ABSTRACT
The Stonewall Rebellion was the explosive event that thrust an oppressed minority group full force into social upheaval. Men and women from earlier years had begun the effort to secure equal rights for homosexuals, but it was the defiant young people who stood tall and tough at the Stonewall Inn who announced to the nation, in no uncertain terms, that gay people would no longer hang their heads in shame and accept the second-class citizenship they previously had endured. When that small band of social revolutionaries fought back during the raid on that gritty New York City bar in June 1969, the militant phase of a social movement was ignited.
