By Robert Kesten
In the wee hours of the morning on Saturday, June 28, 1969, the Friday night crowd was still dancing and drinking at the Stonewall Inn on Christopher Street in New York’s West Village. Soon the police would enter the bar and life for the LGBTQ+ community, its friends and families, would change forever.
The Stonewall Uprising had begun and the event that has become synonymous with the Gay-Liberation Movement was born. That was 55 years ago and not once has there been a reenactment of those seminal events. The Fort Lauderdale based Stonewall National Museum, Archives, & Library is going to change that on June 29, 2024, when we host the reenactment at our museum, and our recreation of the Stonewall Inn, as it looked on the morning of June 28, 1969.
When you enter the museum, you face a red brick wall and a neon sign that reads, “Stonewall Inn”. When you cross the threshold, you enter a dark space, all the walls painted black, as it was back then. There is a bar, a jukebox, and a cigarette machine. The bucket for washing glasses (there was no running water) sits on the bar and Tree, the longtime bartender at Stonewall, The Ninth Circle, and Julius is behind the bar.
It is a chance to experience LGBTQ+ life and music as it was in 1969, at the place that has become legendary as home base to the community and all we have accomplished over the past 55 years.
