In the Strausbaugh book, A History of Greenwich Village, the match that lit the fuse of the famous Stonewall Riot happened during a routine police raid led by Deputy Inspector Seymour Pine. In the aftermath of the raid, Pine’s team led patrons and staff into waiting paddy wagons. But the mood of the gathering crowd turned angry when a cop used his club to force a queen into the wagon. But what really lit the fuse was a single lesbian (whose identity was never confirmed) that took the fight to the cops. It took 10 minutes before they could whisk her away from the scene. Emboldened, the crowd transformed from merely angry, to violent. Pine and others barricaded themselves inside the Stonewall. Straubaugh describes what happened next:
“The party was over. Truscott reported the crowd began throwing bottles and paving stones; someone pulled a parking meter out of the sidewalk and used it to batter the Stonewall door. Others tried to set the place on fire. Howard Smith, who had flashed his press card to get in, was now locked inside with Pine and his small contingent of cops. He reported that they were very frightened and the edgy, fingering their weapons, as the crowd outside roared and battered at the door and barricaded windows. “It was terrifying,” Pine later said. Slowly, reinforcements from the Sixth and other precincts arrived in patrol cars, sirens wailing and red lights spinning. They pushed the crowd away from the front of the building so that those inside could get out. Pine hustled Van Ronk and others into waiting vehicles that sped away. The crowd dispersed. The sun rose soon over a Christopher Street that looked like a full-scale battle had been waged. It was strewn with broken glass and bottles, twisted trash cans, stones, and that uprooted parking meter. Nobody had ever seen anything like it before.”
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