2019 PrideBook

THE
STONEWALL RIOTS
Parts of this story have been previously published on the blog Inside of Knoxville
Written By Oren Yarbrough & Edited by Maggie Cole
THIS YEAR MARKS AN EXTRAORDINARY ANNIVERSARY - THE 50TH ANNIVERSARY OF
THE STONEWALL RIOTS AND THE GENESIS OF THE LGBTQ RIGHTS MOVEMENT.
In the early morning hours of June 28th,
1969, New York City police carried out a
raid on the Stonewall Inn, a popular gay
bar in the heavily LGBTQ neighborhood
of Greenwich Village. Sadly, raids on gay
bars were a common method employed
to marginalize and drive out the LGBTQ
community from the rare spaces they
occupied. However, on this night the
bar’s patrons boiled over with anger and
resistance in a pivotal moment that sparked
a revolution.
In order to understand the intense reaction
from the bar patrons at Stonewall Inn
and the bystanders on Christopher Street
you also must know some LGBTQ history
leading up to this point in time.
Following the end of the Second World War
a large number of LGBTQ people moved
to cities like Chicago, San Francisco, Los
Angeles, and New York City in the hopes
of finding greater acceptance and a fresh
start. The large number of new LGBTQ
citizens moving to these cities presented
the opportunity to create gay communities
for increased safety and the sharing of
culture and place-making. However, public
authorities were antagonistic.
forms of society. In 1953 President Dwight
Eisenhower signed Executive order 10450,
which immediately barred homosexuals
from working in any forms of government.
The mass firing of nearly 5,000 persons in
the State Department, military, and other DC
agencies is now known as the “Lavender
Scare.” It was doubly upsetting because
after the individuals were fired they were
also publicly outed. Many would lose their
homes and families and everything they
had worked for up to that moment. For the
next couple of decades following Executive
Order 10450 thousands of job applications
were denied throughout the US government,
effectively ensuring that there was no one
in a position of power that could work for
LGBTQ rights.
During the 1950s and 1960s the FBI
regularly kept track of the names and
addresses of known homosexuals. They
would gather as much information as
possible on their activities as part of the US
government’s efforts to fight communism.
During this time the US Postal Service
Government Workers Protesting Executive Order 10450
regularly tracked and recorded all addresses
that had mail sent to and from known
homosexuals.
Following the time of the Lavender Scare
and Executive Order 10450 many state and
city governments shut down gay-owned
establishments and places known to cater
to homosexuals. In cities throughout the US
raids were regularly conducted to expel gay
people from bars, beaches, parks, and even
neighborhoods. When an establishment that
was known to cater to homosexuals was
raided and shut down, all the patrons inside
the bar were arrested on public indecency
charges and their name and pictures were
placed in the newspaper for the public to
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Federal, state, and city laws became heavily
anti-homosexual in the decades following
the Second World War due to a media
fueled panic that began with the McCarthy
hearings and the “Red Scare.” Members of
the federal government believed that people
who led a homosexual lifestyle or performed
homosexual acts were more likely to be
blackmailed into giving away government
secrets or actively spying for a communist
organization. The US government also
believed that homosexuals were emotionally
and mentally inferior to normal persons and
were in general a great security risk in all