Many of them were people of color. This was a familiar scene. They started throwing donuts, then coffee. The police fled to their squad car and called for backup. In the minds of many, Stonewall represents the beginning of a movement.
Yet the activists at Stonewall built on decades of previous activism, and this activism was geared not merely toward the liberation of gay men and lesbians, but also toward the liberation of a wider group of queer people: trans and gender-nonconforming people, queer people of color and queer sex workers. In addition, due in large part to the limited economic options available to out queer people at the time, many of the participants at Stonewall and in the uprisings that made Stonewall possible themselves sold sex.
Those fighting for the liberation of queer people today, and marking the 50th anniversary of Stonewall this June, should know the radical origins of the LGBTQ movement and the debt they owe to sex workers.
Riots like the famous one at Stonewall had an extensive genealogy. Throughout the s, queer people set up picket lines, engaged in sit-ins, marched down boulevards and rioted against police harassment in New York; Philadelphia; Washington, D. One summer night, as the cops began manhandling a queen, she threw coffee in his face and a riot immediately broke out.
Perhaps 50 or 60 patrons overturned tables and smashed windows and beat the police with heavy purses. Sex workers participated in nearly all of the iconic queer uprisings of the era. Indeed, they helped create the conditions that made such uprisings possible. In San Francisco, for instance, a group of street youth β largely trans and queer kids, many of whom sold sex in the Tenderloin β came together in to form a new organization called Vanguard.
