8 Things You Need To Know About The Stonewall Riots

Roderick Balenda
17 min readJun 18, 2023
Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

As for the Stonewall Riots, they were a series of spontaneous, violent demonstrations by members of the LGBTQ+ community in response to a police raid that took place at the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village, New York City, in June 1969.

At the time, homosexuality was illegal in most states in the United States, and LGBTQ+ people faced widespread discrimination and harassment from law enforcement and society at large. The Stonewall Inn, which was owned and operated by the Mafia, was one of the few places where LGBTQ+ people could gather and socialize without fear of persecution.

On the night of June 28, 1969, police raided the Stonewall Inn and began arresting patrons for violating laws that criminalized homosexuality. The raid sparked a spontaneous uprising among the patrons and passersby, who began throwing objects at the police and refusing to disperse.

The riots continued for several nights, and they marked a turning point in the LGBTQ+ rights movement in the United States. They helped to galvanize support for LGBTQ+ rights and led to the formation of organizations like the Gay Liberation Front and the Gay Activists Alliance.

The Stonewall Riots were a response to the systemic discrimination and oppression that LGBTQ+ people faced at the time, and they helped to pave the way…

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Roderick Balenda

An inviting blogger| Writer| Frenchman| Congolese| Atheist| Air hockey player| Motivator| Pragmatic Conservative| Based in Bordeaux