American Experience (1988–…): Season 23, Episode 10 - Stonewall Uprising - full transcript

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For me there was no bar
like the Stonewall

because the Stonewall
was like the watering hole

on the savannah.

It's just everybody was there.



We were all there.

Well, gay bars were
the social centers of gay life.

Gay bars were to gay people

what churches were to blacks
in the South.

There were no instructions
except put them out of business.

The first police officer
that came in with our group

said, "The place
is under arrest.

"When you exit,
have some identification

and it'll be over
in a short time."

This time they said,
"We're not going."

"That's it, we're not going."

Something snapped.

It's like, "This is not right."

That's what happened Stonewall
night to a lot of people.



We went, "Oh, my God.

"I am not alone.

There are other people that feel
exactly the same way."

We didn't have the manpower,

and the manpower
for the other side

was coming like
it was a real war.

And that's what it was,
it was a war.

This was the Rosa Parks moment,

the time that gay people
stood up and said "No!"

And once that happened,
the whole house of cards

that was the system of
oppression of gay people

started to crumble.

In the civil rights movement,
we ran from the police.

In the peace movement,
we ran from the police.

That night, the police ran from
us, the lowliest of the low.

And it was fantastic.

Do you want your son enticed
into the world of homosexuals,

or your daughter lured
into lesbianism?

Do you want them to lose
all chance

of a normal, happy,
married life?

The 1960s were dark ages
for lesbians and gay men

all over America.

The overwhelming number
of medical authorities

said that homosexuality
was a mental defect,

maybe even a form
of psychopathy.

The average homosexual, if
there be such, is promiscuous.

He is not interested in
nor capable of

a lasting relationship like that
of a heterosexual marriage.

I was wondering if you think
that there are

any "happy homosexuals"
for whom homosexuality would be,

in a way, their best adjustment
to life?

I think the whole idea

of saying the
"happy homosexual" is

to create a mythology about
the nature of homosexuality.

Dr. Charles Socarides is
a New York psychoanalyst

at the Albert Einstein
School of Medicine.

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.

Homosexuality is in fact
a mental illness

which has reached
epidemiological proportions.

In those days, what they would
do, these psychiatrists,

is they would try to talk you
into being heterosexual.

If that didn't work,
they would do

things like aversive
conditioning...

You know, show you pornography

and then give you
an electric shock.

This involves showing the gay
man pictures of nude males

and shocking him with
a strong electric current.

Over a short period of time,

he will be unable to get
sexually aroused

to the pictures, and hopefully,

he will be unable to get
sexually aroused

outside in other settings
as well.

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.

The most infamous of those
institutions was Atascadero

in California.

Atascadero was known
in gay circles

as the Dachau for queers,
and appropriately so.

The medical experimentation
in Atascadero

included administering
to gay people a drug

that simulated the experience
of drowning.

In other words,

a pharmacological example
of waterboarding.

Somebody that I knew
that was older than me,

his family had him sent off
where they go up

and damage the frontal part
of the brain.

The last time I saw him,
he was a walking vegetable.

Because he was homosexual.

Society expected you to,
you know, grow up,

get married, have kids,

which is what a lot of people
did to satisfy their parents.

I never believed in that.

It eats you up inside.

It eats you up inside not being
comfortable with yourself.

When I was growing up
in the '50s,

I was supposed to get married
to some guy,

produce, you know,
the usual 2.3 children.

And I could look at a guy
and say,

"Well, objectively
he's good looking,"

but I didn't feel anything, just
didn't make any sense to me.

What finally made sense to me
was the first time

I kissed a woman.

And I thought, "Oh, this is
what it's about."

And I knew that I was a lesbian.

And it was...

I knew that I would go
through hell,

I would go through fire
for that experience,

for those kisses.

Note how Albert delicately
pats his hair

and adjusts his collar.

His movements are not
characteristic of a real boy.

I wasn't labeled "gay,"
just "different."

Somehow being gay was
the most terrible thing

you could possibly be.

And I just didn't
understand that.

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.

Clever.

Remember everything.

