New York City’s first Pride march took place on the first anniversary of the Stonewall riots and has since become one of the city’s most celebrated annual events. Johnson, brought new visibility to the budding LGBT rights movement and galvanized queer communities across the country to fight for their rights. The resulting six nights of riots, led in part by transgender and gender nonconforming activists of color such as Silvia Rivera and Marsha P.
Unlike in previous raids, however, the crowd amassed at the Stonewall Inn fought back. In the early hours of June 28th, 1969, a squad of plainclothes police officers from the NYPD entered Greenwich Village’s Stonewall Inn and began arresting the bar’s staff as well as patrons they determined to be “masquerading” as a member of the opposite sex. It was one such raid that kicked off the famous Stonewall riots, today recognized as the event that gave birth to our country’s modern LGBTQ rights movement. Bars allowed queer people to socialize without a political agenda and offered a space for them to celebrate their sexuality with relative freedom-“relative” being the key word, as homosexual solicitation was still illegal and police raids were common. While bathhouses, drag balls, and good ol’ “Screech Beach” (also known as the beach at Jacob Riis Park) were all important sites for queer gatherings, the city’s queer community especially thrived in its gay bars. In the first half of the 20th century, when queer people across the country were largely forced to live in isolation and secrecy for fear of being disowned by their families or fired from their jobs, the city was home to a number of social groups (such as the New York branches of the Mattachine Society and Daughters of Bilitis ) that allowed queer people to find their communities-and, perhaps more importantly, a number of places where these communities could congregate. New York City has long been known for both its current thriving queer community as well as its rich history as a wellspring of LGBTQ activism.