The thick bottle that had contained an entire culture was uncorked in 1969 within a few years it would be shattered into a thousand pieces.' But while many gay people remained ignorant of Stonewall and others reacted to it with discomfort, this 1960s version of the Boston Tea Party would do more than any other event to transform gay life in America. The 1960s came to a close with what is still perhaps the most consequential event in recent American gay history: the Stonewall riots of June 28, 1969.Īs Charles Kaiser put it in his history of gay New York, 'No other civil rights movement in America ever had such an improbable unveiling: an urban riot sparked by drag queens. For more about the project, see our introduction to the series, where you'll also find a handy list of all the series' pieces so far. This article is the 11th in a series featuring clips from the American Archive of Public Broadcasting, which is working to digitize television and radio pieces so that they may be preserved for years to come.
