Lonesome Cowboys police raid
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On August 5, 1969, the Atlanta Police Department led a police raid on a screening of the film Lonesome Cowboys at a movie theater in Atlanta, Georgia, United States.
The raid targeted members of the city's
Background
Police raid
At the start of August 1969, Lonesome Cowboys was airing nightly at the
Aftermath
While the raid was not the first instance of police in the state targeting the LGBT community, the impact on and response by the community was larger than in previous events.
In a 2019 interview with Smithsonian, Abby Drue, an LGBT activist who had been present at the raid, stated that "I truly believe the Lonesome Cowboys raid was the spark that ignited the Atlanta homosexual population." The same article goes on to state that "[w]hile Stonewall is credited with ushering in a more radical era of LGBTQ politics, many early activists saw the raid at the Ansley theater as their galvanizing moment". That article called the event "The Stonewall of the South that History Forgot" and compared the event to other "gay liberation events" throughout the country, such as the UpStairs Lounge arson attack in New Orleans and the Dewey's sit-ins in Philadelphia.[5] Speaking about the raid in a 2019 article, Georgia Public Broadcasting stated that "...Stonewall, when it happened, had little effect on gay life in the South. It was another raid, a little more than a month later, that sparked outrage and galvanized Atlanta's LGBT communities."[8]
See also
References
- ^ ISBN 978-0-7425-6857-0 – via Google Books.
- ^ a b Packard, Isabel (April 28, 2021). "Drag in Atlanta, Contextualized by Queerness in the South". The Emory Wheel. Archived from the original on May 17, 2021. Retrieved May 17, 2021.
- ^ a b c d Brown, Malik (May 12, 2021). "A Short Retelling of Atlanta's Long – But Radical – Queer History". Out. Archived from the original on May 15, 2021. Retrieved May 17, 2021.
- ^ a b c d e f Chenault, Wesley; Ditzler, Andy; Orr, Joey (February 26, 2010). "Discursive Memorials: Queer Histories in Atlanta's Public Spaces". Southern Spaces. Archived from the original on April 26, 2021. Retrieved May 17, 2021.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i Waters, Michael (June 25, 2019). "The Stonewall of the South That History Forgot". Smithsonian. Smithsonian Institution. Archived from the original on April 6, 2021. Retrieved June 15, 2020.
- ^ a b Saunders, Patrick (June 10, 2016). "Georgia Gay Liberation Front and Atlanta's first Pride march". The Georgia Voice. Archived from the original on March 27, 2021. Retrieved May 20, 2021.
- ^ Wheatley, Thomas (October 11, 2019). "How one march for gay rights launched nearly 50 years of Atlanta Pride". Atlanta. Archived from the original on October 29, 2020. Retrieved May 17, 2021.
- ^ Brock, Emilia; Prescott, Virginia (June 28, 2019). "South of Stonewall: The Atlanta Police Raid That Sparked Georgia Gay Liberation". GPB News. Georgia Public Broadcasting. Archived from the original on December 1, 2019. Retrieved June 15, 2020.
Further reading
- "Stonewall, Lonesome Cowboys, and the Georgia Gay Liberation Front". Georgia State University Library. Georgia State University. Archived from the original on October 30, 2020. Retrieved June 16, 2020.
- Hayward, Dave (November 2, 2020). "Remembering Atlanta Pride's radical roots, or why early organizers got thrown out of gay bars". Atlanta. Archived from the original on November 2, 2020. Retrieved May 17, 2021.
- Saunders, Patrick (August 5, 2019). "'It's a Raid!' Atlanta's Stonewall moment 50 years ago today". Project Q Atlanta. Archived from the original on May 20, 2021. Retrieved May 20, 2021.