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A lot has changed for LGBTQ Americans in the 50 years since June 28, 1969, when an uprising in response to a police raid at the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in Manhattan's West Village neighborhood, kicked off a new chapter of grassroots activism. The U.S. Supreme Court has struck down state bans on same-sex marriage; the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy has come and gone; one of the candidates for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination is gay.

But one thing that has changed surprisingly little is the narrative about what exactly happened that night. In half a century, we haven't gained any new major information about how Stonewall started, and even experts and eyewitnesses remain unsure how exactly things turned violent.

"We have, since 1969, been trading the same few tales about the riots from the same few accounts - trading them for so long that they have transmogrified into simplistic myth," Martin Duberman writes in the new preface for the 2019 re-release of his 1994 book Stonewall, widely considered to be the definitive account of Stonewall and the events that followed.

"In terms of what happened that night, it really depends on who you talk to, and that includes the people who were actually there," Duberman, now 88, told TIME on a recent visit to his Manhattan apartment. "They often have very different takes on what went down."

In 1969, police raids at Stonewall were common, says Duberman, who was not there on the night of the raid but was closely involved in the organizing that followed. Officers would throw people against the wall and make sure they were wearing three pieces of clothing that were appropriate to their biological sex, per New York State law at the time. But nobody really knows why the police showed up that specific date, not long after midnight in the wee hours of Saturday morning on June 28; one theory, Duberman says, is that the bar owners failed to pay off the police. "It's one of those apparent accidents of history," says Duberman.

It's also unclear how exactly that particular police raid turned violent, or why that was the night when, rather than being cowed, the patrons responded with resistance.

Some eyewitnesses to whom Duberman has spoken say that "a lesbian actually began the rioting by striking out at a policeman who was mauling her," he says, but no such woman has ever come forward to say that was her. Some say the incident may have turned violent when a trans person hit a policeman, and some think that one of those people, at least, was Tammy Novak, who fought back when a policeman tried to push her into a police van, according to an account Duberman heard from Sylvia Rivera, a pioneering transgender activist whom the city announced on May 29 will be honored with a monument near the Stonewall Inn.

Part of the reason for the confusion is that there are very few photographs of the uprising in progress, even though the nearby Village Voice extensively covered the five nights of riots that followed. Craig Rodwell, owner of a bookstore that specialized in books about gay and lesbian culture, was taking pictures but they didn't come out. The news photos that often accompany stories about Stonewall may not even come from the day of the uprising.
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Despite the lack of clarity on how the Stonewall riots started, there is a deeper answer to why the uprising happened - and that side of the story is quite clear.

At the time of Stonewall, in 1969, many different counter-cultural movements were underway already.

"I think you need to know the whole context of the 1960s, and just how much rebellion was going on throughout the culture," says Duberman. "The birth of the feminist movement, the black struggle for Civil Rights, Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination - it was an extremely volatile decade. We began to think, well, black people have been long defined as inferior. But now they're saying black is beautiful. We, gay people, have long been defined as inferior. Maybe it's time we started to say, 'Gay is beautiful.'"

Within weeks after Stonewall, LGBTQ people who had been active in other movements, or in the typically quieter forms of LGBTQ activism that predated Stonewall by decades, came together to start "a whole new gay movement" in the U.S., as Duberman puts it. This was a grassroots political protest movement that could organize more openly than its predecessors. This phase of the story Duberman knows personally: after spending years attempting to change his sexuality, he "turned on instantly to the new message" and joined the Gay Liberation Front. Duberman was one of the founders of the Gay Academic Union, the National LGBTQ Taskforce and the first advisory board of Lambda Legal Defense, and is considered a Founding Father of LGBT Studies.

Today, he worries that younger LGBTQ Americans may not appreciate the more under-the-radar pre-Stonewall approach, without understanding what things were like at a time when people could lose their jobs, their apartments and friends merely for being suspected of being gay. He's also disappointed with what he sees as LGBTQ activists' overly narrow focus on issues like monogamous marriage, which he considers a straight ideal, and not enough acceptance of different forms of relationships - or attention to other problems in society like criminal justice reform, immigration policies or income inequality, which he sees as issues that ought to broadly concern the American left.

