Episode Details

For the twenty-fifth installment of “50 Weeks That Shaped America” we go to June 1969, and New York City’s Greenwich Village. Police raids on the Stonewall Inn, one of the main gay bar’s in NYC, were fairly common. But for a number of reasons, on the night of June 28th, patrons had finally had enough. They pushed back on the police, a crowd formed, someone (maybe?) threw a brick, and a key moment in the gay rights movement was sparked. We talk about the larger context of activism that set the stage for Stonewall, what went down that night — and how the story of Stonewall is contested in ways that reveal a lot about how movements grow and shift.

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Our team: Jacob Feldman, Researcher/Producer; Khawla Nakua, Transcripts; music by Teen Daze and Blue Dot Sessions; Audrey Mardavich is our Executive Producer at Radiotopia.