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 On the night of Judy
Garland's funeral, a gay bar called the Stonewall Inn was
raided.
The raid changed the course of LGBT
history.
Raids were not unusual in 1969; in fact, they were conducted
regularly without much resistance. However, that night the
street erupted into violent protest as the crowds in the bar
fought back. The backlash and several nights of protest that
followed have come to be known as the Stonewall Riots.
Prior to that summer there was little public expression of the
lives and experiences of LGBT people. The Stonewall Riots marked
the beginning of the gay liberation movement that has
transformed oppression into calls for pride and action. In
the past forty years we have all been witness to an astonishing
flowering of LGBT culture that has changed the world forever.
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