Greenwich Village Gazette
THE STONEWALL In 1933, with the repeal of Prohibition, cops on the take would have lost all their extra income had it not been for gay bars. They were aided by a State Liquor Authority ban on serving homosexuals, and this was the basis of a shift in graft from what was being served--to who. An occasional police raid kept the system in good running order and provided the boys in blue with the fun of putting on a good show. No one could have imagined that this shakedown system could ever go out of fashion, but in 1969 it breathed its last. The Stonewall Inn at 51 Christopher Street opened in 1930, in street level space which was created by joining two former stables built ninety years earlier. Popular at first for weddings, by the late 1960's the crowd was male and ranged from college types to those who were more flamboyant. Rumors circulated about management ties to organized crime and a call-boy service being run on the second floor, but nobody really cared. The Stonewall was a second home to those who were considered too outrageous to be allowed entry to the strait-laced jazz club two doors down. Perhaps it was the full moon, but what started as a police raid on June 28, 1969 ended in a full-scale riot. Although conservative patrons reminded docile as they were turned out by the cops, their flamboyant bar mates, when they were roughed up, fought back. Seeing their friends roughed up, the crowd in the street reacted hurling epithets, then loose coins, then beer bottles and garbage cans. The police called for assistance after they had barricaded themselves inside. The Tactical Patrol Force was there in minutes, in full riot gear. For hours the TPF charged the taunting crowd, which scattered through the irregular streets around Christopher Park and then regrouped. The police were dumbfounded as they never expected gays to fight back. But the defiance was as real as the guns the police had drawn. The riot ended in the early morning with only a few injuries. Only the assumption that homosexuals would ever again accept prejudice and discrimination without resistance had died. Annual parades are now held at the end of June in most American cities to commemorate the Stonewall riot and the movement for gay rights that began on that night. The former Stonewall Inn now houses a men's apparel shop.
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