Because I really realized
I was being trained

as a straight person, so I could
fool these people.

As kids we played King Kong.

I would wait until there was
nobody left to be the girl

and then I would be the girl.

If anybody should find out
I was gay

and would tell my mother,
who was in a wheelchair,

it would have broken my heart,

and she would have thought
she did something wrong.

I could never let that happen
and it never did.

I knew that the words that were
being said to put down people

was about me.

I learned very early that those
horrible words were about me,

that I was one of those people.

He's a faggot, he's a sissy,
queer.

Queer was very big.

Homo... homo was big.

Uh, my last name being Garvin,
I was called Danny Gay-vin.

I was in the Navy when I was 17.

And it was there that
I discovered that I was gay.

Homosexuality was a dishonorable
discharge in those days

and you couldn't get
a job afterwards.

So I attempted suicide
by cutting my wrist.

I met this guy,
I broke down crying in his arms,

saying, "I don't want to be
this way.

"This is not the life I want.

I'm losing everything
that I have."

Kicked out of the church,
to be damned to hell.

Because to be gay
represented to me

either very super effeminate men

or older men who hung out
in the upper movie theaters

on 42nd Street or in the subway
T-rooms, would be masturbating.

Sure enough, the following day,

when Jimmy finished
playing ball,

well, the man was there waiting.

Jimmy hadn't enjoyed himself
so much in a long time.

Then, during lunch, Ralph showed
him some pornographic pictures.

Jimmy knew he shouldn't
be interested

but, well, he was curious.

What Jimmy didn't know was that
Ralph was sick,

a sickness that was not visible
like smallpox,

but no less dangerous
and contagious.

A sickness of the mind.

You see, Ralph was a homosexual.

One never knows when
a homosexual is about.

He may appear normal,
and it may be too late

when you discover
he is mentally ill.

I was a poor, young gay person.

All I knew about was that

I heard there were people down
in Times Square who were gay...

And that's where I went to.

And I found them
in the movie theaters,

sitting there next to them.

I had cousins
ten years older than me

and they had a car sometimes.

And I would get in the back
of the car

and they would say,
"We're going to go see faggots."

That was one of the things
you did in New York,

it was like a Barnum and Bailey
aspect of it.

It was fun to see fags.

Two out of three Americans

look upon homosexuals with
disgust, discomfort or fear.

A CBS News public opinion
survey indicates

that sentiment is
against permitting

homosexual relationships
between consenting adults

without legal punishment.

The severity of the punishment
varies from state to state.

The homosexual, bitterly aware
of his rejection,

responds by going underground.

They frequent their own clubs
and bars and coffeehouses,

where they can escape the
disapproving eye of the society

that they call "straight."

This is one of
the county's principal

weekend gathering places
for homosexuals,

both male and female.

The scenes were photographed
with telescopic lenses.

It is usually after
the day at the beach

that the real crime occurs.

And it's interesting to note
how many youngsters

we've been seeing
in these films.

There may be some
in this auditorium.

There may be someone here today
that will be homosexual

in the future.

There are a lot of kids here.

There may be some girls
that'll turn lesbian.

We don't know.

But its serious, don't kid
yourselves about it.

They can be anywhere.

They could be judges, lawyers.

We ought to know,
we've arrested all of them.

So if any one of you

have let yourself
become involved

with an adult homosexual
or with another boy,

and you're doing this
on a regular basis,

you better stop quick.

Because one out of three of you
will turn queer.

And if we catch you
involved with a homosexual,

your parents are going to know
about it first.

And you will be caught.

Don't think you won't be caught,

because this is one thing
you cannot get away with.

This is one thing that if you
don't get caught by us,

you'll be caught by yourself.

And the rest of your life
will be a living hell.

I grew up with that.

I grew up in a very
Catholic household.

And the conflict of issues
of redemption, of is it possible

that if you are this thing
called a homosexual,

is it possible to be redeemed?

Is that conceivable?

And that was a very haunting
issue for me.

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.

The Stonewall riots came
at a central point in history.

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.

This is a nation of laws.

