And Vito and I walked the rest of the whole thing with tears running down our face. For those kisses. John O'Brien:And then somebody started a fire, they started with little lighters and matches. Milestones in the American Gay Rights Movement. He said, "Okay, let's go." Seymour Pine, Deputy Inspector, Morals Division, NYPD:Well, we did use the small hoses on the fire extinguishers. It was done in our little street talk. Here are my ID cards, you knew they were phonies. A gay rights march in New York in favor of the 1968 Civil Rights Act being amended to include gay rights. A lot of them had been thrown out of their families. Raymond Castro Ellen Goosenberg We had no speakers planned for the rally in Central Park, where we had hoped to get to. Lucian Truscott, IV, Reporter,The Village Voice:TheNew York TimesI guess printed a story, but it wasn't a major story. But we couldn't hold out very long. Richard Enman (Archival):Ye - well, that's yes and no. William Eskridge, Professor of Law: The 1960s were dark ages for lesbians and gay men all over America. I met this guy and I broke down crying in his arms. Sophie Cabott Black First Run Features Alexis Charizopolis You see these cops, like six or eight cops in drag. And then they send them out in the street and of course they did make arrests, because you know, there's all these guys who cruise around looking for drag queens. The history of the Gay and Lesbian community before the Stonewall riots began the major gay rights movement. Evan Eames TV Host (Archival):Are those your own eyelashes? Where did you buy it? Seymour Pine, Deputy Inspector, Morals Division, NYPD:We only had about six people altogether from the police department knowing that you had a precinct right nearby that would send assistance. Seymour Wishman And I ran into Howard Smith on the street,The Village Voicewas right there. Because to be gay represented to me either very, super effeminate men or older men who hung out in the upper movie theatres on 42nd Street or in the subway T-rooms, who'd be masturbating. Dick Leitsch:Well, gay bars were the social centers of gay life. Jerry Hoose:I was afraid it was over. David Huggins And I think it's both the alienation, also the oppression that people suffered. I was a homosexual. Giles Kotcher Gay people were not powerful enough politically to prevent the clampdown and so you had a series of escalating skirmishes in 1969. Dick Leitsch:And that's when you started seeing like, bodies laying on the sidewalk, people bleeding from the head. Dick Leitsch:And so the cops came with these buses, like five buses, and they all were full of tactical police force. And the Stonewall was part of that system. Transcript Aired June 9, 2020 Stonewall Uprising The Year That Changed America Film Description When police raided the Stonewall Inn, a popular gay bar in the Greenwich Village section of. We were going to propose something that all groups could participate in and what we ended up producing was what's now known as the gay pride march. The events. Stonewall: The Riots that Sparked the Gay Revolution He is not interested in, nor capable of a lasting relationship like that of a heterosexual marriage. That's more an uprising than a riot. [7] In 1989, it won the Festival's Plate at the Torino International Gay & Lesbian Film Festival. It was the only time I was in a gladiatorial sport that I stood up in. Seymour Pine, Deputy Inspector, Morals Division, NYPD:The moment you stepped out that door there would be hundreds facing you. Michael Dolan, Technical Advisors You needed a license even to be a beautician and that could be either denied or taken away from you. Martin Boyce:Well, in the front part of the bar would be like "A" gays, like regular gays, that didn't go in any kind of drag, didn't use the word "she," that type, but they were gay, a hundred percent gay. Samual Murkofsky The film brings together voices from over 50 years of the LGBTQ rights movement to explore queer activism before, during and after the Stonewall Riots. And she was quite crazy. Raymond Castro:There were mesh garbage cans being lit up on fire and being thrown at the police. Stonewall Forever is a documentary from NYC's LGBT Community Center directed by Ro Haber. And, I did not like parading around while all of these vacationers were standing there eating ice cream and looking at us like we were critters in a zoo. They were to us. And I just didn't understand that. Jerry Hoose:Who was gonna complain about a crackdown against gay people? Doric Wilson:That's what happened Stonewall night to a lot of people. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. John O'Brien:If a gay man is caught by the police and is identified as being involved in what they called lewd, immoral behavior, they would have their person's name, their age and many times their home address listed in the major newspapers. (c) 2011 Janice Flood Today, that event is seen as the start of the gay civil rights movement, but gay activists and organizations were standing up to harassment and discrimination years before. It was an age of experimentation. Slate:In 1969, homosexual acts were illegal in every state except Illinois. And if we catch you, involved with a homosexual, your parents are going to know about it first. Yvonne Ritter:I had just turned 18 on June 27, 1969. The Catholic Church, be damned to hell. Diana Davies