Stonewall Inn 1969: Mafia Gayola, a Parking Meter Ram and the First Pride

Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode!

Before Stonewall, gay Americans faced the Lavender Scare, in which the State Department labeled homosexuals security risks. Between 1947 and 1950, about 1,700 federal job applications were denied, more than 4,300 people were discharged from the military and 420 were fired from government jobs. The American Psychiatric Association listed homosexuality as a mental disorder until 1974, even though Evelyn Hooker's 1956 blind Rorschach study showed experts could not tell gay and straight men apart. Homophile groups such as the Mattachine Society and the Daughters of Bilitis picketed in suits and dresses. In 1966, members of the Genovese crime family opened the Stonewall Inn on Christopher Street, with watered drinks, no running water behind the bar and no fire exits, paying police a weekly bribe called gayola.

At 1:20 a.m. on June 28, 1969, police raided the packed bar without the usual tip off. Instead of dispersing, a crowd of 500 to 600 gathered outside, and after a woman being forced into a police car shouted at onlookers to act, they threw coins, bottles and bricks. Officers barricaded themselves inside, and rioters used an uprooted parking meter as a battering ram. Unrest lasted six days. Within weeks the bar was gone, the Gay Liberation Front and STAR, founded by Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson, had formed, and on June 28, 1970, the Christopher Street Liberation Day March became the first Pride parade.

• Bar managers allegedly blackmailed patrons from Wall Street or prominent families by threatening to expose them.
• Women held in the nearby Women's House of Detention shouted support and threw burning belongings from their windows.
• When the Tactical Patrol Force charged, rioters circled the Village's crooked blocks and formed kick lines behind the police.
• Earlier uprisings at Cooper Donuts in Los Angeles in 1959 and Compton's Cafeteria in San Francisco in 1966 preceded Stonewall.
• At the 1973 anniversary rally, Jean O'Leary objected to drag performers and Sylvia Rivera forced her way onstage to speak, and O'Leary later called her stance an embarrassment.