These homosexuals glorify
unnatural sex acts.

Every arrest and prosecution is
a step in the education

of the public to the solution
of the problem.

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.

You were alone.

We arrested homosexuals

who committed their lewd acts
in public places.

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.

The men's room was under
police surveillance.

The only faces you will see are
those of the arresting officers.

Anyone can walk into
that men's room,

any child can walk in there

and see what you guys
were doing.

How do you think that would
affect them mentally,

for the rest of their lives,

if they saw an act
like that being...

I realize that, but the thing is

that for life I'll be wrecked
by this record, see?

I mean, I'm only 19.

This'll ruin me.

The federal government
would fire you,

school boards would fire you.

So you couldn't have a license
to practice law,

you couldn't be
a licensed doctor.

You needed a license
even to be a beautician,

and that could be either denied
or taken away from you.

It was an invasion.

I mean, you felt outraged
and stuff like, you know,

"God, this is America,
what's this country come to?"

But you lived with it, you know,
you were used to it.

After the third time it happened

or the third time you heard
about it,

that's the way the world is.

It's like, you know,
people who...

black people got used
to being mistreated

and going to the back
of the bus,

and I guess this was sort of our
going to the back of the bus.

Before Stonewall,

there was no such thing
as coming out or being out.

The very idea of being out,

it was ludicrous.

People talk about being
in and out now...

There was no out,
there was just in.

If you were in a small town
somewhere,

everybody knew you and everybody
knew what you did

and you couldn't have
a relationship

with a member
of your own sex, period.

If you came to a place
like New York,

you at least had the opportunity
of connecting with people

and finding people who didn't
care that you were gay.

In the early '60s,

if you would go near
Port Authority,

there were tons of people
coming in.

And they were gay.

There were all these articles

in, like, Life magazine about
how the Village was liberal

and people that were called
homosexuals went there.

And then there were always
priests ranting in church

about certain places not to go,

so you kind of knew
where you could go

by what you were told not to do.

And I got to the corner
of Sixth Avenue

and Eighth Street,
crossed the street,

and there I had found nirvana.

There was all these drag queens
and these crazy people

and everybody was carrying on.

I made friends that first day.

It was the perfect time to be
in the Village.

The music was great,
cafés were good,

you know, the coffeehouses
were good.

There was one street called
Christopher Street,

where actually I could sit
and talk to other gay people

beyond just having sex.

The open gay people
that hung out on the streets

were basically the
have-nothing-to-lose types,

which I was.

A lot of them had been
thrown out of their families.

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.

You gotta remember,

the Stonewall bar was just down
the street from there.

It was right in the center
of where we all were.

That was our only block.

That was our world, that block.

I mean, I came out in Central
Park and other places.

That wasn't ours,
it was borrowed.

This was ours, here's where the
Stonewall was, here's our Mecca.

I had a column in
the Village Voice

that ran from '66
all the way through '84.

The idea was to be there first.

It was an age of experimentation
in the sexual area,

in psychology, psychiatry.

Almost anything you could name.

Things were just changing.

All the rules were off
in the '60s.

It was tremendous freedom.

It was free, but not quite
free enough for us.

You had no place to try to find
an identity.

And when you got a word,

the word was homosexuality
and you looked it up.

It said the most
dreadful things.

It said nothing
about being a person.

It was as if they were
identifying a thing.

In the '60s I met Craig Rodwell,

who was running
the Oscar Wilde Bookshop.

He brought in gay-positive
materials

and placed that in a setting
that people could come to

and feel comfortable in.

But as visibility increased, the
reactions of people increased.

The shop had been threatened,
we would get hang-up calls,

calls where people would curse
at us on the phone.

We'd had vandalism,
windows broken,

streams of profanity.

You could be beaten, you could
have your head smashed

in a men's room because you were
looking the wrong way.

We could lose our memory
from the beating.

We could be in wheelchairs,
like some were.

Hunted, hunted.

Sometimes we were hunted.

We could easily be hunted.

That was a game.

