In the decade following the Stonewall uprising, police abuse remained a problem for many LGBT people, but it was joined by growing concerns about general street safety. On June 28, however, the Stonewall patrons and others socializing outside the bar responded to the unexpected raid with a three-day rebellion that is now credited with spurring a more militant and visible LGBT movement. At the time, police raids of gay bars were common, and bar owners often sought protection through payoffs to the police. Years earlier, Bell had written about a much more famous police raid and response, which had taken place at the Stonewall Inn bar on June 28,1969. probably for narcotics use.” Bell also noted the striking contrast between the raid and another press-worthy event held that same night: a black tie dinner, $150 a plate, sponsored by the Human Rights Campaign Fund (HRCF), a gay and lesbian political action committee, at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel with a keynote by former vice president Walter Mondale. Martin, commanding officer of the Midtown South Precinct, who described Blue’s as “a very troublesome bar” with “a lot of undesirables” and “a place that transvestites are drawn to.
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Gay activist and journalist Arthur Bell wrote a front-page story about the raid for the alternative weekly the Village Voice. Although one mention of a rally made it into the New York Times, Credle noted in his testimony that the incident itself had been ignored by major media outlets, an insult certainly made worse by the fact that the bar sat across the street from the Times’s own headquarters.īlues Bar protest, Oct.
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The event galvanized lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) activists for whom police violence was a primary concern.
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The following year, activist James Credle testified at congressional hearings on police misconduct, describing the brutal beatings of the Black and Latino gay men and trans people who made up the bar’s main clientele. On September 29, 1982, over thirty New York City police officers raided Blue’s, a bar in Manhattan’s Times Square.