What really happened at the Stonewall Inn?
Gorton, Don. 2004. "What really Happened at the Stonewall Inn?" The Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide, Nov, 37.
Previous accounts of Stonewall in both the gay and mainstream press, including in Martin Duberman's 1992 book Stonewall, have suffered for the incompleteness of the historical record. There is no film of the riots and only one "frontline" photograph from the critical night of June 28, 1969. Moreover, the Sheridan Square area of New York where the riot was centered afforded few vantage points from which crowd activity could be seen in overview. Reconstruction would be impossible since the police lost the initiative soon after the raid, and there was no gay guerilla leader planning or orchestrating the assault from "our" side. Eyewitness accounts remain the primary source about the Stonewall Riots, though each is spotty when considered in isolation. Inferences culled from the context of time and place help fill out the picture.
