You might even notice, more specifically, that your favorite celebrity holds that revered place in queer history: Mariah Carey threw the first brick. Fifty years after the Stonewall riots, if you scan certain quarters of the internet-Gay Twitter, Reddit threads-you might see that the brick-thrower question has taken on a fascinating life. Though the brick has achieved legendary status, there’s little historical consensus on who, if anyone, actually threw it.
The ensuing multi-night riots have since become a potent symbol of queer liberation. Other onlookers followed suit, lobbing whatever they could get their hands on-coins, rocks, glass bottles-to protest the harassment that queer people had long suffered at the hands of the state. One of the most enduring questions about the Stonewall riots is, Who threw the first brick? According to what has become a sort of origin myth, someone flung a chunk of masonry at police officers as they hauled revelers away during a routine raid of the Stonewall Inn, a Greenwich Village gay bar, in the early-morning hours of June 28, 1969.
