a. Where the law saw deviance, the Mafia saw a golden business opportunity. The State Liquor Authority and the New York Police Department regularly raided bars that catered to gay patrons. But between New York’s LGBTQ community in the 1960s being forced to live on the outskirts of society and the Mafia’s disregard for the law, the two became a profitable, if uneasy, match. The Mafia ran gay bars in NYC in the 1960s. police raids became less commonplace and gay bar patrons, while still oppressed in society, had recovered their safe havens.Ĥ. For the next few years in New York, the gay community felt empowered. The trio visited taverns, declared themselves gay, and waited to be turned away so they could sue.Īlthough the State Liquor Authority initially denied the men’s discrimination claim, the Commission on Human Rights argued that gay individuals had the right to be served in bars. In 1966, three members of the Mattachine Society, an early organization dedicated to fighting for gay rights, staged a “sip-in”-a twist on the “sit-in” protests of the 1960s. Julius’ Sip-In - After pouring their drinks, a bartender in Julius’s Bar refuses to serve John Timmins, Dick Leitsch, Craig Rodwell, and Randy Wicker, members of the Mattachine Society who were protesting New York liquor laws that prevented serving gay customers, 1966. Three years before Stonewall, a protest for gay rights started in another New York City bar. The next year, post-war Germany’s first gay rights organization, Homosexuelle Aktion Westberlin (HAW), reclaimed the pink triangle as a symbol of liberation.ģ. In 1972, The Men with the Pink Triangle, the first autobiography of a gay concentration camp survivor, was published. In Nazi Germany, a downward-pointing pink triangle was sewn onto the shirts of gay men in concentration camps-to identify and further dehumanize them. The pink triangle was co-opted from the Nazis and reclaimed as a badge of pride.īefore the pink triangle became a worldwide symbol of gay power, it was intended as a badge of shame. government designated Gerber’s Chicago house a National Historic Landmark.Ģ. Police raids forced the group to disband in 1925. Gerber’s small group published a few issues of its newsletter “Friendship and Freedom,” the country’s first gay-interest newsletter.
![is june gay pride month is june gay pride month](https://cdn.theatlantic.com/thumbor/4idkt-62svTc6vD2exev-p_X9Ow=/0x306:5889x3619/720x405/media/img/mt/2020/06/2020_06_26T000000Z_1093983220_RC2OGH9CR914_RTRMADP_3_GAY_PRIDE_GLOBAL_PRIDE-1/original.jpg)
Army service in World War I, Gerber was inspired to create his organization by the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee, a “homosexual emancipation” group in Germany.
![is june gay pride month is june gay pride month](https://i.pinimg.com/564x/a6/9f/59/a69f59a335cfc69e8db350500ded7512--pride-day-lgbt-support.jpg)
Henry Gerber, a German immigrant, founded the Society for Human Rights, the first documented gay rights organization in the United States. gay rights organization was founded in Chicago in 1924. Below is a list of surprising facts about Stonewall and the struggles and milestones of the gay rights movement.ġ. Since then, various groups have advocated for LGBTQ rights and the movement accelerated in the wake of the Stonewall Riots of 1969. The movement for LGBTQ rights in the United States dates at least as far back as the 1920s, when the first documented gay rights organization was founded.