How the Memory of Stonewall Lives On in a Meme
Editor’s Note: This article is part of a series about the gay-rights movement and the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising.
One of the most enduring questions about the Stonewall riots is, Who threw the first brick? According to what has become a sort of origin myth, someone flung a chunk of masonry at police officers as they hauled revelers away during a routine raid of the Stonewall Inn, a Greenwich Village gay bar, in the early-morning hours of June 28, 1969. Other onlookers followed suit, lobbing whatever they could get their hands on—coins, rocks, glass bottles—to protest the harassment that queer people had long suffered at the hands of the state. The ensuing multi-night riots have since become a potent symbol of queer liberation.
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