All throughout the '60s
in New York City,

the period when the
New York World's Fair

was attracting visitors
from all over America

and all over the world,

the mayor of New York City,
the police commissioner

were under pressure
to clean up the streets

of any kind of "weirdness,"

a word that would be used in the
1960s for gay men and lesbians.

They were sexual deviates.

I guess they're deviates.

They were to us.

Ed Koch, who was
a Democratic Party leader

in the Greenwich Village area,

was a specific leader
of the local forces

seeking to clean up the streets.

There were complaints
from people

who objected to the wrongful
behavior of some gays

who would have sex
on the street.

And the Village has a lot
of people with children

and they were offended.

In states like New York, there
were a whole basket of crimes

that gay people
could be charged with.

One was the 1845 statute

that made it a crime in
the state to masquerade.

Are those your own eyelashes?

No.

And Sonia, is
that your own hair?

No.

That's a very lovely dress, too,
that you're wearing, Simone.

Where did you buy it?

Oh, I made it myself.

Ladies and gentlemen, the reason
for using first names only

for these very, very
charming contestants

is that right now each
one of them is breaking the law.

In "drag," the downside was

that you could get arrested,

you could definitely
get arrested,

if someone had... someone
clocked you or someone spooked

that you were not really
what you appeared to be

on the outside.

Three articles of clothing
had to be of your gender

or you would be in violation
of that law.

Mind you, socks didn't count,
so it was underwear

and undershirt.

Now, the next thing was going
to ruin the outfit.

If someone was dressed
as a woman,

you had to have a female
police officer go in with her.

They'd go into the bathroom
or any place that was private,

that they could either feel them
or check them visually.

I remember I was
in a paddy wagon one time

on the way to jail.

We were all locked up together
on a chain in the paddy wagon

and the paddy wagon stopped
for a red light or something

and one of the queens said,
"Oh, this is my stop."

We did use humor to cover pain,
frustration, anger.

Very often, they would put the
cops in dresses with makeup,

and they usually weren't
very convincing.

You see these cops,
like six or eight cops, in drag.

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.

And so there's this drag queen
standing on the corner,

so they go up and make a sexual
offer and they get busted.

The police would zero in on us

because sometimes they would be
in plain clothes,

and sometimes
they would even entrap.

Yes, entrapment did exist,

particularly in the subway
system, in the bathrooms.

The cops would hide behind
the walls of the urinals.

New York City subways, parks,
public bathrooms, you name it.

Naturally you get careless,

you fall for it,
and next thing you know,

you have silver bracelets
on both arms.

You read about Truman Capote
and Tennessee Williams

and Gore Vidal and all these
actors and stuff,

Liberace and all these people
running around

doing all these things,

and then you came to New York
and you found out,

well, maybe they're doing them

but, you know,
us middle-class homosexuals,

we're getting busted
all the time.

Every time we have a place
to go, it gets raided.

Everybody would just freeze
or clam up.

The lights came on,
it's, like, stop dancing.

If that light goes on, you know
to stop whatever you're doing

and separate.

Because that's what
they were looking for,

any excuse to try
to bust the place.

It was always "Hands up!"

"What do you want?

Here are my ID cards."

You knew they were phonies.

And it would take maybe a half-
hour to clear the place out.

At the peak, as many
as 500 people per year

were arrested for
the crime against nature,

and between 3,000 and 5,000
people per year

arrested for various
solicitation

or loitering crimes.

This is every year
in New York City.

Well, it was a nightmare
for the lesbian or gay man

who was arrested and caught up
in this juggernaut,

but it was also a nightmare
for the lesbians and gay men

who lived in the closet.

This produced an enormous
amount of anger

within the lesbian and gay
community in New York City

and in other parts of America.

Gay people were not
powerful enough politically

to prevent the clampdown,

and so you had a series of
escalating skirmishes in 1969.

Eventually something
was bound to blow.

When I was very young,

one of the terms for gay people
was "twilight people,"

meaning that we never came out
until twilight,

till it got dark.

Gay bars were always on
side streets out of the way

in neighborhoods that nobody
would go into.

