Life Before Stonewall

"If two men or two women were holding hands in public, the nicest thing a police officer would do was demand they stop. Most of the time, they threw slurs at you and beat you with their baton."

- Joe Negrelli, 2020 -

Before the uprising of Stonewall even happened, the LGBTQ+ community was constantly in battle with the public. While the community wanted to be accepted for who they were, society was focused on “fixing them”. LGBTQ+  people were constantly harassed and had to deal with bogus charges that prohibited them from showing affection towards someone of the same sex arguing that the gathering of homosexuals was “disorderly”. “Gay men were so afraid of the police. It was considered so outrageous for gay men to gather on the street. At the time, many local residents in Greenwich Village did not like this concentration of gay people so they put pressure on the politicians to clean up the neighborhood. It was common for a police officer to take a billy club out and hit a gay man on the legs and say ‘Move on, f*ggot.’” - David Carter, 2009. Just a few years before Stonewall, in San Francisco, there were the Compton Cafeteria Riots. It was a response to the police for the disturbance towards trans people, once again displaying the lack of diplomacy between the public and the LGBTQ+ community. Almost all records of the Compton Cafeteria Riots had been wiped clean, so while it happened before Stonewall, Stonewall ended up getting more attention.