The Stonewall Riots were a series of spontaneous protests by members of the gay, lesbian, and bisexual community following a police raid on the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar located at 51 and 53 Christopher Street in Greenwich Village, New York City, in the early morning hours of 28 June 1969. The unrest continued over several nights and is widely regarded as a catalyst for the modern gay rights movement in the United States and internationally.

The Stonewall Inn was operated by the Genovese crime family and catered to some of the most marginalized members of New York's gay community, including drag queens, transvestites, homeless youth, and working-class gay men. Raids on gay establishments were routine under New York law at the time, which prohibited serving alcohol to homosexuals and criminalized same-sex dancing and cross-dressing in public. On the night of 28 June 1969, plainclothes officers from the New York City Police Department's Public Morals Division entered the bar, arrested employees for liquor violations, and began removing patrons. Unusually, the crowd gathered outside resisted rather than dispersing. The resistance escalated into two nights of rioting and several subsequent nights of demonstrations. The identity categories used to describe some participants have been subject to later reinterpretation. For a more detailed account, see Stonewall Riots - History.

A persistent and unresolved question in the historical record is which individual - or individuals - first physically resisted the police during the raid. Several names appear in eyewitness accounts and later oral histories, most notably Marsha P. Johnson, a black gay activist and drag performer, and Sylvia Rivera, a Latina activist who was present that night. However, both Johnson and Rivera gave inconsistent or contradictory accounts over the years, and Johnson herself stated at various points that she did not arrive at the Stonewall Inn until after the initial confrontation had begun. Other accounts credit an unidentified butch lesbian, sometimes associated with Stormé DeLarverie, whose resistance while being escorted by police is said to have prompted the crowd to act. The factual question remains contested. See Stonewall Riots - First Punch Debate for a fuller treatment of the competing accounts.

Within months of the riots, activist organizations including the Gay Liberation Front and the Gay Activists Alliance were founded in New York. The first gay pride marches were held on 28 June 1970 - the one-year anniversary of the raid - in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Chicago. The riots are commemorated annually through pride events held worldwide. The Stonewall Inn was designated a National Monument by President Barack Obama in 2016, the first U.S. national monument dedicated to LGBTQ history.

The interpretation of the riots - their causes, their participants, and their significance - remains a subject of ongoing historical and political debate. Questions include the relative roles of different community factions, the degree to which the events were spontaneous versus organized, and the extent to which subsequent gay rights movements reflect or depart from the priorities of those who were present.

There is broad historical consensus that the Stonewall Riots represented a turning point in the organized pursuit of gay civil rights in the United States, though historians debate the weight to assign various contributing factors and individuals. See Stonewall Riots - Historical Consensus.

• Catalyst of liberation - The riots marked the beginning of a sustained, movement-scale push for gay civil rights and should be understood as a foundational moment of collective resistance. Viewpoint: Liberation Catalyst
• Criminality and context - The involvement of organized crime in operating the Stonewall Inn, and the routine corruption between the NYPD and gay establishments, complicates simple narratives of police oppression versus community resistance. Viewpoint: Organized Crime Context
• Contested representation - Later commemorations of the riots have emphasized certain participants in ways that some historians argue are anachronistic or politically motivated, including the retroactive application of identity categories to individuals who identified at the time as gay men, drag queens, or transvestites; others argue this corrects earlier erasure. Viewpoint: Contested Representation
• Assimilationist vs. radical legacy - Subsequent gay rights movements diverged over whether to pursue integration into mainstream institutions or to maintain a more radical challenge to social norms; both trace claims of legitimacy to Stonewall. Viewpoint: Assimilationist vs. Radical Legacy

• Stonewall Riots - History
• Stonewall Riots - First Punch Debate
• Stonewall Riots - Debate
• Stonewall Riots - Historical Consensus
• Marsha P. Johnson
• Sylvia Rivera
• Stormé DeLarverie
• Gay Liberation Front
• Gay Rights Movement
• Stonewall Inn

1. Carter, David. Stonewall: The Riots That Sparked the Gay Revolution. St. Martin's Press, 2004.
2. Duberman, Martin. Stonewall. Dutton, 1993.
3. Gan, Jessi. “'Still at the Back of the Bus': Sylvia Rivera's Struggle.” Centro Journal 19, no. 1 (2007): 124-139.
4. Kissack, Terence. “Freaking Fag Revolutionaries: New York's Gay Liberation Front, 1969-1971.” Radical History Review 62 (1995): 104-134.
5. Luibhéid, Eithne, and Lionel Cantú, eds. Queer Migrations. University of Minnesota Press, 2005.
6. Marcus, Eric. Making Gay History. HarperCollins, 2002.
7. National Park Service. Stonewall National Monument. U.S. Department of the Interior, 2016.
8. “Sylvia Rivera.” Transcript of speech, Latino Gay Men of New York, 2001. Archived at the LGBTQ History Project.