In honor of the Stonewall uprising, the Community-Driven Archives (CDA) team would like to take a moment to celebrate this momentous occasion in what many state was one of the most important movements of the 20th century in the fight for LGBTQ+ rights in the United States. On June 28, 1969 at the Stonewall Inn in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City police conducted an early morning raid on the property. Stonewall Inn during that time was a popular hangout location for many marginalized groups within the LGBTQ+ community including the poor and unhoused folks. Police raids on gay bars during the 1960s were common due to many of the policies enforced at that time regarding homosexuality.
Due to these constant raids many gay bars and patrons of these establishments felt harassed by police and had enough of this harassment. During that early morning raid and subsequent uprising which lasted 6 days, a legacy of activism for LGBTQ+ rights was born. Without this spark of political activism started at Stonewall, many people in the year 2020 would not have events like Pride Month or know the names of Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson, two transgender women of color who were at Stonewall that night. The legacy of this uprising continues to fuel many within the LGBTQ+ space to continue the fight for the rights of the LGBTQ+ community.
To learn more about the Stonewall uprising and the fight for LGBTQ+ rights in the United States please visit the links provided below:
- What Happened at the Stonewall Riots? A Timeline of the 1969 Uprising
- The Stonewall You Know is a Myth. And That’s O.K. New York Times video
To learn more about the fight for LGBTQ+ rights in Arizona the Bj Bud Collection at Arizona State University (ASU) Library is the largest LGBTQ+ collection in Arizona. It was assembled by local activists and the Valley of the Sun Gay and Lesbian Center which established a community center in 1993 that was a safe space for the LGBTQ+ community in Phoenix. Harlene “Bj” Bud was a lesbian activist involved with the Valley of the Sun Gay and Lesian Center and when she passed away on February 14, 1996 the community center honored her life and work by naming the collection after her. ASU Library obtained the collection in 2004 and through the grant awarded to ASU Library by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in 2017 it has been digitized and is now accessible for viewing online.
Contact me, Jessica Salow, with feedback at Jessica.Salow@asu.edu, as I would love to hear from you your thoughts regarding the work we here at ASU are doing in community archiving around Arizona. We also want your feedback on what you would like to see from us in future blog posts. See you next week!