The windows were always cloaked.

There were gay bars
all over town,

not just in Greenwich Village.

There were gay bars in midtown,
there were gay bars uptown,

there were certain kinds of gay
bars on the Upper East Side...

You know, really, really, really
buttoned-up straight gay bars.

There was at least
one gay bar that was run

just as a hustler bar
for straight gay married men.

The New York State
liquor authority had a rule

that one known homosexual
in a licensed premise

made the place disorderly,

so nobody would set up a place
where we could meet because

they were afraid that the cops
would come in and close it.

And that's how the Mafia got
into the gay bar business.

The mob raised its hand
and said,

"Oh, we'll volunteer."

You know, "We'll set up
some gay bars

and serve overpriced, watered-
down drinks to you guys."

And the Stonewall was part
of that system.

The Mafia owned the jukeboxes,

they owned the cigarette
machines,

and most of the liquor was
off of truck hijacking.

It was a hundred percent profit.

I mean, they were stealing
the liquor,

then watering it down and
then charging twice as much

as they charged one door away
at the 55.

The Stonewall, they didn't have
a liquor license

and they were raided
by the cops regularly

and there were payoffs
to the cops; it was awful.

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?"

But I had only stuck my head
in once at the Stonewall.

It was a down-at-the-heels
kind of place.

It was a lot of street kids
and things like that.

It was not a place that,
in my life, me and my friends,

paid much attention to.

We knew it was a gay bar,
we walked past it.

It meant nothing to us.

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.

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.

I never bought a drink
at the Stonewall.

Never, never, never.

Mafia house beer?

I mean, does anyone know
what that is?

The bar itself was a toilet.

But it was a refuge.

It was a temporary refuge
from the street.

The Stonewall pulled in everyone
from every part of gay life.

Everyone from the street kids
who were white

and black kids from the South.

All kinds of designers, boxers.

Big museum people.

A medievalist.

First you gotta get past
the door.

There's a little door
that slides open

with this power-hungry nut
behind it,

that you see this much
of his eyes,

he sees that much of your face,

and then he decides whether
you're going to get in.

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.

And then as you turned into
the other room with the jukebox,

those were the drag queens
around the jukebox.

Mary, Queen of the Scotch.

Congo Woman, Captain Faggot,
Miss Twiggy.

What was so good
about the Stonewall

was that you could dance
slow there.

Because we could feel a sense
of love for each other

that we couldn't show
out on the street.

Because you couldn't show
any affection out on the street.

It was a chance to find love,
you know?

I had never seen
anything like that.

I never saw so many gay people
dancing in my life.

And I said to myself, "Oh,
my God, this will not last."

Heterosexuals, legally,
had lots of sexual outlets.

They call them hotels, motels,
lovers' lanes,

drive-in movie theaters, etc.

Gay people were told we didn't
have any of that

and we had no right to such.

Except for the few
mob-owned bars

that allowed some socializing,

it was basically verboten.

And so we had to create these
spaces, mostly in the trucks.

And these were meat trucks
that in daytime

were used by the meat industry
for moving dead produce,

and they really reeked.

But at nighttime, that's where
people went to have sex,

you know, and there would be
hundreds and hundreds of men

having sex together
in these trucks.

I heard about the trucks,

which, to me,
just fascinated me.

You know, in the imagination,

I'd think it was
like Marseilles.

How could it be only
a few blocks away?

But we went down to the trucks
and there people would have sex

in the trucks
or around the trucks.

And it just seems,
like, fantastic

because the background
was this industrial...

becoming an industrial ruin.

It was a masculine setting.

It was a whole world.

I'd go in there and I would look

and I would just cringe
because, you know,

people would start touching me,
and, hello,

what are you doing there
if you don't want to be touched?

But I was just curious.

I didn't want to participate

because, number one,
it was so packed.

I mean, I'm talking
like sardines.

It was definitely dark,

it was definitely smelly
and raunchy and dirty,

and that's the only places
that we had to meet each other

was in the very dirty,
despicable places.

And there, we weren't allowed
to be alone,

the police would raid us still.