Photographs, Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations Gay people were never supposed to be threats to police officers. Interviewer (Archival):Are you a homosexual? That wasn't ours, it was borrowed. Raymond Castro:You could hear screaming outside, a lot of noise from the protesters and it was a good sound. In an effort to avoid being anachronistic . John O'Brien:They had increased their raids in the trucks. All kinds of designers, boxers, big museum people. Before Stonewall: The Making of a Gay and Lesbian Community is a 1984 American documentary film about the LGBT community prior to the 1969 Stonewall riots. There was all these drags queens and these crazy people and everybody was carrying on. Dr. Socarides (Archival):I think the whole idea of saying "the happy homosexual" is to, uh, to create a mythology about the nature of homosexuality. Before Stonewall pries open the closet door, setting free dramatic stories from the early 1900's onwards of public and private existence as experienced by LGBT Americans. Raymond Castro:Incendiary devices were being thrown in I don't think they were Molotov cocktails, but it was just fire being thrown in when the doors got open. This produced an enormous amount of anger within the lesbian and gay community in New York City and in other parts of America. And I knew that I was lesbian. Dick Leitsch:Very often, they would put the cops in dresses, with makeup and they usually weren't very convincing. The Gay Revolution: The Story of the Struggle, Queer (In)Justice: The Criminalization of LGBT People in the United States. Barak Goodman I say, I cannot tell this without tearing up. We don't know. We went, "Oh my God. Stacker put together a timeline of LGBTQ+ history leading up to Stonewall, beginning with prehistoric events and ending in the late 1960s. TV Host (Archival):That's a very lovely dress too that you're wearing Simone. Seymour Pine, Deputy Inspector, Morals Division, NYPD:And they were, they were kids. But you live with it, you know, you're used to this, after the third time it happened, or, the third time you heard about it, that's the way the world is. Paul Bosche It's very American to say, "You promised equality, you promised freedom." And some people came out, being very dramatic, throwing their arms up in a V, you know, the victory sign. Homosexuals do not want that, you might find some fringe character someplace who says that that's what he wants. It was a leaflet that attacked the relationship of the police and the Mafia and the bars that we needed to see ended. One of the world's oldest and largest gay pride parades became a victory celebration after New York's historic decision to legalize same-sex marriage. I was celebrating my birthday at the Stonewall. As president of the Mattachine Society in New York, I tried to negotiate with the police and the mayor. Tires were slashed on police cars and it just went on all night long. They would not always just arrest, they would many times use clubs and beat. I went in there and they took bats and just busted that place up. This 19-year-old serviceman left his girlfriend on the beach to go to a men's room in a park nearby where he knew that he could find a homosexual contact. Few photographs of the raid and the riots that followed exist. All of the rules that I had grown up with, and that I had hated in my guts, other people were fighting against, and saying "No, it doesn't have to be this way.". Doric Wilson The award-winning documentary film, Before Stonewall, which was released theatrically and broadcast on PBS television in 1984, explored the history of the lesbian and gay rights movement in the United States prior to 1969. If that didn't work, they would do things like aversive conditioning, you know, show you pornography and then give you an electric shock. And the people coming out weren't going along with it so easily. They could be judges, lawyers. ", Howard Smith, Reporter,The Village Voice:And he went to each man and said it by name. It is usually after the day at the beach that the real crime occurs. It meant nothing to us. David Alpert It's like, this is not right. But I was just curious, I didn't want to participate because number one it was so packed. Like, "Joe, if you fire your gun without me saying your name and the words 'fire,' you will be walking a beat on Staten Island all alone on a lonely beach for the rest of your police career. Windows started to break. On this episode, the fight for gay rights before Stonewall. Jorge Garcia-Spitz David Carter, Author ofStonewall:Most raids by the New York City Police, because they were paid off by the mob, took place on a weeknight, they took place early in the evening, the place would not be crowded. Dr. Socarides (Archival):Homosexuality is in fact a mental illness which has reached epidemiological proportions. 