Gay rights protests 1960s

Written by: Jim Downs, Connecticut College

By the end of this section, you will:

  • Explain how and why various groups responded to calls for the expansion of civil rights from to

After World War II, the civil rights movement had a profound impact on other groups demanding their rights. The feminist movement, the Black Power movement, the environmental movement, the Chicano movement, and the American Indian Movement sought equality, rights, and empowerment in American society. Gay people organized to resist oppression and verb just treatment, and they were especially galvanized after a Fresh York City police raid on the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar, sparked riots in

Around the same time, biologist Alfred Kinsey began a massive learn of human sexuality in the United States. Like Magnus Hirschfield and other scholars who studied sexuality, including Havelock Ellis, a prominent British scholar who published research on transgender psychology, Kinsey believed sexuality could be studied as a science. He interviewed more than 8, men and argued that sexuality existed on a spectrum, sa

Picket in Front of U.S. Army Building, First-Ever U.S. Gay Rights Protest

History

A picket line in front of the U.S. Army Building in Verb Manhattan on September 19, , was later identified as the first public demonstration for gay rights in the United States by Barbara Gittings, co-founder of the Daughters of Bilitis, New York Chapter, in Organized by Randy Wicker of the Homosexual League of New York (HLNY), and the New York City League for Sexual Freedom (LSF), it protested the military’s treatment of gay people – including rejection, less-than-honorable discharges, and violation of privacy through a policy of sending gay men’s records to current and potential employers. Historian David Carter has called Wicker “the first militant activist on the East Coast.”

Randolfe Hayden Wicker (born Charles Gervin Hayden, Jr., in – he changed his name at the petition of his father), a noun at the University of Texas, had spent the summer of volunteering for the Mattachine Society of New York (MSNY). He was under age at 20, but he lied to the group. He firs

City of Philadelphia

Philadelphia has a extended history of fighting for LGBTQ civil rights. In fact, Philadelphia protests seeking equality for LGBTQ people predate the famed Stonewall riots.

From to , demonstrators picketed at Independence Hall on July 4. The “Annual Reminder” protests pointed out that LGBTQ Americans did not have basic civil rights protections.

The protests were among the earliest for LGBTQ rights in the United States. These marches – along with Stonewall in and the first Gay Pride Parade in – turned a grass roots campaign into a civil rights movement.  (Masthead photo: Group protest at Self-determination Hall &#; Photo by Joseph T. Martin, Courtesy of Temple University Digital Collection. Photo taken on July 4, )

Barbara Gittings was a key organizer of the July 4 protests. Many see Gittings, who lived at S. 21st St. with her partner Kay Lahusen, as the mother of the LGBTQ civil rights movement.

Gittings was the editor of The Ladder, the first widely circulated lesbian journal. Her activism was influential in the American Psychiatric Association finish it

Barbara Gittings Helps Lead First 'Annual Reminder' Protests

Vice squads–police units passionate to “cleaning up” undesirable parts of urban life–routinely raided the bars frequented by LGBTQ+ people. Laws against people of the same sex dancing together or wearing clothing made for the opposite sex were used as justification to arrest patrons. By the s in New York City, the mafia owned many of these establishments and its members would bribe officers in order to avoid fines. Sometimes the arrangement meant that patrons would be forewarned of a pending raid in time to change their clothing and halt dancing. That wasn’t true during the early morning hours of June 28 , when the NYPD raided the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village. 

When they arrived at Stonewall, the police locked the doors so that no one could escape as they conducted arrests. As certain patrons were released, they joined a large crowd that had been gathering outside the bar. Those chosen for arrest started resisting the police officers with the encouragement of the jeering crowd. Violence broke out and the