That extensive activism is particularly key given the conclusions he's reached about this moment in history: that we may never know who threw the " first brick " but we can say for sure that the climate of the time made it possible.

"Having written the book about Stonewall, I've talked to a lot of people who were there that night, and basically I think what you have to conclude is that it was that night strictly by accident," he says. "It was in the air. That is, rebellion, anti-authoritarianism - all that was in the air."

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Even People Who Were There Still Don't Agree on How Stonewall Started. Here's What We Do Know

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The man who wrote the book on Stonewall says the history-changing event was a matter of both accident and inevitability. Here's what to know

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Why/How: Gay Liberation Movement Background

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Why/How: Gay Liberation Movement Background

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Why/How: Gay Pride Protest Art and Multimedia 

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Antiwar Movement Begins

In August 1964, North Vietnamese torpedo boats attacked two U.S. destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin, and President Lyndon B. Johnson ordered the retaliatory bombing of military targets in North Vietnam. By the time U.S. planes began regular bombings of North Vietnam in February 1965, some critics had begun to question the government's assertion that it was fighting a democratic war to liberate the South Vietnamese people from Communist aggression.

The antiwar movement began mostly on college campuses, as members of the leftist organization Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) began organizing "teach-ins" to express their opposition to the way in which it was being conducted.

Though the vast majority of the American population still supported U.S. government policy in the Vietnam War, a small but outspoken minority was making its voice heard by the end of 1965, especially after Johnson began an increasingly aggressive air and ground war in Vietnam.

This vocal minority included many students as well as prominent artists, intellectuals and members of the "hippie" movement, i.e., the growing number of mostly young people who rejected authority and embraced the counterculture.

Did you know? Boxer Muhammad Ali was one prominent American who resisted being drafted into service during the Vietnam War. Ali, then heavyweight champion of the world, declared himself a "conscientious objector," earning a prison sentence (later overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court) and a three-year ban from boxing.

Widespread Disillusionment

By November 1967, American troop strength in Vietnam was approaching 500,000 and U.S. casualties had reached 15,058 killed and 109,527 wounded. The Vietnam War was costing the United States some $25 billion per year, and disillusionment was beginning to reach greater sections of the taxpaying public.

More casualties were reported in Vietnam every day, even as U.S. commanders demanded more troops. Under the draft system of conscription, as many as 40,000 young men were called into service every month, adding fuel to the fire of the antiwar movement.

On October 21, 1967, one of the most prominent antiwar demonstrations took place as some 100,000 protesters gathered at the Lincoln Memorial-around 30,000 of them continued in a march on the Pentagon later that night.

After a brutal confrontation with the soldiers and U.S. Marshals protecting the building, hundreds of demonstrators were arrested. One of them was the author Norman Mailer, who chronicled the events in his book "The Armies of the Night," published the following year to widespread acclaim.

Also in 1967, the antiwar movement got a big boost when the civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. went public with his opposition to the war on moral grounds, condemning the war's diversion of federal funds from domestic programs as well as the disproportionate number of Black casualties in relation to the total number of soldiers killed in the war.

At a march of over 5,000 protestors in Chicago, Illinois, on March 25, 1967, King called the Vietnam War "a blasphemy against all that America stands for."

Vietnam War Protest Songs

The Vietnam War protest inspired many popular songs that became an anthem for that generation. Phil Ochs wrote "What Are You Fighting For?" in 1963 and "I Ain't Marching Anymore" in 1965. Other songs whose very titles were a protest themselves included Pete Seeger's "Bring 'Em Home" (1966) and Joan Baez 's "Saigon Bride" (1967).

Nina Simone's "Backlash Blues" (1967) took a civil rights poem by Langston Hughes and adapted it into a protest of Vietnam: "Raise my taxes/Freeze my wages/Send my son to Vietnam." Marvin Gaye 's "What's Going On?" from 1971 went on to be one of the most popular songs of all time.

John Lennon's first song after leaving the Beatles, "Give Peace a Chance," hit airwaves in 1966. " Imagine," from 1971, has transcended the Vietnam era to be a timeless song of peace and unity.

