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Quote by New York Public Library

“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!”

Quote by New York Public Library

Work

The Stonewall Reader

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New York Public Library

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“For some people the march was and will be one of the highest points in their lives. The courage that it took for some people to make those first steps from Sheridan Square into Sixth Avenue and out of the Village was the summoning up of a whole lifetime’s desire to finally come clear, to say the truth as it is, to expose themselves nakeder than any pinup boy in any flesh book, to show their heads as well as their bodies and to put their heads and souls where their bodies have been for so many years.”

“Some say that Stonewall was the first time LGBTQ people fought back, which is also not true. Stonewall was preceded by earlier queer revolts such as the Cooper Do-nuts Riot in Los Angeles in 1959, the Dewey’s restaurant sit-in in Philadelphia in 1965, the Compton’s Cafeteria Riot in San Francisco in 1966, and the protests against the raid of the Black Cat Tavern in Los Angeles in 1967, among many others. Scholars, participants, and the interested public also debate how many days the uprising lasted and who threw the first brick, the first bottle, or the first punch. And more, beyond any of these questions we wonder what these events that transpired fifty years ago mean to us today.”