We're taking the place! According to Duberman p. Historian David Carter presents information [66] indicating that the Mafia owners of the Stonewall and the manager were blackmailing wealthier customers, particularly those who worked in the Financial District. They appeared to be making more money from extortion than they were from liquor sales in the bar. Carter deduces that when the police were unable to receive kickbacks from blackmail and the theft of negotiable bonds facilitated by pressuring gay Wall Street customers , they decided to close the Stonewall Inn permanently.

Two undercover policewomen and two undercover policemen had entered the bar earlier that evening to gather visual evidence, as the Public Morals Squad waited outside for the signal. Once inside, they called for backup from the Sixth Precinct using the bar's pay telephone. The music was turned off and the main lights were turned on. Patrons who had never experienced a police raid were confused. A few who realized what was happening began to run for doors and windows in the bathrooms, but police barred the doors. Michael Fader remembered,. Things happened so fast you kind of got caught not knowing.

All of a sudden there were police there and we were told to all get in lines and to have our identification ready to be led out of the bar. The raid did not go as planned. Standard procedure was to line up the patrons, check their identification, and have female police officers take customers dressed as women to the bathroom to verify their sex, upon which any men dressed as women would be arrested.

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Those dressed as women that night refused to go with the officers. Men in line began to refuse to produce their identification. The police decided to take everyone present to the police station, after separating those cross-dressing in a room in the back of the bar.

Maria Ritter, then known as male to her family, recalled, "My biggest fear was that I would get arrested. My second biggest fear was that my picture would be in a newspaper or on a television report in my mother's dress! The police were to transport the bar's alcohol in patrol wagons. Instead, they stopped outside and a crowd began to grow and watch.

Although the police forcefully pushed or kicked some patrons out of the bar, some customers released by the police performed for the crowd by posing and saluting the police in an exaggerated fashion. The crowd's applause encouraged them further: When the first patrol wagon arrived, Inspector Pine recalled that the crowd—most of whom were homosexual—had grown to at least ten times the number of people who were arrested, and they all became very quiet.

The police began escorting Mafia members into the first wagon, to the cheers of the bystanders. Next, regular employees were loaded into the wagon. A bystander shouted, "Gay power!

Author Edmund White , who had been passing by, recalled, "Everyone's restless, angry, and high-spirited. No one has a slogan, no one even has an attitude, but something's brewing. A scuffle broke out when a woman in handcuffs was escorted from the door of the bar to the waiting police wagon several times. She escaped repeatedly and fought with four of the police, swearing and shouting, for about ten minutes.

Described as "a typical New York butch" and "a dyke—stone butch", she had been hit on the head by an officer with a baton for, as one witness claimed, complaining that her handcuffs were too tight. The police tried to restrain some of the crowd, knocking a few people down, which incited bystanders even more.

Some of those handcuffed in the wagon escaped when police left them unattended deliberately, according to some witnesses. The commotion attracted more people who learned what was happening. Someone in the crowd declared that the bar had been raided because "they didn't pay off the cops", to which someone else yelled "Let's pay them off!

Though Van Ronk was not gay, he had experienced police violence when he participated in antiwar demonstrations: Every time you turned around the cops were pulling some outrage or another. Multiple accounts of the riot assert that there was no pre-existing organization or apparent cause for the demonstration; what ensued was spontaneous.

We all had a collective feeling like we'd had enough of this kind of shit. It wasn't anything tangible anybody said to anyone else, it was just kind of like everything over the years had come to a head on that one particular night in the one particular place, and it was not an organized demonstration Everyone in the crowd felt that we were never going to go back. It was like the last straw.

It was time to reclaim something that had always been taken from us All kinds of people, all different reasons, but mostly it was total outrage, anger, sorrow, everything combined, and everything just kind of ran its course. It was the police who were doing most of the destruction. We were really trying to get back in and break free. And we felt that we had freedom at last, or freedom to at least show that we demanded freedom. We weren't going to be walking meekly in the night and letting them shove us around—it's like standing your ground for the first time and in a really strong way, and that's what caught the police by surprise.