Political Consequences of Vietnam War Protests

The launch of the Tet Offensive by North Vietnamese communist troops in January 1968, and its success against U.S. and South Vietnamese troops, sent waves of shock and discontent across the home front and sparked a most intense period of antiwar protests. By February 1968, a Gallup poll showed only 35 percent of the population approved of Johnson's handling of the war and a full 50 percent disapproved.

Joining the antiwar demonstrations by this time were members of the organization Vietnam Veterans Against the War, many of whom were in wheelchairs and on crutches. The sight of these men on television throwing away the medals they had won during the war did much to win people over to the antiwar cause.

After many 1968 New Hampshire primary voters rallied behind the antiwar Democrat Eugene McCarthy, President Johnson announced that he would not seek reelection.

Later that year, Hubert Humphrey accepted the Democratic nomination for president at the 1968 Democratic Convention, held at Chicago's International Amphitheatre. Meanwhile, outside the convention hall, 10,000 antiwar demonstrators showed up, clashing violently with security forces assembled by Mayor Richard Daley.

Humphrey lost the 1968 presidential election to Richard M. Nixon, who promised in his campaign to restore "law and order"-a reference to conflict over antiwar protests as well as the rioting that followed King's assassination in 1968-more effectively than Johnson had.

Silent Majority

The following year, Nixon claimed in a famous speech that antiwar protesters constituted a small-albeit vocal-minority that should not be allowed to drown out the "silent majority" of Americans. Nixon's war policies divided the nation still further, however: In December 1969, the government instituted the first U.S. draft lottery since World War II, inciting a vast amount of controversy and causing many young men to flee to Canada to avoid conscription.

Tensions ran higher than ever, spurred on by mass demonstrations and incidents of violence by officials such those at Kent State in May 1970, when National Guard troops shot into a group of protesters demonstrating against the U.S. invasion of Cambodia, killing four students.

At the Mayday Protest in 1971, thousands of antiwar protestors tried to shut down Washington, D.C., completely, all but crippling the U.S. government. Traffic was stopped for a few hours, and CIA director Richard Helms later remarked that Mayday was "one of the things that was putting increasing pressure on the [Nixon] administration to try and find some way to get out of the war."

Vietnam War Ends

As antiwar fervor grew, in mid-1971, Daniel Ellsberg brought about the publication of the Pentagon Papers -which revealed previously confidential details about the war's conduct-and misconduct by government and military officials. Ellsberg called the Pentagon Papers "evidence of a quarter-century of aggression, broken treaties, deceptions, stolen elections, lies and murder."

These and other revelations caused more and more Americans to doubt the accountability of the U.S. government and the integrity of the U.S. military establishment.

Finally, in response to an almost overwhelming antiwar mandate, Nixon announced the effective end to U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia in January 1973. The Paris Peace Accords were signed on January 27, 1973, effectively ending the Vietnam War.

Sources

Vietnam War. Civil Rights and Labor History Consortium: University of Washington.
Anti-War Protests of the 1960s-70s. The White House Historical Association.
Anti-War Movement. PBS.

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Vietnam War Protests: Antiwar & Protest Songs - HISTORY

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Vietnam War protests began among antiwar activists and students, then gained prominence in 1965 when the U.S. military began bombing North Vietnam heavily.

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Delano Grape Strike - Lorraine Agtang Reflects 50 Years Later

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California Farmworkers Who Sparked A Rebellion For Farmworkers' Rights

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Senator Robert Kennedy (L) breaks bread with Union Leader Cesar Chavez as Chavez ended a 23-day fast in support of non-violence in the strike against grape growers. (Getty Images)

It might have been a half-century ago, but the impact of the Delano grape strike will always be felt -- not only in Hispanic history, but labor history in general.

On Sept. 8, 1965, a group of farmers who worked in grape fields went on strike to protest poor pay and working conditions in Delano, California.

So, what exactly made the strike so historic?

Here are five ways the Delano grape strike was so unique and instrumental.

1). It brought Hispanics and Filipinos together.

The strike began on Sept. 8, 1965, when members of the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee, which primarily consisted of Filipino-Americans, walked out, according to United Farm Workers.

