![\"Pride](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/81\/2017\/06\/Pride-Long-Beach.jpg\")
<\/a>\nIn the early hours on this day, the 28th of June, 1969, police raided the Stonewall Inn on Christopher Street in Greenwich Village, on Manhattan. Such things were a familiar occurrence. The Inn had a reputation of first, being owned by the Mafia, and secondly for catering to the most marginal of the Lesbian and Gay community.<\/p>\n
The Wikipedia article on this event stated the clientele were mostly \u201cdrag queens, transgender people, effeminate young men, butch lesbians, male prostitutes, and homeless youth.\u201d It was the only bar where same gender people could dance. <\/p>\n
The raid began as the raids often did. But then things began to shift. First, people who were cross dressing refused to be examined for their gender. Then others refused to show identification. The police responded with force. There are allegations women were groped by some of the officers. Some were detained. Those who were released did not flee, but stayed in among a growing crowd. As people were being escorted to the paddy wagons, someone shouted \u201cGay power!\u201d Someone began singing \u201cWe shall overcome.\u201d An officer shoved a transvestite, who hit him with her purse. <\/p>\n
At Wikipedia we\u2019re told \u201cA scuffle broke out when a woman in handcuffs was escorted from the door of the bar to the waiting police wagon several times. She escaped repeatedly and fought with four of the police, swearing and shouting, for about ten minutes. Described as \u2018a typical New York butch\u2019 and \u2018a dyke\u2013stone butch\u2019, she had been hit on the head by an officer with a baton for, as one witness claimed, complaining that her handcuffs were too tight. Bystanders recalled that the woman, whose identity remains unknown (Storm\u00e9 DeLarverie has been identified by some, including herself, as the woman, but accounts vary, sparked the crowd to fight when she looked at bystanders and shouted, \u2018Why don\u2019t you guys do something?\u2019 After an officer picked her up and heaved her into the back of the wagon, the crowd became a mob and went \u2018berserk\u2019: \u2018It was at that moment that the scene became explosive.'\u201d<\/p>\n
Of what followed, one of the patrons, Michael Fader writes:<\/p>\n
\u201cWe all had a collective feeling like we\u2019d had enough of this kind of shit. It wasn\u2019t anything tangible anybody said to anyone else, it was just kind of like everything over the years had come to a head on that one particular night in the one particular place, and it was not an organized demonstration\u2026 Everyone in the crowd felt that we were never going to go back. It was like the last straw. It was time to reclaim something that had always been taken from us\u2026. All kinds of people, all different reasons, but mostly it was total outrage, anger, sorrow, everything combined, and everything just kind of ran its course. It was the police who were doing most of the destruction. We were really trying to get back in and break free. And we felt that we had freedom at last, or freedom to at least show that we demanded freedom. We weren\u2019t going to be walking meekly in the night and letting them shove us around\u2014it\u2019s like standing your ground for the first time and in a really strong way, and that\u2019s what caught the police by surprise. There was something in the air, freedom a long time overdue, and we\u2019re going to fight for it. It took different forms, but the bottom line was, we weren\u2019t going to go away. And we didn\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n
The world would never be the same\u2026<\/p>\n