2019 PrideBook

There was just one problem. The patrol
wagons had been delayed due to confusion
over the radio. The first wagon didn’t arrive
for over 15 minutes, giving the crowd plenty
of time to swell to a number that easily
outnumbered the police by hundreds. After
the patrol wagon arrived on the scene
the police first began putting the mafia
members in the back, followed by the first
group of the bar patrons. Throughout the
crowd a rumor had begun to spread that the
police were beating the people inside the
bar. A police officer shoved a transvestite
as he walked to the paddy wagon, causing
a rumble in the crowd. Someone swung a
purse to hit the officer over the head.
People started to throw small objects at the
police cars and the paddy wagon in protest.
9
When one butch lesbian was brought out
of the bar she began to fight the police,
screaming that her handcuffs were too
tight. After being hit over the head by one
police officer, the woman tried to run from
him. She ultimately wound up being chased
by, and fighting off, up to four police officers
for near ten minutes. In the final moments
of this scuffle the lesbian looked to the
crowd and yelled, “Why don’t you guys do
something?” as she was picked up and
thrown into the back of the paddy wagon.
The reaction from the crowd was explosive
and quick. Large numbers of people rushed
the police cars and began attempting to flip
them over. Beer cans, coins, and rocks were
thrown at the police and the vehicles and
front of the bar. Some police officers quickly
fled the scene in the one or two vehicles that
were still in drivable condition while a small
number fled into the bar for protection. The
crowd outside the bar began to throw all
kinds of different objects at the front of the
building in an effort to gain entrance inside,
at one point even lighting garbage on fire
and stuffing it between the cracks in the
wood that covered the front windows.
The most visible individuals during this
moment of the protest were the “flame
queens, hustlers, and street kids,” the most
oppressed portion of the gay community
then (and in many cases still the most
oppressed today). The street kids were
supposedly uprooted a parking meter to use
to try and beat down the front door of the
Stonewall.
This intense standoff with the police
trapped inside the bar finally came to an
end after backup officers, fire trucks, and a
Tactical Patrol Force (TPF) arrived on the
scene to disperse the riot and free them.
The TPF was not able to completely clear
the streets of the mob until 4 am, almost 3
hours after the standoff had first started.
The mob at first mocked the TPF by forming
an kick line and chanting slogans like chorus
girls, which angered the officers and caused
them to rush the line. More vehicles were
overturned and just about anything glass
was smashed in all directions. In total 13
people were arrested and 4 police officers
injured. Many of the people arrested were
transvestites who fought back against the
TPF once they had begun their sweep of the
crowd.
The next day the streets in front of
Stonewall Inn were quiet with small crowds
wandering up sporadically to see the burned
and pock marked façade of the bar. The
New York Times, New York Post, and New
York Daily News all ran articles on the
previous night’s events. All sorts of rumors
of what caused the riots spread throughout
the city, but the LGBTQ people living in NYC
and all over the United States at this time
knew what caused the Riot at Stonewall Inn.
A quote by Stonewall Protester, Michael
Fader:
We all had a collective feeling like we'd
had enough of this kind of s**t. It wasn't
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…..It was time to reclaim something
that had always been taken from us …..And
we felt that we had freedom at last, or
freedom to at least show that we demanded
freedom. We weren't going to be walking
meekly in the night and letting them shove
us around—it's like standing your ground for
the first time and in a really strong way, and
that's what caught the police by surprise.
There was something in the air, freedom a
long time overdue, and we're going to fight
for it. It took different forms, but the bottom
line was, we weren't going to go away. And
we didn't.