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“That’s where gay rights started, in a gay bar, and they’ve always been fought for in the bars. “This is the 50th anniversary of Stonewall,” said Steve Murphy, co-owner of The Pumping Station. And they still serve as spaces for organizing in the face of escalating political attacks.Ĭurrently in Tennessee, the state legislature is considering bills that would restrict LGBT adoptions and foster care, define marriage as exclusive to heterosexual unions and allow businesses and medical professionals to refuse service to LGBT people. They’re also beacons for LGBT people in rural areas surrounding Memphis and the only places many transgender people can safely explore their identity and transition. “Now you’ve got the internet, churches are a lot more open … It’s not the same culture anymore.”īut Memphis’ last gay bars are still well-loved spots to socialize. They were the community center, they were the church, they were the entertainment, the place find your next boyfriend or girlfriend,” said Tami Montgomery, owner of Dru’s Bar. There are other factors, like the rise of the internet and shifts within LGBT culture, but it’s largely the gains in equality that are responsible for the decline in the bars' popularity. For most LGBT people, bars are no longer their only safe spaces. While LGBT people do still face discrimination and violence, it pales in comparison to life before Stonewall. The success of the riot and subsequent equal rights movement brought many legal protections and widespread social acceptance. In short, Stonewall did what it set out to do. The reasons for this dramatic decline are complexand bittersweet. Census bureaushowed a loss of nearly 6,000 gay and lesbian bars nationwide from 1997 to 2007 and the trend has continued. It was created for the 2013 Mid-South Pride celebration and features nearly 110 bars, all but two of which are now closed. Inside Dru’s, a massive mural logs the names of nearly 110 bars that once served Memphis’ LGBT community.Ī mural at Dru's Bar pays homage to Memphis' long history of LGBT bars. By 1998, Family & Friends first edition listed 14 bars in Memphis, 11 of which were in or surrounding Madison Heights.īut today, there are only two full-time, dedicated gay bars operating in Memphis.ĭru’s Bar and The Pumping Stationare both located in Madison Heights at 1474 Madison Avenue and 1382 Poplar Avenue, respectively. In 1975, the inaugural issue of Gaiety, Memphis’ first LGBT newspaper, highlighted five bars in or adjacent to the neighborhood. Madison Heights - the neighborhood radiating from the Madison Avenue-Cleveland Street intersection - has historically been at the center of Memphis’ LGBT bar scene.
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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.