Appreciating Another Black Cat

Black Cat protesters

For #blackcatappreciationday, we remember Los Angeles's Black Cat bar, site of a pre-Stonewall gay rights protest.

Trudy Ring

Trudy Ring is The Advocate’s senior politics editor and copy chief. She has been a reporter and editor for daily newspapers and LGBTQ+ weeklies/monthlies, trade magazines, and reference books. She is a political junkie who thinks even the wonkiest details are fascinating, and she always loves to see political candidates who are groundbreaking in some way. She enjoys writing about other topics as well, including religion (she’s interested in what people believe and why), literature, theater, and film. Trudy is a proud “old movie weirdo” and loves the Hollywood films of the 1930s and ’40s above all others. Other interests include classic rock music (Bruce Springsteen rules!) and history. Oh, and she was a Jeopardy! contestant back in 1998 and won two games. Not up there with Amy Schneider, but Trudy still takes pride in this achievement.

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Trudy Ring

August 17 2016 3:01 PM EST

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Most people participating in #blackcatappreciationday on social media are honoring their favorite felines. But there's a Black Cat that played an important role in launching the modern LGBT rights movement -- and The Advocate.

The Black Cat was a gay bar in the Silver Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles that became the site of protests against police harassment two and half years before the Stonewall uprising. Just as patrons were celebrating the New Year, 1967, police stormed into the bar, where they beat and handcuffed more than a dozen people. They arrested two men for kissing, and the men had to register as sex offenders. A bartender suffered a ruptured spleen.

Such raids were common at the time, but this time gay Angelenos decided to fight back. They protested in front of the bar for several days, demanding an end to police actions against gay bars and gay citizens. Such actions didn't stop immediately, but a civil rights movement was taking shape.

The raid also led two men, Richard Mitch and Bill Rau, to take over the newsletter of the L.A. gay group Personal Rights in Defense and Education, or PRIDE, which had organized the protests. They decided to develop it into a newsmagazine, The Los Angeles Advocate. The first issue came out in September 1967. The magazine soon expanded into covering news nationally, becoming The Advocate as we know it today.