Mark Segal moved to New York City in May of 1969 and a month later found himself at The Stonewall Inn as the now-infamous police raid began.
Those around him responded casually. It was a usual occurrence, a wholly unremarkable event right until the moment it wasn't."The police came in, pretended that they were doing their duty, got their pay off...the difference here was they barged in, they threw people up against the wall, they extorted money from some of the older people, they harassed the drag queens.
It was pretty violent," Segal says. He immediately started organizing with the Gay Liberation Front, returning to Stonewall the next night and the next. "Everything we did in that first year was basically illegal.