Photograph as originally submitted to this page in the Historical Marker Database www.HMdb.org. Click on photo to resize in browser. Scroll down to see metadata.

Photographer: Andrew Ruppenstein
Taken: October 3, 2016
Caption: Raided Premises Sign
Additional Description: The above sign is found inside the Stonewall Inn. Howard Leary was police commissioner at the time of the Stonewall Riots.

...New York City had the largest gay population in the United States. It was also the city that most aggressively upheld anti-sodomy laws. In the mid-1960s New York created police vice squads to raid gay bars and baths, and began using decoys to solicit and entrap gays. By 1966 over 100 men a week were arrested as a result of this effort. "It was a nightmare for the lesbian or gay man who was arrested and caught up in the juggernaut but it was also a nightmare for the lesbians or gay men who lived in the closet," Yale Law School professor William Eskridge says in the film. "This produced an enormous amount of anger within the lesbian and gay community in New York City. Eventually something was bound to blow." -- Introduction: Stonewall Uprising, American Experience, PBS
Submitted: October 15, 2016, by Andrew Ruppenstein of Lamorinda, California.
Database Locator Identification Number: p366056
File Size: 1.366 Megabytes

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