Stonewall Museum Stages First Reenactment of Historic Riot

On June 28, 1969, a police raid in New York set off a chain of events that started a political revolution. The Stonewall Riot, named for the Greenwich Village bar that police had invaded, catalyzed a global movement toward LGBTQ rights and recognition that continues to this day. It's the reason June is designated as Pride Month.

This week, ahead of the riot's 55th anniversary, a Fort Lauderdale museum will commemorate the uprising in a unique way. The Stonewall National Museum, Archives & Library will host the first reenactment of the important incident.

"We decided to host it because it's historic," Robert Kesten, executive director of the museum, says. "When you bring history to life, it resonates in a way that it doesn't always resonate on the page. And our history is more shrouded than others, because our community, as big as it as it is, in certain places, is not very obvious in others. And so it is vitally important that we bring it to life."

The reenactment on Saturday, June 29, will restage the police raid and its aftermath. Actors will play the bar patrons and the cops arresting them, and afterward, the participants will sign a commemorative flag that will join the museum's archive. The reenactment is also functioning as a donation drive, with participants paying upwards of $100 and as much as $100,000 to act as extras in the restaged uprising.

In order to restage the raid, the museum has built a replica of the Stonewall Inn. They worked in close consultation with the bar itself, which is still in business in Greenwich Village, and its staff, some of whom were present during the real event. The Stonewall Inn was a very gritty establishment in 1969 — it was owned by the Genovese crime family and had no running water — so details such as the original bar's black-painted walls and the sign-in sheet designed to screen straight patrons and law enforcement have been included.

Along with the replica of the Stonewall Inn, the exhibit includes info posters and artifacts related to the riots, including testimony from people who were there. They describe the events of June 28, as well as the cultural scene around the bar before the riots and their aftermath.
The Stonewall was the most popular gay bar in New York at the time due to the fact that it permitted dancing. It was also frequented by transgender patrons, which made it a target for repeated raids by the NYPD, who were enforcing a ban on cross-dressing. After one raid too many, on June 28, the patrons started fighting back in a spontaneous display of resistance. The cops eventually barricaded themselves in the Stonewall as the crowd grew to hundreds, many shouting slogans like "Gay power!" and many more throwing debris and burning garbage at the police. Eventually, reinforcements arrived to clear the streets and make arrests, but riots resumed the following night.

The exhibit also includes press clippings reporting on the riots, which were almost uniformly unflattering. One New York Daily News headline read, "Homo Nest Raided, Queen Bees Are Stinging Mad."

Founded in 1971 in nearby Hollywood, the Stonewall Museum features art and history exhibits focusing on LGBTQ themes. Its current premises mostly consist of its library, home to 29,000 pieces of print and digital media, and archives, which house more than six million pages of material on LGBTQ history and life. The museum has bounced around locations over the years and currently shares a cultural complex with the Broward County Library's Fort Lauderdale Reading Center, the World AIDS Museum and Educational Center, and the organization ArtServe.

According to Kesten, the museum has been in its current home in Fort Lauderdale, just south of the famously queer-friendly municipality of Wilton Manors, for about 14 years. They're currently fundraising in the hope of moving in the near future. "We're now looking for a more permanent home that will accommodate the size of our collections and the need for exhibition space," he says.

The museum allows anyone to view its collection, and members can check out books, DVDs, and other materials from the library. That includes books that have been banned from schools by Gov. Ron DeSantis' "Don't Say Gay" laws. A display case in the library features materials related to the bans, including LGBTQ-themed picture books such as I Am Jazz and And Tango Makes Three, books about censorship like 1984 and Fahrenheit 451, and a copy of the Constitution.

Kesten says that staging the reenactment in Florida is especially important considering Gov. Ron DeSantis' regressive legislation targeting the LGBTQ community.

"We want in the state of Florida, which has tried desperately to become ground zero in the culture wars, to be reminded that history has happened."

Stonewall Uprising Reenactment. 4:30 p.m. Saturday, June 29, at the Stonewall National Museum, Archives & Library, 1300 E. Sunrise Blvd., Fort Lauderdale; stonewall-museum.org. Admission is free with RSVP.