"In popular memory, Stonewall is often considered the beginning of LGBTQ political movements. In fact, from the 1950s onward, there was a political vanguard of the LGBTQ community with “homophile” organizations like the Mattachine Society and the Daughters of Bilitis, and pioneering transgender organizations like the Erickson Educational Foundation operating in small groups across the United States. In addition, Stonewall was not the first of these riots; it was preceded by similar conflicts between the LGBTQ community and the police across the U.S. throughout the 1960s, including confrontations in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Philadelphia.
This flyer points to Stonewall as a pivotal moment of transition in this political community. It outlines the range of political concerns of LGBTQ activists in the 1960s, including harassment by police, exploitation by organized crime, persecution of homosexuality and the injustice of sodomy laws. It also calls upon the mass of the LGBTQ community to get politically involved, seizing on Stonewall as a reason to rally — and thus helps us better understand, a half-century later, the role of that moment. It was not a beginning, as is shown by the fact that an organization already exists to produce this flyer, but it was the start of something new."
