Madison Heights - the neighborhood radiating from the Madison Avenue-Cleveland Street intersection - has historically been at the center of Memphis’ LGBT bar scene. The bar was everything,” said Elokin CaPece, director of programs for OUTMemphis, Memphis' LGBT community center. It’s where we broadcast our artistic and cultural achievements. “It’s where we politically organized, it’s where we socially organized. Stonewall’s patrons fought back, and a week-long riot ensued.The modern LGBT rights movement was born from that uprising and gay and lesbian bars throughout the country served as hubs for the revolution.
Bar raids and arrests were commonplace, and violence, public ridicule, exile and unemployment were constant fears. At the time, homosexual acts from hand-holding to dressing outside of one’s assigned gender were illegal across most of the U.S. On June 28, 1969, police raided the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in New York City’s Greenwich Village.
