| Historians date the gay liberation movement to a few nights
in 1969, when New York City queers took to the streets to protest police
harassment of gay bars. But the city's gay community can actually trace
its roots back at least 100 years. |
| In the last decades of the 19th century, many young people
came to New York City from small towns, rural areas, and Europe, looking
for the economic opportunities. Among them were many queer folk who had
felt isolated and alone in their hometowns. |
| An array of saloons and dance halls catered to the social
needs of the new urban dwellers, and patrons included numerous male
"degenerates." Vice squad reports from the early 1900s show that
gay men also frequented public spaces like parks and bathhouses looking
for sex. |
| Because women led less public lives than men did, little is
known about lesbians in New York before the 1920s. However, many of the
city's labor organizers, social workers, suffragists, and academics of the
time were never-married women who lived in domestic arrangements with
other women and had networks of close female friends. |
| Between the world wars, Bohemian culture, which embraced
both artistic and sexual freedom, took root in Greenwich Village, making
it a popular haven for gay men and lesbians. At the same time, a queer
subculture blossomed in Harlem. Many of the greatest contributors to the
Harlem Renaissance of 1920-1935 were gay or bisexual. |
| After World War II, many discharged gay service members
stayed on in New York instead of returning to small towns and disapproving
families. In 1945 a group of gay ex-soldiers formed the Veterans
Benevolent Association, a social club that held dances and parties
attracting hundreds of gay men. |
| Bars remained the center of gay male social life in New
York throughout the 1950s and early 1960s, helping to foster a sense of
queer community. Separate women's clubs offered lesbians a way to meet
friends and lovers. |
| Queer New York had its political side, too. Activist Randy
Wicker launched a one-man campaign in 1962 to improve gay coverage in the
media. Wicker's efforts culminated in the running of a gay story on the
front page of the New York Times in December 1963 -- a first for a
mainstream paper, though the story had a less-than-positive slant. |
| In 1967 gay activist Craig Rodwell founded the first gay
bookstore in the world in Greenwich Village. The Oscar Wilde Memorial
Bookshop was an ad hoc community center, where as much organizing took
place as did book buying. |
| After the historic riots at the Stonewall Inn in June 1969,
New York witnessed an explosion of gay and lesbian groups, like the
National Gay Task Force (now NGLTF) and Lambda Legal Defense and Education
Fund, which are still active today. |
