A few local gay papers existed around the country, but there wasn't any real national gay press. The riot was not immediate national news. īut in Chicago, the events of that June day in 1969 barely made a ripple. It conjures up a vision of bar-raiding Greenwich Village cops terrorized inside the Stonewall Inn by a bunch of angry queens outside, tossing rocks, bottles, a Molotov cocktail and shouts reminiscent of Network ( 'I'm not going to take this anymore!' ). In the 21st century, 'Stonewall' is the accepted buzzword for the beginning of the gay liberation movement in the United States.

Pictured: A police arrest during the riots outside the 1968 Democratic National Convention ( photo courtesy of the Chicago History Museum ) and David Stienecker in 2008 ( photo by Tracy Baim ). A companion book, Out and Proud in Chicago: An Overview of the City's Gay Movement, edited by Tracy Baim, will be published this summer by Surrey Books.

The following article was written for the Chicago Gay History Project, a Web site launching later this summer. This article shared 20140 times since Wed May 28, 2008