Where Were the Lesbians in the Stonewall Riots? The Women’s House of Detention & Lesbian Resistance

Authors

Polly Thistlethwaite, CUNY Graduate CenterFollow

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

Summer 6-27-2019

Abstract

Where were the lesbians in the Stonewall Riots? They were jailed in the House of Detention for Women in Greenwich Village, New York City, two blocks away from the Stonewall Inn. Lesbians in the Women's House of Detention shouted from the windows to the rioters in the streets below, fueling the momentum of the Stonewall uprising. The women's prison was a site of lesbian confinement and resistance that inspired the 1969 uprising in Greenwich Village.

Polly Thistlethwaite is Chief Librarian at the Graduate Center, CUNY. She volunteered at the Lesbian Herstory Archives 1986 – 1997.

Comments

This essay was first published by the Gotham Center for New York History at the Graduate Center, City University of New York, as “Stonewall 50: Remembering the Lesbians,” at https://www.gothamcenter.org/blog/stonewall-at-50-a-roundtable, June 27, 2019.