This is a book about the development of national political consciousness and its growing momentum in the gay community. The book is edited by Jason Baumann, coordinator of the library’s LGBT initiative, and features photographs by Kay Tobin Lahusen and Diana Davies, an archive that Baumann describes as the “great queer treasures of the New York Public library”.ĭiana Davies’s 1969 shot of the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village, site of the riots that would change LGBT activism for ever. A key part of the festivities will be the New York Public Library’s exhibition and its tremendous accompanying book: Love and Resistance, Stonewall at 50. In June, the movement’s 50th anniversary will be celebrated in New York with a month of partying, lectures and readings and “the biggest Pride celebration in the world”. The riots switched protest up a gear and pushed for an unapologetic, inclusive, enlightened culture in which gay pride would see off shame for good.įifty years later, Stonewall is one of the most significant global landmarks in the fight for gay rights (the gay rights campaign group in the UK is named after it). That night’s rioting was followed by days of further violent demonstrations in the neighbourhood. As customers were hauled out in handcuffs, the crowd outside erupted into fury. T he Stonewall riots started in the early hours of 28 June 1969 during a police raid at the Stonewall Inn, Greenwich Village, a favourite haunt of gay and lesbian New Yorkers.
