change brought by the Stonewall riots. An organizer of gay activism in the 1950s, he was used to persuasion, trying to convince heterosexuals that gay people were no different from them. When he and other people marched in front of the White House, the State Department, and Independence Hall only five years earlier, their objective was to look as if they could work for the US government. Ten people marched with Kameny then and they alerted no press to their intentions. Although he was stunned by the upheaval by participants in the Annual Reminder in 1969, he later observed, "By the time of Stonewall, we had fifty to sixty gay groups in the country. A year later there was at least fifteen hundred. By two years later, to the extent that a count could be made, it was twenty-five hundred." Similar to Kameny's regret at his own reaction to the shift in attitudes after the riots, Randy Wicker came to describe his embarrassment as "one of the greatest mistakes of his life". The image of gay people retaliating against police, after so many years of allowing such treatment to go unchallenged, "stirred an unexpected spirit among many homosexuals". Kay Lahusen, who photographed the marches in 1965, stated, "Up to 1969, this movement was generally called the homosexual or homophile movement... Many new activists consider the Stonewall uprising the birth of the gay liberation movement. Certainly it was the birth of gay pride on a massive scale." David Carter, in his article "What made Stonewall different", explained that even though there were several uprisings before Stonewall, the reason Stonewall was so significant was that thousands of people were involved, the riot lasted a long time (six days), it was the first to get major media coverage, and it sparked the formation of many gay rights groups. Legacy The Stonewall riots are often considered to be the origin or impetus of the gay liberation movement, and many studies of LGBT history in the U.S. are divided into pre- and post-Stonewall analyses. However, this has been criticized by historians of sexuality. Calls for the rights of gender and sexual minorities predate the Stonewall riots, and there was already the emergence of a gay liberation movement in New York at the time of the riots. The Stonewall riots were not the only time LGBT people organized politically amid attacks on LGBT establishments. However, the