Before Silverlake became one of Los Angeles’ most gentrified areas, it was a working-class Latinx neighborhood and a gay enclave that housed the Black Cat, a queer bar where a 1967 police raid led to “a watershed moment for the gay rights movement.” As the number of gay bars across the country continues to dwindle, Zócalo Public Square’s associate editor Talib Jabbar examines the historic queer site and urges us to think more deeply about “what the struggle for gay bars was actually about, and what the struggle to preserve them means.” The Black Cat raid led to a new coalition of gay rights organizations and to cross-movement protests by people who faced police harassment.