In October, in Rodwell’s and his boyfriend Fred Sargeant’s apartment at 350 Bleecker Street, meetings were held to discuss an action to replace the Reminder Days. It was clear that the events at Stonewall had already changed things. Rodwell chartered a bus of younger people from New York, who joined the Philadelphia demonstration but did not adhere to the strict conservative dress code, nor did they follow the “orderly” rules of conduct of previous years.
The last Reminder Day took place on July 4, 1969, only one day after the end of the Stonewall uprising.
Among the earliest significant LGBT protests in the United States, these were held to highlight the community’s lack of basic civil rights. Rodwell had been an organizer of the annual Fourth of July Reminder Day demonstrations in front of Independence Hall in Philadelphia, from 1965 to 1969. At the one-year anniversary of the Stonewall uprising on Sunday, June 28, 1970, a group headed by Craig Rodwell, owner of the Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop, led what became the first annual NYC Pride March (then known as the Christopher Street Liberation Day March).