'Cause I really realized that I was being trained as a straight person, so I could really fool these people. Read a July 6, 1969excerpt fromTheNew York Daily News. Jerry Hoose:I mean the riot squad was used to riots. Danny Garvin:We were talking about the revolution happening and we were walking up 7th Avenue and I was thinking it was either Black Panthers or the Young Lords were going to start it and we turned the corner from 7th Avenue onto Christopher Street and we saw the paddy wagon pull up there. "You could have got us in a lot of trouble, you could have got us closed up." The very idea of being out, it was ludicrous. Gay bars were to gay people what churches were to blacks in the South. You had no place to try to find an identity. The events that took place in June 1969 have been described as the birth of the gay-rights movement, but that's only partially true. John O'Brien:I was with a group that we actually took a parking meter out of theground, three or four people, and we used it as a battering ram. Daily News Transcript A gay rights march in New York in favor of the 1968 Civil Rights Act being amended to include gay rights. There are a lot of kids here. John O'Brien Doric Wilson:When I was very young, one of the terms for gay people was twilight people, meaning that we never came out until twilight, 'til it got dark. William Eskridge, Professor of Law:Gay people who were sentenced to medical institutions because they were found to be sexual psychopaths, were subjected sometimes to sterilization, occasionally to castration, sometimes to medical procedures, such as lobotomies, which were felt by some doctors to cure homosexuality and other sexual diseases. Before Stonewall: The Making of a Gay and Lesbian Community is a 1984 American documentary film about the LGBT community prior to the 1969 Stonewall riots. Activists had been working for change long before Stonewall. A sickness that was not visible like smallpox, but no less dangerous and contagious. Ed Koch, Councilman, New York City:There were complaints from people who objected to the wrongful behavior of some gays who would have sex on the street. And Howard said, "Boy there's like a riot gonna happen here," and I said, "yeah." Absolutely, and many people who were not lucky, felt the cops. And the rest of your life will be a living hell. Few photographs of the raid and the riots that followed exist. And it was those loudest people, the most vulnerable, the most likely to be arrested, were the ones that were doing the real fighting. The cops would hide behind the walls of the urinals. Gay bars were always on side streets out of the way in neighborhoods that nobody would go into. And the first gay power demonstration to my knowledge was against my story inThe Village Voiceon Wednesday. Meanwhile, there was crowds forming outside the Stonewall, wanting to know what was going on. William Eskridge, Professor of Law:In states like New York, there were a whole basket of crimes that gay people could be charged with. First you gotta get past the door. But, that's when we knew, we were ourselves for the first time. National History Archive, LGBT Community Center Noah Goldman There were occasions where you did see people get night-sticked, or disappear into a group of police and, you know, everybody knew that was not going to have a good end. He pulls all his men inside. Charles Harris, Transcriptions Martha Shelley:In those days, what they would do, these psychiatrists, is they would try to talk you into being heterosexual. And they were lucky that door was closed, they were very lucky. But as we were going up 6th Avenue, it kept growing. They were getting more ferocious. Remember everything. We could easily be hunted, that was a game. His movements are not characteristic of a real boy. But as visibility increased, the reactions of people increased. New York City's Stonewall Inn is regarded by many as the site of gay and lesbian liberation since it was at this bar that drag queens fought back against police June 27-28, 1969. by David Carter, Associate Producer and Advisor Jerry Hoose:The bar itself was a toilet. Frank Kameny We had been threatened bomb threats. I just thought you had to get through this, and I thought I could get through it, but you really had to be smart about it. Richard Enman (Archival):Well, let me say, first of all, what type of laws we are not after, because there has been much to-do that the Society was in favor of the legalization of marriage between homosexuals, and the adoption of children, and such as that, and that is not at all factual at all. Danny Garvin:With Waverly Street coming in there, West Fourth coming in there, Seventh Avenue coming in there, Christopher Street coming in there, there was no way to contain us. They were supposed to be weak men, limp-wristed. Lucian Truscott, IV, Reporter,The Village Voice:It was a bottle club which meant that I guess you went to the door and you bought a membership or something for a buck and then you went in and then you could buy drinks. Seymour Pine, Deputy Inspector, Morals Division, NYPD:There were no instructions except: put them out of business. And there was tear gas on Saturday night, right in front of the Stonewall. The Stonewall had reopened. All I knew about was that I heard that there were people down in Times Square who were gay and that's where I went to. This, to a homosexual, is no choice at all. I entered the convent at 26, to pursue that question and I was convinced that I would either stay until I got an answer, or if I didn't get an answer just stay. Mike Wallace (Archival):Two out of three Americans look upon homosexuals with disgust, discomfort or fear. Many of those activists have since died, but Marcus preserved their voices for his book, titled Making Gay History. Martin Boyce:You could be beaten, you could have your head smashed in a men's room because you were looking the wrong way. Martha Babcock Former U.S. President