It's 1 a.m. on June 28th, 1969 in the village. Greenwich Village that is, here in downtown New York City.

It is hot, so hot tonight, and we're at the Stonewall Inn on Christopher Street. It's packed at the bar and the floor sticks to your feet. Sticky as the drink glasses all washed in tubs of dirty water. There's no working plumbing behind the bar. Lovely. There's also no fire escape anywhere

and toilets tend to overflow and despite the mafioso owners of this so-called bottle club paying off the police, there's a raid about once a month

which seems to be increasing. But no time for that now. It's 1 a.m. it's dark and the

music is pumping. The lights are pulsing, the company is great.

When suddenly it all cuts out.

The music, the lights, the atmosphere.

It's a raid.

Anybody who's been through this before moves automatically for the door.

But tonight feels different.

Hotter somehow.

Blocked by the cops, some of the guys refused to show their IDs. Some of the women refused

the verification of officers. Stonewall is rumbling. And I'm Hello, it's Don Wildman, and welcome to American History. We're glad to have you.

Imagine a time or remember it if you were alive then. It wasn't all that long ago.

When gathering in a bar or a cafe in the city, if you were a gay person, a lesbian,

transgender, queer, cross-dressing, when any of the identities and behavior we so openly embrace,

even celebrate today, would be considered criminal, labeled by authorities as deviant,

perverse, dangerous to public morality.

Think of what life would be like in a society where the emotional and sexual needs you are

born with automatically placed you into a category of undesirable,

unemployable, unacceptable.

Such was the case up to and including the 1960s in America

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