There is little agreement about the events of that night—aside from the fact that patrons violently clashed with police. Newspaper accounts, oral histories, and reports conflict with one another. Jason Baumann, curator of the New York Public Library’s LGBTQ collection, writes that scholars still debate “how many days the uprising lasted, and who threw the first brick, the first bottle, and the first punch.”

("There was a price we paid to open up our mouths:" Hear from members of the LGBTQ community from across the U.S.)

Regardless of who started the uprising, the police raid did not go according to plan. As violence flared outside the bar, officers retreated inside and barricaded themselves in the building. Protesters burst through the barricade, exchanged blows with police, and lit a fire in the club. It took hours for officers to clear the streets. The next night, thousands came to the Stonewall Inn to taunt the police. Clashes broke out again that night and sporadically in the days that followed.

No going back after Stonewall

In the aftermath of the rebellion, participants and Greenwich Village residents who were tired of living in the shadows of oppression were galvanized; they joined forces with those who had already begun protesting discrimination against LGBTQ people.

“Everyone in the crowd felt that we were never going to go back,” recalled Michael Fader, who had been present at the raid. “The bottom line was, we weren’t going to go away. And we didn’t.” Within months, people who had once feared holding hands on the street had taken to the streets to demand gay liberation. The movement stoked by the police raid in Greenwich Village soon spread to cities across the country.