But the group asked for help in the form of noted Hispanic labor leader Cezar Chavez, who led the National Farm Workers Association, which primarily consisted of Hispanic-Americans.

After taking a vote from his members, Chavez and his union joined the strike on Sept. 16, 1965, Mexican Independence Day.

The two unions worked together, sharing picket lines, food and a union hall.

2.) It was strictly nonviolent.

While there was temptation to resort to violence against grape growers that abused workers, Chavez insisted on following the model of nonviolent protests.

3.) Chavez became legendary with his methods of protests.

Chavez led by example and followed through on his ideas of nonviolent protests, coming up with other ways to get support behind the union.

He led a 300-mile march from Delano to Sacramento, went on a 25-day hunger strike that caused him to lose 35 pounds, organized boycotts of grapes and their distribution centers, and took to the streets of various cities to convey their message throughout the impasse.

4.) It was a long strike.

This standoff definitely wasn't in the category of "short." It took nearly five years of being on the picket lines and personal sacrifices before an agreement was finalized in July 1970 after a sizable boycott of grapes.

5.) There was a big victory won in the end.

The grape growers ultimately got what they fought so hard for, signing union contracts with higher pay, better benefits and enhanced protections.

The strike not only was a win for those workers in 1970, but it set a standard for the rights of farm workers all across America in future years.

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5 reasons why the Delano grape strike was so impactful

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It might have been a half-century ago, but the impact of the Delano grape strike will always be felt -- not only in Hispanic history, but labor history in general. On Sept. 8, 1965, a group of farmers who worked in grape fields went on strike to protest poor pay and working conditions in Delano, California.

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Why/How: Cesar Chavez goes on a Hunger Strike on TV to bring awareness

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Why/How: Cesar Chavez goes on a Hunger Strike on TV to bring awareness

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Huelga! : Cesar Chavez's Message of Solidarity & Unions : 1969 (feat. Teebs : While You Dooooo)

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Why/How: TV News clip of Wartime Footage

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Why/How: TV News clip of Wartime Footage

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Today’s post comes from Madie Ward in the National Archives History Office. The Vietnam War (1955–75) was a time of great controversy in the United States. Cold War tensions ran high as the country…

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Why/ How: The impact of TV on public support for Vietnam War  

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Why/ How: The impact of TV on public support for Vietnam War  

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Today’s post comes from Madie Ward in the National Archives History Office. The Vietnam War (1955–75) was a time of great controversy in the United States. Cold War tensions ran high as the country…

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MUSIC CLIPS

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Often great art is produced in the hardest of times, and some of the most iconic music of the 20th century was produced during the 1960s and early 1970s in protest of America's involvement in the Vietnam War. Artists like Marvin Gaye, George Harrison, Joan Baez, and Arlo Guthrie spoke out against a war that took nearly 60,000 American lives. These are the best Vietnam protest songs.

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Often great art is produced in the hardest of times, and some of the most iconic music of the 20th century was produced during the 1960s and early 1970s in protest of America's involvement in the Vietnam War. Artists like Marvin Gaye, George Harrison, Joan Baez, and Arlo Guthrie spoke out against a war that took nearly 60,000 American lives.

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Why/How: Muhammed Ali Protests  Black Involvement in Vietnam

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Why/How: Muhammed Ali Protests  Black Involvement in Vietnam

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Muhammad Ali Refuses Induction, Opposing Vietnam War - April 28, 1967

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Clip from the MLK movie Selma

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Selma Movie CLIP - Give Us the Vote (2015) - David Oyelowo, Oprah Winfrey Movie HD

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On Sunday, March 7, 1965--what became known as Bloody Sunday--some 600 marchers lining up behind SNCC's John Lewis and SCLC's Hosea Williams in Selma, Alabama did not seem to expect much violence despite the city's notoriety for violence against the Civil Rights Movement.

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Interview clip with John Lewis on the impact of Television

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U.S. Rep. John Lewis' Firsthand Account of Surviving "Bloody Sunday" | Oprah’s Master Class | OWN

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Video clip from MLK movie Selma

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Constant Raids at Gay Bars

The 1960s and preceding decades were not welcoming times for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) Americans. For instance, solicitation of same-sex relations was illegal in New York City.

