Who Rioted at the Stonewall Bar That Night?

Stonewall rioters photographed by Fred MacDarrah outside the offices of the Village Voice on the second or third night of the riots.

Who started rioting at the Stonewall Bar that hot humid night 40 years ago?

The Stonewall bar was a dive. Even by the low standards of Mob owned New York gay bars, the Stonewall was the bottom of the pit. Most of its patrons were way under the legal age for drinking. Glasses were washed at best occasionally, and frequently weren’t even rinsed. The restrooms were primitive and filthy. Craig Rodwell led a campaign to close the Stonewall after an outbreak of hepatitis among its patrons in the spring of 1969.
The clientele of the Stonewall was not the Fire Island set grieving over the late Judy Garland that week. The regular patrons of the Stonewall probably never heard of her. They were street kids. They were very young runaways and castaways leaving their families, or thrown out, because they were gay. Many of them were homeless and lived precarious (and sometimes short) lives by hustling, petty thievery, drug dealing, and odd jobs. Others were weekend street kids, kids who led double lives; straight at home and at school, and gay on the weekends in Manhattan. They too sometimes hustled and dealt drugs. As one gay Village resident who knew them said, “They were rotten kids, but they were made rotten.”
There was always a large population of homeless runaways in the Village and around Times Square, most of them gay boys. Among them were a number of transgenders. That population is still there in the Village, though the Times Square population has mostly been driven out by real estate development. The only thing that has changed about it is its color. In 1969, that population was largely white. Today, it is largely black and Hispanic reflecting middle class white America’s decision to accept its gay children, and African and Hispanic America’s continuing struggles with this issue, and with all kinds of complicating factors. The artist and writer David Wojnarowicz would emerge out of this homeless runaway population in the 1980s. He ran away from a violent alcoholic father and began hustling at age 12. His story is not that unique.
These were the people who started the Stonewall riots, who launched that first shot across the bow of history for all gays and lesbians.

As can be seen from the photographs, a substantial number of them were black and Latino. A lot of transgenders were involved. Two of them, Sylvia Rivera and Marsh P. Johnson, would emerge as political leaders, founding their own organization, Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR) in the 1970s. Lesbians don’t appear to be much of a presence in the records, which does not mean they weren’t there. It is possible that one lesbian, Marylin Fowler, started the whole thing by ferociously resisting arrest as the cops raided the bar, provoking the crowds into charging the police.

The activists and other gays and lesbians joined in on the second and third nights. Craig Rodwell was at first appalled by the rioting, but quickly recognized its importance.  He tried to do some political consciousness-raising among the rioters.  Marty Robinson was there on the second night of rioting and remembered it as an exhilarating experience.

Not all of the rioters were gay. A substantial number of heterosexuals joined the riots on the second and third nights. Many of them were career anarchists and brawlers from the East Village who relished a good street fight with the NYPD. Many others were genuinely sympathetic to their gay friends.