On August 5, 1969, just over one month after the Stonewall riots in New York City, an Ansley Mall Mini Cinema screening of Andy Warhol’s Lonesome Cowboys was raided in Midtown Atlanta. Among the film’s flashes of breasts and buttocks, the pop artist’s X-rated campy satire on the American West featured some same-sex kissing cowpokes. Fifteen minutes before the movie’s conclusion, the Atlanta Police Department burst into the theater, confiscated the film reels, and arrested the theater’s projectionist plus some of the 70 patrons. Attendees, including a minister, were photographed.

Of his new citywide anti-smut campaign, Fulton County Criminal Court solicitor general Hinson McAuliffe told the Atlanta Journal , “We thought we would look over the photographs and see what percentage of thes

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