So, you're outside,

and you see, like, two people
walking toward these trucks

and you think,
"Oh, I think I'll go in there."

You go in there and there's,
like, a lot of people in there,

and it's all dark.

Then the cops come up

and make what used to be called
the bubble gum machine.

Back then a cop car only had
one light on the top

that spun around.

The term like "authority
figures" wasn't used back then.

There was just "Lily Law,"
"Patty Pig," "Betty Badge."

It was done in our
little street talk.

The police would come by
two or three times a night.

They would bang on the trucks.

We'd say, "Here comes Lillian."

We would scatter... ka-poom...
every which way.

I was chased down the street

with billy clubs.

One time a bunch of us
ran into somebody's car

and locked the door and
they smashed the windows in.

That was scary, very scary.

Whenever you'd see the cops,
you'd run away from them.

Absolutely.

And many people who were
not lucky felt the cops.

They would not always
just arrest,

they would many times
use clubs and beat.

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.

The Mattachine Society was the
first gay rights organization,

and they literally met in a
space with the blinds drawn.

They were afraid that
the FBI was following them.

Mattachino in Italy
were court jesters,

the only people
in the whole kingdom

who could speak truth
to the king

because they did it
with a smile.

As president of the Mattachine
Society in New York,

I tried to negotiate with
the police and the mayor.

Finally, Mayor Lindsay
listened to us

and he announced there would be
no more police entrapment

in New York City.

We are homosexual human beings

and homosexual American
citizens.

We participated
in demonstrations

in Philadelphia
at Independence Hall.

A few of us would get dressed up
in skirts and blouses

and the guys would all have
to wear suits and ties.

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.

Our human dignity.

Our equality and our acceptance
as the homosexual...

We wore suits and ties because
we wanted people, in the public,

who were wearing suits and ties,
to identify with us.

We didn't want to come on
wearing, you know,

fuzzy sweaters and lipstick,
you know, and being freaks.

We wanted to be part
of the mainstream society.

Richard Enman, president of the
Mattachine Society of Florida,

whose goal is to legalize
homosexuality

between consenting adults
was a reluctant participant

in tonight's program.

Present laws give
the adult homosexual

only the choice of being,
to simplify the matter,

heterosexual and legal
or homosexual and illegal.

This, to a homosexual,
is no choice at all.

What type of laws are you after?

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.

Homosexuals do not want that.

You might find some fringe
character someplace

who says that
that's what he wants.

Are you a homosexual?

Ye... well, that's yes and no.

I was a homosexual.

I first engaged in such acts
when I was 14 years old.

I was never seduced by an older
person or anything like that.

But I gave it up about,
oh, I forget, some years ago,

over four years ago.

It's not my cup of tea.

They wanted to fit into American
society the way it was.

And I had become very
radicalized in that time.

There was the hippie movement,
there was the Summer of Love,

Martin Luther King, and all
of these affected me terribly.

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."

And deep down I believed
because I was gay

and couldn't speak out
for my rights,

was probably one of the reasons

that I was so active
in the civil rights movement.

It was a way to vent my anger
at being repressed.

What we felt in isolation

was a growing sense of outrage
and fury

particularly because
we looked around

and saw so many avenues
of rebellion.

U.S. out of Vietnam!

We had thought
of women's rights,

we had thought of black rights...

We thought of 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.

The election was
in November of 1969,

and this was the summer of 1969,
this was June.

Mayor John Lindsay, like most
mayors, wanted to get reelected.

And the police escalated
their crackdown on bars

because of the reelection
campaign.

All of straight America,
in terms of the middle class,

was recoiling in horror
from what was happening

all around them at that time,
in that summer

and the summer before.

The Chicago riots, the Human
Be-in, the dope smoking,

the hippies.

All of this stuff was
just erupting,

as far as they were concerned,

like a gigantic boil
on the butt of America.

Who was gonna complain about
a crackdown against gay people?

Nobody.

Not even us.

They had increased their raids
of the trucks.

