New York Public Library

No matter that we were defending a Mafia club. The Stonewall was a symbol, just as the leveling of the Bastille had been. No matter that only six prisoners had been in the Bastille and one of those was Sade, who clearly deserved being locked up. No one chooses the right symbolic occasion; one takes what’s available.

I was with a group of queens, and we started walking up Christopher Street going, “Gay power! Gay power! Gay power!” We walked all the way to Eighth Avenue, and then we all looked at each other and said, “What do we do now?” So we turned round and walked all the way back down Christopher Street, still yelling, “Gay power!

Then everything changed with the Stonewall uprising toward the end of June 1969. And it wasn’t all those crewnecked white boys in the Hamptons and the Pines who changed things, but the black kids and Puerto Rican transvestites who came down to the Village on the subway...