Millions expected at NYC Pride March commemorating 50th anniversary of Stonewall riots

Millions of people from around the globe are expected in Manhattan at Sunday’s Pride parade — commemorating 50 years since riots over an NYPD raid at a gay bar called the Stonewall Inn helped kindle the modern gay rights movement.

This jubilee parade steps off at noon — at 26th Street and Fifth Avenue, south to Eighth Street, west on Eighth which becomes Greenwich Avenue, southwest on Christopher Street past the Stonewall Inn, and then north on Seventh Avenue until 23rd Street — and lasts until 8 p.m.

On June 28, 1969, eight NYPD cops raided Stonewall, a gritty, mob-owned bar on Christopher Street, at a time when sodomy was illegal in nearly every state including New York, homosexuality was considered a mental illness, and appearing in drag was effectively illegal. It was a climate in which the Mafia filled in the void of bars catering to gay and transgender people, with black-market nightlife. 

Raiding gay bars was a common police practice of the era: Patrons were subject to arrest on morals charges, public shaming in the newspaper, and if in drag, the additional indignity of anatomical inspections for failing to wear clothing matching their birth sex.

At Stonewall, police roughed up patrons, which riled up the crowd. The rioting at Stonewall continued for several days: Patrons, soon joined by others, tussled with the police, threw projectiles and tried to set the bar on fire. 

What happened over those nights marked something almost unheard of in gay activism: a violent revolt against NYPD harassment of those who are known in modern parlance as LGBTQ people.

On June 6, NYPD Commissioner James O’Neill apologized for what the NYPD did at Stonewall.

“I do know what happened should not have happened,” O’Neill said. “The actions taken by the NYPD were wrong — plain and simple. The actions and the laws were discriminatory and oppressive, and for that, I apologize.”

The NYPD now invites LGBTQ officers to march, in uniform, in the parade.

There has been a commemoration of what happened at Stonewall every year since 1970. The aftermath of the riots marked the start of a more radical and confrontational — and less polite and deferential — style of gay activism. 

Stonewall wasn’t the first effective protest of anti-gay laws.

For decades beginning around 1957, activist Frank Kameny, who was fired from his job as a government astronomer for being gay, helped lead a campaign to persuade the federal government to stop ousting gay workers. He was later honored in the White House by President Barack Obama for the efforts. 

And at Julius’ in 1966, around the corner from Stonewall, several activists challenged the State Liquor Authority practice outlawing the serving of alcohol to a known homosexual, as gays were commonly called then.

Bars that served gays could lose their licenses to serve alcohol.

Called the “Sip-In," the protest led a bartender to refuse service after one of the activists made known his homosexual orientation.

The liquor authority later changed its practice.

The struggle for gay rights has made strides, including a reversal of anti-sodomy laws (by the state's top court in 1980 and by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2003) and the legalization of same-sex marriage (by the Albany statehouse in 2011, and by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2015).

As for Stonewall, the park across the street where much of the rioting happened was declared a national monument under Obama in 2016.

Before Sunday's parade, there will be a smaller, more radical event that will follow the route from 1970: the Queer Liberation March, sponsored by a group that says the bigger parade has become too corporate, too friendly with the NYPD and insufficiently radical. It's to start at 9:30 a.m. from around Christopher Street and Seventh Avenue, ending with a rally in Central Park.

By Matthew Chayes

matthew.chayes@newsday.comchayesmatthew

Matthew Chayes, a Newsday reporter since 2007, covers New York City.