The Stonewall riots of June 1969 are often cited as the start of the gay liberation movement, but several GLBT protests occurred during the preceding years. These early actions included both organized demonstrations and spontaneous bursts of outrage at specific injustices.

Perhaps the first unplanned protest occurred in May 1959 at Cooper’s Donuts, an all-night hangout in downtown Los Angeles frequented by hustlers and drag queens. According to author John Rechy, who was present, police harassed and tried to arrest a few of the patrons, prompting others to throw food and tableware; the officers retreated to their car and summoned reinforcements, who closed the street and arrested several rioters. A similar event occurred in August 1966 at Compton’s Cafeteria in San Francisco. After a police officer tried to grab a young queen, some 50 customers hurled dishware and overturned tables, while outside a police car was destroyed and a newsstand was set on fire.

Police harassment of gay bars in Los Angeles also spurred early protests. Soon after midnight on New Year’s Eve in 1967, police raided the Black Cat bar on Sunset Boulevard, beating patrons and bartenders and arresting several people for lewd conduct. Protests erupted outside the bar that night and continued for several days. A year later, police raided the Patch, another gay bar in the same city. After owner Lee Glaze shouted, "It’s not against the law to be homosexual," the patrons marched to the nearby Harbor Division police station and pelted the building with flowers.

The first organized GLBT demonstrations took place in the mid-1960s to protest antigay discrimination in federal employment and the military. Typically, these actions were small and polite, featuring men in suits and women in dresses walking in circles holding signs. In 1964, about a dozen activists demonstrated against the military ban outside the Whitehall Induction Center in New York City; the picketers included members of the Sexual Freedom League, some of whom were heterosexual. In early 1965, Craig Rodwell (who would later open the Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop, the first gay bookstore in the United States) and others demonstrated outside United Nations headquarters to protest ill treatment of gays in Cuba.

In the spring and summer of 1965, activists with the East Coast Homophile Organizations—co-founded by Frank Kameny, who had himself been fired from a government job— picketed the White House, the Pentagon, the State Depart-ment, and the Civil Service Commission in Washington, D.C.

That summer, 40 activists staged the first of four "Annual Reminders" at Independence Hall in Philadelphia (home of the Liberty Bell) on July 4. The demonstration was organized by members of the Mattachine Society, the Daughters of Bilitis (DOB), and Philadelphia’s Janus Society; among the participants were several individuals who became well-known figures in the GLBT movement, including Barbara Gittings (an editor of The Ladder) and Kiyoshi Kuromiya (later a prominent AIDS activist). The Annual Reminders ended after 1969 and were supplanted by yearly Gay Pride celebrations.

"We cracked the cocoon of invisibility," Gittings later recalled. "We had finally stepped forward and said to the public, ‘I’m not going to live in a closet anymore.’" Added fellow participant Lilli Vincenz, "We exploded the myth that real homosexuals could [not] possibly look happy and proud and dignified and visible."

In early 1966, the North American Conference of Homophile Organizations met in Kansas City and called for demonstrations on Armed Forces Day to protest the military ban. On May 21, actions took place in several cities, including a motorcade in Los Angeles with Mattachine Society founder Harry Hay. Homophile activists also took on the psychiatric establishment, protesting at professional conferences beginning in 1968.

Public pickets initially proved controversial, as some members of the GLBT community preferred not to call attention to themselves. By the late 1960s, however, the country was in the grip of an era of militant protest by groups espousing diverse causes. One of the first actions of what would become known as the gay liberation (as opposed to the earlier homophile) movement was a March 1968 "gay-in" in Griffith Park in Los Angeles. In the same city, activists also began picketing Barney’s Beanery, a diner that posted a sign reading "Fagots Stay Out" [sic]. In San Francisco in the spring of 1969, young queer militants demonstrated outside the offices of States Steamship Line for weeks to protest the firing of gay activist Gale Whittington.

The Stonewall riots garnered more media attention than previous demonstrations and sparked intensified gay organizing across the country. Since then, GLBT protests have been a mainstay of the movement’s strategy, waxing and waning in cycles that reflect the overall national political and social climate.

While the polite pickets of the mid-1960s may appear tame to contemporary activists, it took considerable courage for GLBT people to demand their rights at a time when homosexual conduct was illegal and gays were considered mentally ill. "Visibility has always been the keystone of our struggle for civil rights," Gittings said in the 2004 documentary Gay Pioneers. "We are pushing for equality through visibility. Today, we have visibility—oh, do we have visibility!"