For Boston queer activists, the Vietnam War still overshadowed other causes on April 15, 1970, they joined a large march sponsored by the National Mobilization Against the War in Vietnam. Even though there was no March in 1970, several events were held to commemorate Stonewall.
But the first March occurred two years later, in June 1971. To avoid choosing a single label, we use them interchangeably throughout.Ī widely held misconception about the Boston Pride March is that it began the year after Stonewall. We know that labeling the event a “march” or “parade” has significant meaning. Some years, political issues burned at the forefront while in others, the weather was the top story. While it is impossible to include every event and group associated with Pride, with this concise history we offer a peek into each year. Police harassment of bar patrons decreased markedly in Boston by the late 60s, but persisted in New York, especially at the Stonewall Inn. “If you didn’t have ID, they’d arrest you and put your name in the paper,” says Conrad. They’d walk up to each other and ask if their friends had heard about it.” Until the mid-60s, Sporter’s itself was routinely raided by Boston police, who lined patrons up against the walls, yelling slurs at them and demanding identification. Bill Conrad, who worked the door that night, recalls, “Sure, people were talking about, the place was buzzing about it. The next night in Boston, the hot summer air rushed through the door at Sporter’s, a gay bar on Cambridge Street. For homeless black and Latina/Latino LGBTQ youth and young adults who slept in nearby Christopher Park, the Stonewall Inn was their stable domicile.” Therefore, the movement launched by Stonewall, was started not by the well-connected or well-off, but by young white runaways, drag queens, trans people, and people of color. Irene Monroe, who was there, “On the first night of the Stonewall riots, African Americans and Latinos likely were the largest percentage of the protestors, because we heavily frequented the bar. Skirmishes between LGBT people and police continued in the West Village over the next week.Īlthough many of the photographs taken that night were of young white men, the Stonewall Inn attracted a largely and African- American clientele. A routine police raid on the Stonewall Inn, a little-known bar that many middle-class gay people would never think to visit, became a pitched battle, when the queer patrons retaliated.
What looked like a riot was actually an uprising. These things happen in New York all the time.'”īut this was different. One of the women turned to me and said, 'What's going on here?' I said, 'Oh, it's a riot. Years later, Shelley told author Martin Duberman, "We saw these people, who looked younger than I was, throwing things at cops. As they turned onto Christopher Street, they saw a melee outside the Stonewall Inn. The Boston women had come down to discuss opening a DOB chapter back home. Still, no one could have predicted that a worldwide movement was about to erupt in a dive bar that didn’t even have running water.įanning herself against the heat, Martha Shelley, a leader in the New York chapter of the DOB, showed visitors from Boston around the Sheridan Square neighborhood. It felt like something was always about to happen. On long, hot summer nights in the 60s, the air crackled with possibility, but also violence. –Martha Shelley, Daughters of Bilitis (DOB), New York ChapterĪ little past midnight, on June 28, 1969, the temperature hovered around 80 degrees in New York’s Greenwich Village.