According to a 2015 article in Out magazine, the group, which was led by several transgender women, “pelted officers with donuts, coffee, and paper plates until they were forced to retreat and return with larger numbers.” It is the first documented LGBTQ uprising in U.S.
In May 1959, a group of LGBTQ individuals who were fed up with being mistreated by the police revolted at Cooper Do-Nuts in Los Angeles. The Stonewall Riots were not America's first LGBTQ uprising. In the 1960s, the Mattachine Society would hold “Annual Reminders” at Philadelphia’s Independence Hall every Fourth of July, where they'd advocate for lesbian and gay equality. In 1955, the Daughters of Bilitis was founded in San Francisco, and became the first lesbian rights group in the United States. In 1924, Henry Gerber, a German immigrant, founded the Society for Human Rights in Chicago it was the first group to campaign for gay rights in the United States. There is a storied history of LGBTQ activism in the United States that dates back long before the Stonewall Riots. There was a gay rights movement before Pride Month. Given that many of the event's 50th anniversary celebrations were lost amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, now is the perfect time to look back at the history of Pride Month and LGBTQ activism in the United States.
This year marks the 51st anniversary of the first gay pride march, which was held on the first anniversary of the Stonewall Riots. Pride parades, which are traditionally held on the last weekend in June, commemorate the anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising, a watershed moment in LGBTQ history when patrons of The Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in Manhattan that is now a national monument, fought back against a police raid. Since 1970, the LGBTQ community has marked June as Pride Month-a time to celebrate what it means to be lesbian, gay, bisexual, and/or transgender while demanding equality and liberation from cis and heteronormative constraints.