What was the first gay pride parade like
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It is confirmed that the police eventually set the bar on fire and that at some point earlier in the night, they’d trapped some of the patrons indoors. The exact sequence of events is often contested, simply because the exchange broke out into a riot so quickly. This act attracted attention from onlookers and a crowd began to form. At first, the police began forcibly shoving everyone out onto the street, exerting unnecessary force. The Shot Glass Heard Around the WorldĬops began pouring into the bar around 1 in the morning, surprising employees and patrons alike. As a result, patrons were still inside when the police arrived. On June 28, 1969, the bartenders of Stonewall Inn did not receive a tipoff. Some cops had ties to the mafia and would tip them off ahead of time. The mafia saw an opportunity to make money off of an oppressed community and opened several bars that operated without liquor licenses.Ĭops often raided the bars of Greenwich Village in order to arrest LGBTQ+ patrons. Until 1966, it was illegal for restaurants and bars to serve alcohol to openly gay patrons. Like many of the gay bars in the 1960s New York, the Stonewall Inn was owned and run by the Genovese crime family, a prominent NYC mafia.
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Read on to learn more about the 1969 riot that sparked the LGBTQ+ movement.
#What was the first gay pride parade like free
Here, the community was free to be themselves―for the most part. Gay bars like the historic Stonewall Inn cropped up around Greenwich Village and other parts of New York. It was illegal for the community to “gather,” as this counted as “disorderly.”Īs a result, the community went underground, so to speak. What you may not know is that the year before, the first Pride was a riot.Īll the way up until the 1960s, New York City, like the rest of America, criminalized the LGBTQ+ community. June of 2020 marked the 50th anniversary of the Christopher Street Liberation Day march, the earliest version of what we now call the Pride parade.