Today, June 28, 2019, is the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots. In San Antonio in 1969, I certainly heard nothing about this as it happened. It was the summer after my first year at Rice.
But in those years, I did make an effort to follow counterculture news. In particular, I occasionally visited one small bookstore / head shop (I can't remember the name, but according to notes by others, it might have been "Joint Effort") and browse and buy alternative newspapers. Sometime that summer, I bought an issue of the Los Angeles Free Press, and it had a small note about Stonewall.
I was not even fully out to myself yet, wondering whether I might be bisexual, but I definitely paid attention to this news.
After Stonewall
In my first summer in Los Angeles, in 1973, I made a point of going to Hollywood to watch the Christopher Street West parade.
It would still be years before I started coming out.
Years later, during a visit to New York, I attended a special gay pride program where several of the Stonewall Riot participants spoke. I don't remember their names. Based on this button I still have, this may have been in 1985:
In 2016, President Obama designated the area as the Stonewall National Monument.
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