David carter author biography essay

David Carter, noted author and historian of the LGBT civil rights movement, has died in New York City. He was 65. An immediate cause of death was not disclosed.

Carter’s groundbreaking 2004 book, “Stonewall: The Riots That Sparked the Gay Revolution,” was the basis for the PBS “American Experience” documentary film “Stonewall Uprising,” which won a Peabody Award.

The book is a history of the six days of riots that began on June 28, 1969, after police raided the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in New York’s Greenwich Village.

At the time of the riots, “homosexual” sex was illegal in every state except Illinois, and New York’s laws were among the most severe. As Carter wrote, “By 1961, the laws in America were harsher on homosexuals than those in Cuba, Russia or East Germany, countries that the United States criticized for their despotic ways.” The Stonewall riots led to the gay-rights movement and the formation of the Gay Liberation Front and the Gay