1969 was a VERY big year!

1969 it was a very big year for change. A lot happened in 1969 - not all of it good.

It was the year that Richard Milhous Nixon was first elected President of the United States of America, the year of the last ever public performance by The Beatles, on top of Apple Records, the year of the first flight of the Boeing 747, the Jumbo jet that would revolutionise air travel, Judy Garland died from an accidental drug overdose, Prince Charles was invested as Prince of Wales, Apollo 11 was launched and the lunar module Eagle landed on the lunar surface, Charles Manson and members of his cult murdered a pregnant Sharon Tate, the Woodstock Festival was held in upstate New York, The Brady Bunch premiered on American television, Sesame Street started, the first GAP store opened. It was a busy year.

Two other events were reported for 1969, events that have changed the life of every gay man and woman.

1969 is reported as being the first year that the HIV virus was documented as migrating to the USA from Haiti.

1969 was also the year of the Stonewall Riots in New York.

These two events would continue to colour our lives for the next four decades and probably for many more to come.

In Greenwich Village on Christopher St. there was a small, rather seedy bar run by the Genovese Mafia Family. It served watered down drinks, paid off the police and was frequented by transvestites, lesbians, gay men and homeless kids. On the night of June 28 the New York Police raided the club. This type of event was reasonably common in the 50s and 60s but for some reason on this particular night, people had decided that they had had enough and refused to go quietly.

No one is really sure who was first to say “Not this time”, was it a butch dyke dressed as a man or a transvestite who first resisted arrest and started to rally the crowd?

It started with the throwing of coins, a symbol of the graft that the Mafia were paying the police, (gayola) and quickly escalated to bottles, rocks and anything handy being hurled at the law. The normally meek ‘fags’ decided that now was the time for ‘Gay Power’.

Word spread through the Village and across the city; hundreds of gay men, lesbians and other minority groups converged on Christopher St. to join the protest.

The Police were woefully outnumbered and had to use the pay phone inside Stonewall to call for reinforcements. Bolstered by the Tactical Patrol Force, (TPF), riot police specially trained to deal with anti Vietnam War protesters, New York’s finest tried to regain control of the streets but every time the protesters were dispersed they would reform and challenge the TPF by forming a ‘kick line’, like a crowd of angry Rockettes, singing and mocking the police. This was a different style of protest, a protest never seen before but soon to become familiar throughout the world. A protest with panache, that would one day become the mainstay of Gay Pride marches throughout the world, proving that you could get your message across and achieve change with wit and humour.

For the next five nights the crowds, in varying numbers, would regather to hammer home the message, “We’re here, we’re queer, get used to it.”

In July, the week after the riots, a new organisation was born in New York, the ‘Gay Liberation Front’, (GLF), whose sole purpose was to promote equality and force change on an unwilling government. During the next year lesbians and gay men, through out the world formed their own version of the GLF and took their fight to their streets.


In Australia as news of the riots filtered through, Sydney’s first political group, ‘Campaign Against Moral Persecution’, (CAMP), was formed in 1970. The first national Gay Pride march happened on 15 September 1973, with 18 arrests. In 1975 Rod Stringer with Bill McElvie launched ‘Campaign’ a national gay men’s magazine. On the night of Saturday, 24 June, 1978 the first major protest rally to demand equal rights for homosexuals was held in Sydney and from that march the ‘Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras’ was born.

Meanwhile, back in 1969 that little known virus that had migrated from Haiti to America was marshalling its own troops and by the 80’s was ready to mount its own attack on an unsuspecting populace.

1969 was for a lot of reasons a very BIG year.