There was something in the air, freedom a long time overdue, and we're going to fight for it. It took different forms, but the bottom line was, we weren't going to go away. And we didn't. The only photograph taken during the first night of the riots shows the homeless youth who slept in nearby Christopher Park, scuffling with police. The Stonewall became home to these kids.

When it was raided, they fought for it. That, and the fact that they had nothing to lose other than the most tolerant and broadminded gay place in town, explains why. Garbage cans, garbage, bottles, rocks, and bricks were hurled at the building, breaking the windows.

Witnesses attest that "flame queens", hustlers, and gay "street kids"—the most outcast people in the gay community—were responsible for the first volley of projectiles, as well as the uprooting of a parking meter used as a battering ram on the doors of the Stonewall Inn. You've been treating us like shit all these years? Now it's our turn! It was one of the greatest moments in my life. The mob lit garbage on fire and stuffed it through the broken windows as the police grabbed a fire hose. Because it had no water pressure, the hose was ineffective in dispersing the crowd, and seemed only to encourage them.

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The doors flew open and officers pointed their weapons at the angry crowd, threatening to shoot. The Village Voice writer Howard Smith, in the bar with the police, took a wrench from the bar and stuffed it in his pants, unsure if he might have to use it against the mob or the police. He watched someone squirt lighter fluid into the bar; as it was lit and the police took aim, sirens were heard and fire trucks arrived. One officer's eye was cut, and a few others were bruised from being struck by flying debris.

The cops were totally humiliated. This never, ever happened. They were angrier than I guess they had ever been, because everybody else had rioted I mean, they wanted to kill. The TPF formed a phalanx and attempted to clear the streets by marching slowly and pushing the crowd back. The mob openly mocked the police.

The crowd cheered, started impromptu kick lines , and sang to the tune of Ta-ra-ra Boom-de-ay: Just as the line got into a full kick routine, the TPF advanced again and cleared the crowd of screaming gay power[-]ites down Christopher to Seventh Avenue. The cops with the [nightsticks] and the kick line on the other side.

It was the most amazing thing And all the sudden that kick line, which I guess was a spoof on the machismo I think that's when I felt rage. Because people were getting smashed with bats. And for what? A kick line.



Craig Rodwell , owner of the Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop , reported watching police chase participants through the crooked streets, only to see them appear around the next corner behind the police. Members of the mob stopped cars, overturning one of them to block Christopher Street. Jack Nichols and Lige Clarke , in their column printed in Screw , declared that "massive crowds of angry protesters chased [the police] for blocks screaming, 'Catch them! Many people sat on stoops or gathered nearby in Christopher Park throughout the morning, dazed in disbelief at what had transpired.

Many witnesses remembered the surreal and eerie quiet that descended upon Christopher Street, though there continued to be "electricity in the air". It was obvious, at least to me, that a lot of people really were gay and, you know, this was our street. Some in the crowd were hospitalized, [note 8] and four police officers were injured. Almost everything in the Stonewall Inn was broken. Inspector Pine had intended to close and dismantle the Stonewall Inn that night. Pay phones, toilets, mirrors, jukeboxes , and cigarette machines were all smashed, possibly in the riot and possibly by the police.

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All three papers covered the riots; the Daily News placed coverage on the front page. News of the riot spread quickly throughout Greenwich Village, fueled by rumors that it had been organized by the Students for a Democratic Society , the Black Panthers , or triggered by "a homosexual police officer whose roommate went dancing at the Stonewall against the officer's wishes". Graffiti appeared on the walls of the bar, declaring "Drag power", "They invaded our rights", "Support gay power", and "Legalize gay bars", along with accusations of police looting, and—regarding the status of the bar—"We are open.

The next night, rioting again surrounded Christopher Street; participants remember differently which night was more frantic or violent. Many of the same people returned from the previous evening—hustlers, street youths, and "queens"—but they were joined by "police provocateurs", curious bystanders, and even tourists.