Barack Obama shakes hands with gay rights activist Frank Kameny after signing a memorandum on federal benefits and non-discrimination in the Oval Office on June 17, 2009. That's what happened on June 28, but as people were released, the night took an unusual turn when protesters and police clashed. Susan Liberti I could never let that happen and never did. I had never seen anything like that. One time, a bunch of us ran into somebody's car and locked the door and they smashed the windows in. Obama signed the memorandum to extend benefits to same-sex partners of federal employees. And we had no right to such. There was the Hippie movement, there was the Summer of Love, Martin Luther King, and all of these affected me terribly. Chris Mara, Production Assistants And, you know,The Village Voiceat that point started using the word "gay.". At least if you had press, maybe your head wouldn't get busted. Hear more of the conversation and historical interviews at the audio link. They are taught that no man is born homosexual and many psychiatrists now believe that homosexuality begins to form in the first three years of life. Martha Shelley:Before Stonewall, the homophile movement was essentially the Mattachine Society and Daughters of Bilitis and all of these other little gay organizations, some of which were just two people and a mimeograph machine. My last name being Garvin, I'd be called Danny Gay-vin. Danny Garvin:We had thought of women's rights, we had thought of black rights, all kinds of human rights, but we never thought of gay rights, and whenever we got kicked out of a bar before, we never came together. [00:00:58] Well, this I mean, this is a part of my own history in this weird, inchoate sense. To celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Teddy Awards, the film was shown at the 66th Berlin International Film Festival in February 2016. Doing things like that. Dan Bodner Martin Boyce:I wasn't labeled gay, just "different." Narrator (Archival):This is one of the county's principal weekend gathering places for homosexuals, both male and female. John O'Brien:We had no idea we were gonna finish the march. Tommy Lanigan-Schmidt:The police would zero in on us because sometimes they would be in plain clothes, and sometimes they would even entrap. Barney Karpfinger People that were involved in it like me referred to it as "The First Run." And that crowd between Howard Johnson's and Mama's Chik-n-Rib was like the basic crowd of the gay community at that time in the Village. One was the 1845 statute that made it a crime in the state to masquerade. Jerry Hoose William Eskridge, Professor of Law:The federal government would fire you, school boards would fire you. With this outpouring of courage and unity the gay liberation movement had begun. For the first time the next person stood up. Martin Boyce:I had cousins, ten years older than me, and they had a car sometimes. Frank Kameny, co-founder of the Mattachine Society, and Shirley Willer, president of the Daughters of Bilitis, spoke to Marcus about being gay before the Stonewall riots happened and what motivated people who were involved in the movement. (Enter your ZIP code for information on American Experience events and screening in your area.). Fred Sargeant:Three articles of clothing had to be of your gender or you would be in violation of that law. Virginia Apuzzo:It was free but not quite free enough for us. But we're going to pay dearly for this. The most infamous of those institutions was Atascadero, in California. Ed Koch, Councilman, New York City:Gay rights, like the rights of blacks, were constantly under attack and while blacks were protected by constitutional amendments coming out of the Civil War, gays were not protected by law and certainly not the Constitution. But we went down to the trucks and there, people would have sex. Howard Smith, Reporter,The Village Voice:That night I'm in my office, I looked down the street, and I could see the Stonewall sign and I started to see some activity in front. And, it was, I knew I would go through hell, I would go through fire for that experience. Lucian Truscott, IV, Reporter,The Village Voice:They started busting cans of tear gas. This was the first time I could actually sense, not only see them fearful, I could sense them fearful. Participants of the 1969 Greenwich Village uprising describe the effect that Stonewall had on their lives. They raided the Checkerboard, which was a very popular gay bar, a week before the Stonewall. A few of us would get dressed up in skirts and blouses and the guys would all have to wear suits and ties. Dick Leitsch:We wore suits and ties because we wanted people, in the public, who were wearing suits and ties, to identify with us. People started throwing pennies. What Jimmy didn't know is that Ralph was sick. Fred Sargeant:We knew that they were serving drinks out of vats and buckets of water and believed that there had been some disease that had been passed. But it's serious, don't kid yourselves about it. John van Hoesen The Underground Lounge And when you got a word, the word was homosexuality and you looked it up. [1] To commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots in 2019, the film was restored and re-released by First Run Features in June 2019. Hunted, hunted, sometimes we were hunted. John O'Brien:Cops got hurt. You cut one head off. Raymond Castro:New