For such reasons, LGBT individuals flocked to gay bars and clubs, places of refuge where they could express themselves openly and socialize without worry. However, the New York State Liquor Authority penalized and shut down establishments that served alcohol to known or suspected LGBT individuals, arguing that the mere gathering of homosexuals was "disorderly."

Thanks to activists' efforts, these regulations were overturned in 1966, and LGBT patrons could then be served alcohol. But engaging in gay behavior in public (holding hands, kissing or dancing with someone of the same sex) was still illegal, so police harassment of gay bars continued and many bars still operated without liquor licenses-in part because they were owned by the Mafia.

Gay Rights Before Stonewall

The first documented U.S. gay rights organization, The Society for Human Rights (SHR), was founded in 1924 by Henry Gerber, a German immigrant. Police raids forced them to disband in 1925, but not before they had published several issues of their newsletter, "Friendship and Freedom," the country's first gay-interest newsletter. America's first lesbian rights organization, The Daughters of Bilitis, was formed in San Francisco on September 21, 1955.

In 1966, three years before Stonewall, members of The Mattachine Society, an organization dedicated to gay rights, staged a "sip-in" where they openly declared their sexuality at taverns, daring staff to turn them away and suing establishments who did. When The Commission on Human Rights ruled that gay individuals had the right to be served in bars, police raids were temporarily reduced.

The Stonewall Inn

The crime syndicate saw profit in catering to shunned gay clientele, and by the mid-1960s, the Genovese crime family controlled most Greenwich Village gay bars. In 1966, they purchased Stonewall Inn (a "straight" bar and restaurant), cheaply renovated it, and reopened it the next year as a gay bar.

Stonewall Inn was registered as a type of private "bottle bar," which did not require a liquor license because patrons were supposed to bring their own liquor. Club attendees had to sign their names in a book upon entry to maintain the club's false exclusivity. The Genovese family bribed New York's Sixth Police Precinct to ignore the activities occurring within the club.

Without police interference, the crime family could cut costs how they saw fit: The club lacked a fire exit, running water behind the bar to wash glasses, clean toilets that didn't routinely overflow and palatable drinks that weren't watered down beyond recognition. What's more, the Mafia reportedly blackmailed the club's wealthier patrons who wanted to keep their sexuality a secret.

Nonetheless, Stonewall Inn quickly became an important Greenwich Village institution. It was large and relatively cheap to enter. It welcomed drag queens, who received a bitter reception at other gay bars and clubs. It was a nightly home for many runaways and homeless gay youths, who panhandled or shoplifted to afford the entry fee. And it was one of the few-if not the only-gay bar left that allowed dancing.

Raids were still a fact of life, but usually corrupt cops would tip off Mafia-run bars before they occurred, allowing owners to stash the alcohol (sold without a liquor license) and hide other illegal activities. In fact, the NYPD had stormed Stonewall Inn just a few days before the riot-inducing raid.

The Stonewall Riots Begin

When police raided Stonewall Inn on the morning of June 28, it came as a surprise-the bar wasn't tipped off this time.

Armed with a warrant, police officers entered the club, roughed up patrons, and, finding bootlegged alcohol, arrested 13 people, including employees and people violating the state's gender-appropriate clothing statute (female officers would take suspected cross-dressing patrons into the bathroom to check their sex).

Fed up with constant police harassment and social discrimination, angry patrons and neighborhood residents hung around outside of the bar rather than disperse, becoming increasingly agitated as the events unfolded and people were aggressively manhandled. At one point, an officer hit a lesbian over the head as he forced her into the police van- she shouted to onlookers to act, inciting the crowd to begin throw pennies, bottles, cobble stones and other objects at the police.

Within minutes, a full-blown riot involving hundreds of people began. The police, a few prisoners and a Village Voice writer barricaded themselves in the bar, which the mob attempted to set on fire after breaching the barricade repeatedly.

The fire department and a riot squad were eventually able to douse the flames, rescue those inside Stonewall, and disperse the crowd. But the protests, sometimes involving thousands of people, continued in the area for five more days, flaring up at one point after the Village Voice published its account of the riots.

