1967 November 27

First Gay Book Store Opens in New York City

 

The Oscar Wilde Memorial Book Store, founded by Craig Rodwell, which is believed to be the first gay bookstore in the U.S., opened on this day. After several changes in ownership, it finally closed in March 2009.

The birth of the modern lesbian and gay rights movement was stimulated by the Stonewall Inn riots in New York City that began on June 28, 1969.

The Stonewall Inn riots in turn inspired the first national lesbian and gay rights marches in June 1970.

Go to Lambda Literary for a list of LGBT bookstores: http://www.lambdaliterary.org/resources/bookstores/

Read: Dudley Clendinen and Adam Nagourney, Out for Good: The Struggle to Build a Gay Rights Movement in America (1999)

See a timeline of LGBTQ history here

Read LGBTQ first-hand accounts of their lives and experiences: Eric Marcus, Making History: The Struggle for Gay and Lesbian Equal Rights, An Oral History, 1945–1990 (1992)

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