'The majority of people at Stonewall were either drag queens or gay men of color,' Titus Montalvo, a hairdresser and makeup artist who was 16 at the time, told USA TODAY's Dalvin Brown. The Stonewall riots - an incident that became a rallying cry for the nascent gay rights movement - were demonstrations that followed a police raid on the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in New York's Greenwich Village, on June 28, 1969.Īt the time, New York refused to grant licenses to bars that served gays, which allowed police to enter Stonewall with a warrant. What happened at Stonewall? Say her name: Marsha P. Here's a look at why we owe Pride month to them and how we can all be better allies in a dangerous landscape for black LGBTQ people. According to the Human Rights Campaign at the time of press, at least ten of them have been murdered already this year, and many more fear for their lives.īlack transgender women also deserve credit for the state of LGBTQ progress today. Glover, an African American Studies doctoral student at Northwestern University and receive an average annual income of $10,000 - well below the poverty line. They have a bleak life expectancy between 35 and 37 years old, according to Julian K. Black transgender women are murdered at alarming rates.
