[Whitfield:] This weekend marks 50 years since police raided the Stonewall in, a gay bar in New York City touching off days of riots that are widely credited as the start of the modern gay rights movement. It happened in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969. Patrons were inside the Stonewall, drinking, dancing when police enforcing anti-gay laws burst in as they had done many times before, but this time something changed. The patrons tired of being harassed fought back. What followed were six days of protests. This weekend the Stonewall Inn serves as one of the main focal points for pride celebrations in the city. Lady Gaga was there yesterday and delivered an emotional speech, encouraging attendees to celebrate and to be proud of who they are. CNN's Polo Sandoval joins me right now from the Stonewall Inn. You spoke to people who were actually there when those riots began 50 years ago. So what's happening? Set the stage for us.
[Polo Sandoval, Cnn Correspondent:] You know, Fred, just to have a little bit more perspective here, keep in mind that decades before the LGBT community would take their fight for marriage
[Sandoval:] At New York City's monumental Stonewall Inn, there are those who come to pay homage
[Joseph Negrelli, Stonewall Elder:] I'm ready.
[Sandoval:] and those who come to remember what they lived through back in the summer of '69.
[Negrelli:] Nothing was really different that night except that people decided to fight back.
[Sandoval:] As New Yorker Joseph Negrelli remembers it, the NYPD barged in as he sipped a drink inside the Stonewall. Before that night, this tiny Greenwich Village bar was known mostly as a place for LGBT men and women to be themselves. For many, sharing in the relative safety of this place came with a price. They were subjected by frequent police raids described by New York's police commissioner five decades later as discriminatory and oppressive.
[Negrelli:] If you were feminine or you were dressed non-conforming your sexuality at birth, you were arrested and tried to be humiliated. And that's what was happening that night.
[Sandoval:] But the night of June 28, 1969, the bar's patrons revolted, they fought back refusing to comply with officers.
[Negrelli:] Someone threw a bottle from Sheridan Square Park into Christopher Street.
[Sandoval:] That was the start of a night that would galvanize the modern day LGBTQ civil rights movement.
[Negrelli:] Seventy-five people moved forward and blocked the police. Obviously, they got a big surprise that night. And I was very surprised immediately what happened was that they started to call for groups of homosexuals to come together.
[Sandoval:] Eventually the call spread throughout the country and around the world.
[Negrelli:] The civil rights movement, the women's movement all galvanized together but it was truly the transvestites and minorities that were the forefront runners of the Stonewall riot.
[Sandoval:] Five decades later, many of the voices that refused to be silenced returned to where it all started. For Soraya Santiago, it's been 50 years since she set foot at the Stonewall.
[Soraya Santiago, Stonewall Elder:] I thought I would never be here again because a lot of suffering, a lot of abuse occurred in this place.
[Sandoval:] Santiago is back with her fellow Stonewall elders for the 50th anniversary of the riots. So is Karla Jay who participated in subsequent protests at the bar?
[Karla Jay, Stonewall Elder:] In 1970 we thought it would be wonderful to hold hands in the street. We never dreamed that we would be able to get married. So it's an incredible advancement. But we really need to embrace all individuals, particularly our most disadvantaged.
[Sandoval:] The activists say more needs to be done especially for homeless LBGTQ youth and transgender women of color.
[Jay:] We used to say none of us are free until all of us are free.
[Sandoval:] So there certainly is the historical element in this weekend but there is, of course, plenty of celebrations playing out. The main one they expected to happen tomorrow here at Manhattan with a massive parade, Fred. But when you hear from the advocates themselves, they say that parade it's really a march. As you just heard Karla Jay say the movement is still very much alive and as she described it, still has much more to do.
[Whitfield:] Polo Sandoval, thank you so much. Still ahead, an arrest in the death of the University of Utah student. How police tracked down the suspect nearly two weeks after the 23- year-old went missing.