York City subways, parks, public bathrooms, you name it. And you will be caught, don't think you won't be caught, because this is one thing you cannot get away with. Long before marriage equality, non-binary gender identity, and the flood of new documentaries commemorating this month's 50th anniversary of the Greenwich Village uprising that begat the gay rights movement, there was Greta Schiller's Before Stonewall.Originally released in 1984as AIDS was slowly killing off many of those bar patrons-turned-revolutionariesthe film, through the use of . People could take shots at us. Calling 'em names, telling 'em how good-looking they were, grabbing their butts. The idea was to be there first. Seymour Pine, Deputy Inspector, Morals Division, NYPD:Well, I had to act like I wasn't nervous. Jerry Hoose:The open gay people that hung out on the streets were basically the have-nothing-to-lose types, which I was. Now, 50 years later, the film is back. John DiGiacomo I mean I'm talking like sardines. Howard Smith, Reporter,The Village Voice:So at that point the police are extremely nervous. And as awful as people might think that sounds, it's the way history has always worked. It was as if they were identifying a thing. Things were being thrown against the plywood, we piled things up to try to buttress it. Narrated by Rita Mae Brownan acclaimed writer whose 1973 novel Rubyfruit Jungle is a seminal lesbian text, but who is possessed of a painfully grating voiceBefore Stonewall includes vintage news footage that makes it clear that gay men and women lived full, if often difficult, lives long before their personal ambitions (however modest) Before Stonewall was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at the 1985 Sundance Film Festival. The only faces you will see are those of the arresting officers. Martin Boyce:And then more police came, and it didn't stop. Leaflets in the 60s were like the internet, today. Martin Boyce:For me, there was no bar like the Stonewall, because the Stonewall was like the watering hole on the savannah. It was right in the center of where we all were. 1984 documentary film by Greta Schiller and Robert Rosenberg, "Berlinale 2016: Panorama Celebrates Teddy Award's 30th Anniversary and Announces First Titles in Programme", "Guest Post: What I Learned From Revisiting My 1984 Documentary 'Before Stonewall', "See the 25 New Additions to the National Film Registry, From Purple Rain to Clerks", "Complete National Film Registry Listing", "Before Stonewall - Independent Historical Film", Before Stonewall: The Making of a Gay and Lesbian Community (Newly Restored), https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Before_Stonewall&oldid=1134540821, Documentary films about United States history, Historiography of LGBT in the United States, United States National Film Registry films, Short description is different from Wikidata, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, This page was last edited on 19 January 2023, at 05:30. The first police officer that came in with our group said, "The place is under arrest. They call them hotels, motels, lovers' lanes, drive-in movie theaters, etc. In 1969 it was common for police officers to rough up a gay bar and ask for payoffs. Before Stonewall (1984) - full transcript New York City's Stonewall Inn is regarded by many as the site of gay and lesbian liberation since it was at this bar that drag queens fought back against police June 27-28, 1969. Except for the few mob-owned bars that allowed some socializing, it was basically for verboten. I'm losing everything that I have. Narrator (Archival):This is a nation of laws. William Eskridge, Professor of Law:The Stonewall riots came at a central point in history. Some of the pre-Stonewall uprisings included: Black Cat Raid, Los Angeles, California, 1967 Black Night Brawl, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, August 5, 1961. Danny Garvin:Everybody would just freeze or clam up. Martin Boyce:I heard about the trucks, which to me was fascinated me, you know, it had an imagination thing that was like Marseilles, how can it only be a few blocks away? Once it started, once that genie was out of the bottle, it was never going to go back in. I actually thought, as all of them did, that we were going to be killed. Sign up for the American Experience newsletter! and someone would say, "Well, they're still fighting the police, let's go," and they went in. Because its all right in the Village, but the minute we cross 14th street, if there's only ten of us, God knows what's going to happen to us.". All of this stuff was just erupting like a -- as far as they were considered, like a gigantic boil on the butt of America. Howard Smith, Reporter,The Village Voice:I had been in some gay bars either for a story or gay friends would say, "Oh we're going to go in for a drink there, come on in, are you too uptight to go in?" Atascadero was known in gay circles as the Dachau for queers, and appropriately so. Judy Laster It was narrated by author Rita Mae Brown, directed by Greta Schiller, co-directed by Robert Rosenberg, and co-produced by John Scagliotti and Rosenberg, and Schiller. Alexis Charizopolis John O'Brien:All of a sudden, the police faced something they had never seen before. Martin Boyce:Mind you socks didn't count, so it was underwear, and undershirt, now the next thing was going to ruin the outfit.