Stonewall's Legacy

Though the Stonewall uprising didn't start the gay rights movement, it was a galvanizing force for LGBT political activism, leading to numerous gay rights organizations, including the Gay Liberation Front, Human Rights Campaign, GLAAD (formerly Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation), and PFLAG (formerly Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays).

On the one-year anniversary of the riots on June 28, 1970, thousands of people marched in the streets of Manhattan from the Stonewall Inn to Central Park in what was then called "Christopher Street Liberation Day," America's first gay pride parade. The parade's official chant was: "Say it loud, gay is proud."

In 2016, then-President Barack Obama designated the site of the riots-Stonewall Inn, Christopher Park, and the surrounding streets and sidewalks-a national monument in recognition of the area's contribution to gay rights.

Photo Gallery

HISTORY Vault

Sources

A History of Gay Rights in America. CBS.
LGBTQ Activism: The Henry Gerber House, Chicago, IL. NPS.gov.

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1969 Stonewall Riots - Origins, Timeline & Leaders

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The Stonewall Riots, also called the Stonewall Uprising, took place on June 28, 1969, in New York City, after police raided the Stonewall Inn, a local gay club. The raid sparked a riot among bar patrons and neighborhood residents as police hauled employees and patrons out of the bar, leading to six days of protests and violent clashes.

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Why, How: Facebook's Impact on Revolution 

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Facebook and the Arab Spring | The Facebook Dilemma | PBS LearningMedia

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Alicia Garza on the origin of Black Lives Matter

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Black Lives Matter: From social media post to global movement

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Black Lives Matter has sparked a hashtag, grass-roots organisations, and a collective of activists.

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TOPLINE

Korean pop fans have reclaimed the #WhiteLivesMatter from racists on both Twitter and Instagram-tagging posts of K-popstars, in a display of global solidarity with those protesting for racial equality in the United States.

NEW YORK, NEW YORK - FEBRUARY 21: J-Hope of the K-pop boy band BTS visits the "Today" Show at ... [+]
Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images

KEY FACTS

The K-pop fans from around the world-a massive force on social media-are acting as allies with Black Lives Matter, by hashtagging #whitelivesmatter on videos, photos and written statuses featuring Korean pop icons on both Twitter and Instagram.

In response, non-K-Pop fans have expressed initial shock at seeing #whitelivesmatter trending, then gratitude upon learning the reason why.

Other hashtags are being overwhelmed with pop music and peaceful content, like the hashtag #bluelivesmatter, which has also been used in opposition to the #blacklivesmatter movement and to emphasize support for police but has been repurposed for appreciation of blue cartoon characters like Blues Clues and Sonic the Hedgehog.

Here are some of the posts:

Key Background

White Lives Matter has been a racist movement in response to the Black Lives Matter movement for equal opportunity, civil rights and justice for black Americans. "White Lives Matter" along with "Jews will not replace us" were used as a rally cries in the demonstration by white supremacists and other far-right groups during the 2017 Charlottesville protests over the removal of confederate statues that ended in with a right-wing demonstrator plowing his car into a group of counterprotesters, killing one.

This is not the first move of global solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement-people gathered in Paris, London, Auckland, Copenhagen, Tokyo in the last couple days-to show solidarity with those protesting the death of unarmed black man George Floyd in police custody and advocating for racial equality.

Further Reading

Photos: Thousands March In Wake Of George Floyd's Death, From Amsterdam To Tokyo ( Forbes)

Ferguson Elects First Black And Woman Mayor In Its History ( Forbes)

Zuckerberg Defends 'Do Nothing' Approach On Trump, Admits Inaction Hurt Facebook ( Forbes)

Huge Cyber Attacks Attempt To Silence Black Rights Movement With DDoS Attacks ( Forbes)

I'm the Under 30 Editorial Community Lead at Forbes. Previously, I directed marketing at a mobile app startup. I've also worked at The New York Times and New York...

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K-Pop Fans Drown Out Racists By Co-Opting #WhiteLivesMatter On Twitter And Instagram

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Korean pop fans have reclaimed the #WhiteLivesMatter from racists on both Twitter and Instagram-tagging posts of K-popstars, in a display of global solidarity with those protesting for racial equality in the United States.