The 1960s were known for all the different liberation movements in the United States, best known of course is the Civil Rights Movement and Women’s Rights Movements, however one minority’s history and fight for civil rights has been frequently glossed over. Many of you will remember a particular question on the AP Test, concerning the Stonewall Riots. The Stonewall Riots were a number of protests in the 1960s, which demonstrated the growing LGBT community in America. 
The riots began on June 28th, 1969, during a police raid of the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in Greenwich Village of New York City. The police seized alcohol, prompting the dissent of many patrons already in the bar. The police began to force many of the patrons who were dressed in drag to the bathrooms, to identify their gender and then make arrests. None of the patrons agreed to do so, prompting the first arrests. There have been numerous reports of police misconduct in these cases, as many of the gay women at the bar reported that the male police officers frisked them inappropriately, and verbally abused them with slurs such as dyke and bitch. As the arrested patrons were forced into the police cars, bystanders began to shout at the police officers, and several began to sing the well known song “We Shall Overcome.” The actual rioting did not begin until a woman was hit on the head with a baton, by a police officer. After several overturned police wagons, ten police officers barricaded themselves in the Inn, while patrons and bystanders broke the windows, threw rocks and lit fires.
The rioting continued for several days, and thirteen arrests were made before the fighting died out. Several members of the crowd and four police officers were hospitalized, however all survived. The riots are considered the single most important event in American gay rights history, as they prompted a wave of protest and movement for the rights of the LGBT community. This year, film director Roland Emmerich announced that he would be making a movie about the Stonewall Riots, however much controversy has surrounded who would be cast as actors. The transgender community has asked the director numerous times through social media to have the main actors be transgender, as many key leaders of the protests were transgender women or drag queens, such as Yvvonne Ritter and Martin Boyce. However, one of the most widely recognized leaders of the riots, as well as the subsequent protests, was a black transgender woman named Marsha P. Johnson. The transgender community, as well as the rest of the LGBT community has expressed hope that the film will not gloss over the contribution of black and transgendered men and women to the struggle for gay rights.
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