Stonewall riots
The Stonewall uprising begins after a police raid in Greenwich Village
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Original prompt & settings (JSON) ↗The officers who raided Stonewall ended the night barricaded inside it, while the crowd outside worked an uprooted parking meter against the doors.
1:15 a.m. at 51–53 Christopher Street
At about 1:15 a.m. on 28 June 1969, undercover officers from New York's Public Morals squad raided the Stonewall Inn after witnessing unlicensed alcohol sales — part of a June crackdown on LGBTQ bars.
Patrons refused police demands that some of them submit to identification and bathroom sex checks. Customers released from the bar did not scatter: they joined the people gathering outside and in Christopher Park, cheering friends who emerged under police escort.
The park sat opposite the inn, near two subway stations and pay phones, which helped word of the raid travel.
The police locked themselves in
As officers tried to remove those arrested, the crowd shouted for freedom and threw pennies, bottles, paving stones and bricks. The police retreated into the bar and locked themselves inside.
Demonstrators broke windows and used an uprooted parking meter against the doors, and a small fire started inside before the city's riot-control force arrived around 3 a.m.
The first night subsided about 4:30 a.m., with thirteen arrests and no fatality among police or demonstrators.
Six days, and no first brick
It did not end that morning. Crowds returned and confrontations continued on subsequent nights through 3 July.
Witnesses disagree about exactly which person or action turned the crowd's anger into violence, and retrospective claims crediting one famous individual with throwing a "first brick" cannot be established from the contemporary record.
Stonewall also did not create LGBTQ activism from nothing: homophile organizations and earlier acts of resistance came before it.
Sources
Researched 24 Aug 2026 6 sources not yet audited
How this was checked
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What the sources leave uncertain
- The date, location and raid are firmly documented, but witnesses disagree about exactly which person or action first turned the crowd’s anger into violence.
- Retrospective claims crediting one famous individual with throwing a “first brick” cannot be established from the contemporary record.
- Modern identity terms do not always map neatly onto the words participants used for themselves in 1969.