Wisconsin

The history of rock music in Milwaukee began at an age when some musicians played in a segregated part of the city. At the same time, a young singer named Buddy Holly kicked off a tour that ended with a plane crash in Iowa 11 days later. The following years brought the Beatles, Rolling Stones, and the rest of the British Invasion. In the late 1960s came acid rock, civil unrest, and Summerfest, a music festival that continues to this day. Milwaukee has had its moments in the spotlight: Bob Dylan left the stage after two songs in 1964, Bruce Springsteen's 1975 concert was delayed for hours while police searched for a bomb in the theater, hundreds of Black Sabbath fans rioted after a 1980 show, and the Plasmatics' Wendy O. Williams was beaten by police in 1981. And then there was the helicopter crash in which blues guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughn perished.

For a medium-size Rust Belt city with German Protestant roots, Milwaukee was an unlikely place for gay and lesbian culture to bloom before the Stonewall Riots.

However, Milwaukee eventually had as many--if not more--known LGBTQ+ gathering places as Minneapolis or Chicago, ranging from the back rooms of bars in the 1960s to the video bars of the 1980s to the openly gay bars and Pride Festivals of today. Over the past 75 years, LGBTQ+ people have experienced tremendous social change in America, and Milwaukee is a shining example of how a city of "traditional values'? embraced its brothers and sisters to make the city a safe place for them to live; in 2001, Milwaukee was even named the ,1 city for lesbians.