GREENWICH VILLAGE. A history class from the University of Wisconsin crowded into the backroom of the Stonewall Inn on Monday. The bar, of course, is famous as the site of the Stonewall riots, sparked by a police raid 38 years ago this month.
That uprising is considered the defining moment of the gay rights movement. But the students in the bar had been studying the less-celebrated history of gay activism in the years before Stonewall.