History Of Stonewall

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The Stonewall rebellion has been considered the birth of a new wave of a liberation movement that changed the world for millions of lesbians, gay men, drag queens, and drag kings of all races, ethnicities, and ages. Yet, it was certainly not the first raid nor the first moment of protest for homosexuals. The raid at Stonewall was preceded by decades of police harassment of gay establishments. The first recorded raid of a gay bathhouse was in 1903, at the Ariston Hotel Baths at 55th and Broadway in New York where 26 men were arrested. Seven of them received sentences ranging from four to 20 years in prison (Chauncey, 1994). Countless raids, arrests, and imprisonments occurred in the decades that followed. Sometime in August 1966 (exact date …show more content…

Many young, radical gays and lesbians in the late 60’s joined SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) or a Black liberation organization, rather than NACHO (North American Conference of Homophile Organizations) which “struck them as hopelessly bourgeois.” Others may have steered clear of NACHO because of NACHO’s radical (for that time) stance that homosexuality was neither abnormal nor unnatural. Duberman points out the irony of the centrist organization, NACHO, being willing to take a more radical stance on gay liberation than the gay and lesbian activists themselves (Duberman, 1994). Still others may have also steered clear of NACHO because they hadn’t yet come to terms with their own sexual identities. Coming out, as you will hear from the people I’ve interviewed in this book, was not part of most gay experience before Stonewall. Eric Marcus, author of the astounding set of oral histories, Making Gay History, talked about the idea of coming out in a PBS documentary on Stonewall: “Before Stonewall, there was no such thing as coming out or being out. The very idea of being out, it was ludicrous. People talk about being in and out now. There was no out. There was just

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