San Francisco Before Stonewall

A visual timeline of the many pioneering individuals, organizations, publications, and activities in San Francisco during the 100 years leading up to the pivotal Stonewall Rebellion of 1969.

The Stonewall Rebellion was a series of spontaneous, violent demonstrations by queer people against a police raid in Greenwich Village, New York, in June 1969. The important incident, celebrated worldwide as sparking the modern lesbian and gay civil rights movement, did not happen overnight.

The Stonewall Rebellion was a series of spontaneous, violent demonstrations by queer people against a police raid in Greenwich Village, New York, in June 1969. The important incident, celebrated worldwide as sparking the modern lesbian and gay civil rights movement, did not happen overnight.

This program showcases many familiar and lesser-known characters — gay, lesbian, and transgender activists, poets, and entrepreneurs — and important historic events, each one of which deserves much more information and contextualization, we get a perspective on San Francisco’s rich queer history.

This presentation grew out of research begun in the early 1990s for the publication of Gay By the Bay: A Queer History of the San Francisco Bay Area (1996) and continued through “Queer as German Folk,” a series of international exhibits sponsored by the Goethe Institute in 2019.