Stonewall Inn in the context of "Manhattan Island"

Manhattan is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. Coextensive with New York County, Manhattan is the smallest county by area in the U.S. state of New York. Located almost entirely on Manhattan Island near the southern tip of the state, Manhattan is centrally located in the Northeast megalopolis and the urban core of the New York metropolitan area. Manhattan serves as New York City's economic and administrative center and has been described as the cultural, financial, media, and entertainment capital of the world.

Present-day Manhattan was originally part of Lenape territory. European settlement began with the establishment of a trading post by Dutch colonists in 1624 on Manhattan Island; the post was named New Amsterdam in 1626. The territory came under English control in 1664 and was renamed New York after King Charles II of England granted the lands to his brother, the Duke of York. New York, based in present-day Lower Manhattan, served as the capital of the United States from 1785 until 1790. The Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor greeted millions of arriving immigrants in the late 19th century and is a world symbol of the United States and its ideals. Manhattan became a borough during the consolidation of New York City in 1898, and houses New York City Hall, the seat of the city's government. Harlem in Upper Manhattan became the center of what is now known as the cultural Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s. The Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village, part of the Stonewall National Monument, is considered the birthplace in 1969 of the modern gay-rights movement, cementing Manhattan's central role in LGBTQ culture. Manhattan was the site of the original World Trade Center, which was destroyed during the September 11 terrorist attacks in 2001.

New York City has been described as the cultural capital of the world. Its urban culture is reflected in its size and ethnic diversity. As many as 800 languages are spoken in New York, making it the most linguistically diverse city in the world. Many American cultural movements first emerged in the city. Large numbers of Irish, Italian, Jewish, Russian, and eventually African, Latino, and Asian Americans also migrated to New York throughout the 20th century and continuing into the 21st century, significantly influencing the city's culture and image. The city became the center of stand-up comedy in the early 20th century. The city was the top venue for jazz in the 1940s, expressionism in the 1950s and home to hip hop, punk rock, and the Beat Generation. Along with London's West End, New York City is the global center of musical theatre, often referred to as "Broadway" after the major thoroughfare in Manhattan. The Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village, Lower Manhattan, is a designated U.S. National Historic Landmark and National Monument, as the site of the June 1969 Stonewall riots and the cradle of the modern gay rights movement.

The city is the birthplace of many cultural movements, including the Harlem Renaissance in literature and visual art; abstract expressionism (also known as the New York School) in painting; and hip hop, punk, salsa, freestyle, Tin Pan Alley, certain forms of jazz, and (along with Philadelphia) disco in music. New York has been considered the dance capital of the world. The city is also frequently the setting for novels, movies (see List of films set in New York City), and television programs. New York Fashion Week is one of the world's preeminent fashion events and is afforded extensive coverage by the media.New York has also frequently been ranked the top fashion capital of the world on the annual list compiled by the Global Language Monitor. Artists have been drawn into the city by opportunity, as the city government funds the arts with a larger annual budget than the National Endowment for the Arts, and New York is the center of the global art market, which grew up along with national and international media centers.

Lower Manhattan, also known as Downtown Manhattan, is the southernmost part of the New York City borough of Manhattan. The area is the historical birthplace of New York City and in the 17th and 18th centuries composed the entirety of the city. Lower Manhattan serves as the seat of government of both Manhattan and the entire City of New York because there are no municipally defined boundaries for the area. A precise population cannot be quoted, but several sources have suggested that it was one of the fastest-growing locations in New York City between 2010 and 2020, related to the influx of young adults and significant development of new housing units.

Despite various definitions of Lower Manhattan, they generally include all of Manhattan Island south of 14th Street, with the Bowling Green and the Battery near the southern end. Anchored by Wall Street and the Financial District in Lower Manhattan, New York City is the leading global center for finance and fintech. The Financial District houses the New York Stock Exchange, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and other major financial institutions. A center of culture and tourism, Lower Manhattan is home to many of New York City's most iconic structures, including New York City Hall, the Woolworth Building, the Stonewall Inn, the Bull of Wall Street, and One World Trade Center, the tallest skyscraper in the Western Hemisphere.

Stonewall National Monument is a 7.7-acre (3.1 ha) U.S. national monument in the West Village neighborhood of Greenwich Village in Lower Manhattan, New York City. The designated area includes the Stonewall Inn, the 0.19-acre (8,300 sq ft; 770 m) Christopher Park, and nearby streets including Christopher Street, the site of the Stonewall riots of June 28, 1969, widely regarded as the start of the modern LGBTQ rights movement in the United States.

Stonewall National Monument is the first U.S. national monument dedicated to LGBTQ rights and history. President Barack Obama designated it as a national monument on June 24, 2016.

The Stonewall riots (also known as the Stonewall uprising, Stonewall rebellion, Stonewall revolution, or simply Stonewall) were a series of spontaneous riots and demonstrations against a police raid that took place in the early morning of June 28, 1969, at the Stonewall Inn, in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Lower Manhattan in New York City. Although the demonstrations were not the first time American LGBTQ people fought back against government-sponsored persecution of sexual minorities, the Stonewall riots marked a new beginning for the gay rights movement in the United States and around the world.

American gays and lesbians in the 1950s and 1960s faced a legal system more anti-homosexual than those of some other Western and Eastern Bloc countries. Early homophile groups in the U.S. sought to prove that gay people could be assimilated into society, and they favored non-confrontational education for homosexuals and heterosexuals alike. The last years of the 1960s, however, were very contentious, as many social movements were active, including the civil rights movement, the counterculture of the 1960s, and antiwar demonstrations. These influences, along with the liberal environment of Greenwich Village, served as catalysts for the Stonewall riots.

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) movements are social movements that advocate for the inclusion, recognition, and rights of LGBTQ people and other gender and sexual minorities.

While there is no overarching organization representing all LGBTQ people, numerous advocacy groups, grassroots networks, and community-based organizations work to advance related causes. The earliest known LGBTQ rights organization was the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee, founded in Berlin in 1897.

Christopher Street is a street in the West Village neighborhood of the New York City borough of Manhattan. It is the continuation of 9th Street west of Sixth Avenue in Lower Manhattan.

It is most notable for the Stonewall Inn, which is located on Christopher Street near the corner of Seventh Avenue South. As a result of the Stonewall riots in 1969, the street became the center of the world's gay rights movement in the 1970s. To this day, the inn and the street serve as an international symbol of gay pride.

The gay liberation movement was a social and political movement of the late 1960s through the mid-1980s in the Western world, that urged lesbians and gay men to engage in radical direct action, and to counter societal shame with gay pride. In the feminist spirit of the personal being political, the most basic form of activism was an emphasis on coming out to family, friends, and colleagues, and living life as an openly lesbian or gay person.

The Stonewall Inn in the gay village of Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, was the site of the June 1969 Stonewall riots, and became the cradle of the modern LGBTQ rights movement, and the subsequent gay liberation movement. Early in the seventies, annual political marches through major cities, (usually held in June, originally to commemorate the yearly anniversary of the events at Stonewall) were still known as "Gay Liberation" marches. Not until later in the seventies (in urban gay centers) and well into the eighties (in smaller communities) did the marches begin to be called "gay pride parades". The movement involved the lesbian and gay communities in North America, South America, Western Europe, Australia and New Zealand.