The New York Hymnal, vol. 1, no. 1

In New York City in the 1960s, bars were sites of both liberation and danger for the LGBTQ+ community. While bars offered opportunities to meet other LGBTQ+ people, gays, lesbians, and transgender people were constantly in danger of arrest for showing affection, dancing closely, and wearing clothing that did not correspond with their legally assigned gender. At the time, a bar could be shut down for serving LGBTQ+ patrons, so many such venues were owned or controlled by organized crime. They were also sites of extortion, blackmail, and police entrapment. The New York Hymnal, a publication of the Homophile Youth Movement in Neighborhoods (H.Y.M.N), was produced by the activist Craig Rodwell, who was also a member of the gay rights organization Mattachine Society of New York and later the Gay Activists Alliance. In this first issue published in 1968, Rodwell reports on Mafia control of the now-famous bar The Stonewall Inn, site of the Stonewall Uprising in 1969 that is commemorated each year with LGBTQ+ Pride events around the world.