This is so important to remember and to pass along to the new generation.

Courtesy Raymond Castro
Sunday, June 28, marks the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, considered by many the beginning of the modern gay rights movement in the U.S. NBC News Editor Sandra Lilley spoke to two men, one who was at the Stonewall Inn on the night of the riots and the other a historian who wrote a book about the events. They discuss how the movement for gay rights has, and hasn’t, changed over the last 40 years.
Raymond Castro lives a happy suburban life at his house on the water near Tampa, Fla.
Now 67, the semi-retired baker who lives with his partner of 30 years, Frankie Sturniolo, enjoys helping out his neighbors and spending time with family and friends. “All my neighbors treat me so well; they love me and they depend on me. I check on their pets, I mow their lawns…I have keys to three or four houses surrounding me.”
Castro’s tranquil life seems a long way away from events on June 28, 1969, a night that ushered what many consider to be the beginning of the modern gay rights movement: The police raid at the Stonewall Inn, a popular gay bar in Greenwich Village, a then-bohemian neighborhood in New York City.
“When the police raided the place, I was outside,” Castro remembered. “Then I remembered a friend inside who did not have a false ID and he was going to get in trouble, so I went inside to give him one.” (Many of the police raids, he said, resulted in arrests for underage drinking). “Once I got inside, the police wouldn’t let us out. It got really hot. I remember throwing punches and resisting arrest. The police handcuffed me and threw me in the paddy wagon. But I sprung back up, like a leap frog, and when I did that I knocked the police down.”

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