Homophobia & Transphobia
overview
Despite New York City’s reputation as being more LGBT friendly than most other places, LGBT-related discrimination, hate crimes, and harassment are part of its history, past and present.
Sites in this collection feature places where homophobic and/or transphobic actions have taken place, from the 17th century “place of execution” in Lower Manhattan (then part of New Amsterdam) to sites related to discrimination and gay-biased murders over the decades.
It also includes sites where LGBT people have fought back against homophobia and/or transphobia by forming organizations and protesting, picketing, and demonstrating across the city. A separate theme, Gay Activists Alliance, covers the numerous “zaps” that GAA organized to fight homophobia in the 1970s.
Historic Sites in Homophobia & Transphobia
From June 28 to July 3, 1969, LGBT patrons of the Stonewall Inn and members of the local community took the unusual action of fighting back during a routine police... Learn More
City Hall Park is the earliest known documented gay male cruising area in Manhattan, according to newspaper accounts beginning in the early 1840s. Learn More
Early gay rights activist Henry Gerber lived on Governors Island from the late 1920s to 1945 as a member of the United States Army. In 1924, Gerber founded the Society for Human... Learn More
On September 19, 1964, the very first public demonstration for gay rights in the United States took place outside the U.S. Army Building in Lower Manhattan. Organized by Randy Wicker,... Learn More
On April 18, 1965, the fourth-ever gay rights demonstration in the United States – and the third in New York City – took place at Dag Hammarskjöld Plaza, across the... Learn More
On December 2, 1964, the second-ever public demonstration for gay rights in the United States – and the first to challenge the psychiatric profession – took place outside the Great... Learn More
“Lavender Menace” was an action led by Radicalesbians, with women from the Gay Liberation Front and several feminist organizations, at the National Organization for Women’s (NOW) Second Congress to Unite... Learn More
For several years in the 1990s, the South Asian Lesbian and Gay Association (SALGA) led “Desi Dhamaka” protests in Madison Square Park in response to being banned from participating in... Learn More
On March 13, 1993, the March for Truth was organized by the Anti-Violence Project and Queens Gays and Lesbians United, along Myrtle Avenue in Ridgewood, Queens (District 24), to counter... Learn More
Ali Forney was a homeless gender non-conforming youth of color who, on December 5, 1997, was killed near the housing project on East 135th Street and Fifth Avenue in Harlem.... Learn More
This street sign in Jackson Heights commemorates Julio Rivera, a gay Puerto Rican man who in 1990 was brutally attacked by three skinheads in the nearby schoolyard and soon after... Learn More
On January 22, 1990, Vietnam War veteran Jimmy Zappalorti was murdered near his home on the South Shore of Staten Island because he was gay. The highly publicized murder became... Learn More
Two men are known to have been executed in New Amsterdam in 1646 and 1660 for sexual relations with boys. Sodomy was punishable by death in New York until 1796,... Learn More
The Ramrod on the Hudson River waterfront was one of New York’s most popular leather bars in the 1970s. It was the site of one of Greenwich Village’s most notoriously... Learn More
In the early hours of Saturday morning April 28, 1990, a homemade bomb exploded at Uncle Charlie’s bar in Greenwich Village that resulted in an immediate protest by the recently... Learn More
In June 1969, a week before the Stonewall uprising, a group of local Queens residents formed a “vigilante committee” to harass gay men cruising in a nearby Flushing Meadows-Corona Park... Learn More
Kooky’s, also known as Kooky’s Cocktail Lounge, was a lesbian bar that operated from 1965 to 1973. After the Stonewall uprising of June 1969, Kooky’s was the site of lesbian-led... Learn More
A peaceful Times Square protest over recent increased police harassment against the LGBT community in the Greenwich Village and Times Square neighborhoods, on Saturday night, August 29, 1970, was followed... Learn More
Opened as the Apollo Theater in 1920, this venue is significant as the site of the first lesbian love scene depicted on Broadway with the staging of the Yiddish play The... Learn More
In 1982, as policing of Times Square intensified and plans to redevelop the area began to make headway, the police twice raided Blue’s, a predominantly working-class Black and Latino gay... Learn More