They raided the Checkerboard,

which was a very
popular gay bar,

a week before the Stonewall.

There was also vigilantism.

People were using walkie-talkies
to coordinate attacks

on gay men.

So, gay people were being
strangled, shot,

thrown in the river,
blackmailed, fired from jobs.

It was a horror story.

I had just turned 18

on June 27, 1969.

And I was celebrating my
birthday at the Stonewall.

The beginning of our night out
started early.

When we got dressed
for that night,

we had cocktails and we put
the makeup on.

I was wearing my mother's black
and white cocktail dress

that was empire waisted.

I didn't think I could have been
any prettier than that night.

I told the person
at the door, I said,

"I'm 18 tonight."

And he said to me,
"You little SOB."

He said, "You could have got us
in a lot of trouble,

you could have got us
closed up."

Well, little did he know

that what was going to happen
later on was to make history.

I remember it being a clear
evening with a big black sky

and the biggest white moon
I ever saw.

It was incredibly hot.

You throw into that
that the Stonewall was raided

the previous Tuesday night.

So it was a perfect storm
for the police.

They didn't know what they were
walking into.

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.

This was a highly unusual raid,

going in there in the middle
of the night with a full crowd,

the Mafia hasn't been alerted,

the Sixth Precinct
hasn't been alerted.

We only had about six people
altogether

from the police department,
knowing that you had

a precinct right nearby
that would send assistance.

We were in the back of the room
and the lights went on.

So everybody stopped
what they were doing

because now the police started
coming in, raiding the bar.

They pushed everybody
like to the back room

and slowly asking for IDs.

Meanwhile, there was a crowd
forming outside the Stonewall

wanting to know
what was going on.

We were talking about
the revolution happening,

and we were walking
up Seventh Avenue

and we were thinking it was
either Black Panthers

or the Young Lords were going
to start it.

And we turned the corner
from Seventh Avenue

onto Christopher Street

and we saw the paddy wagon
pull up there.

And some people came out,
being very dramatic,

throwing their arms up in a V,
you know, the victory sign.

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.

So I run down there.

And as I'm looking around

to see what's going on,
police cars,

different things happening,

it's getting bigger
by the minute.

And the people coming out

weren't going along with it
so easily.

A rather tough lesbian
was busted in the bar.

And when she came out of the bar
she was fighting the cops

and was trying to get away.

And the harder she fought,

the more the cops
were beating her up

and the madder the crowd got.

And I ran into Howard Smith
on the street.

The Village Voice was
right there.

And Howard said, "Boy, there's
a riot gonna happen here,"

and I said yeah, and the police
were showing up.

And so Howard said, "We've got
police press passes upstairs."

You know, Howard's concern was,
and my concern was,

if all hell broke loose
they'd just start busting heads.

At least if you had press, maybe
your head wouldn't get busted.

Things started off small,

but there was an energy that
began to flow through the crowd.

Pigs! Pigs! Pigs!

People were screaming
"pig," "copper."

People started throwing pennies.

And then everybody started to
throw pennies like, you know,

this is what they were,
they were nothing but copper...

You know, coppers,
that's what they were worth.

So it was mostly goofing really,
basically goofing on them.

Getting them in the car,
rocking them back and forth.

Calling 'em names, telling 'em
how good looking they were,

grabbing their butts.

Doing things like that.

Just making their lives
miserable for once.

At a certain point it felt
pretty dangerous to me,

but I noticed that the cop
that seemed in charge,

he said, "You know what, we have
to go inside for safety.

"Your choice...
You can come in with us

"or you could stay out here
with the crowd

and report your stuff
from out here."

I said, "I can go in with you?"

He said, "Okay, let's go."

He pulls all his men inside.

It's the first time
I'm fully inside the Stonewall.

So then I got pushed back in,
into the Stonewall

by these plainclothes cops,
and they would not let me out.

They didn't let anybody out.

They were just holding us almost
like in a hostage situation

where you don't know what's
going to happen next.

But there were little, tiny pin
holes in the plywood windows...

I'll call them the windows,
but they were plywood...

And we could look out
from there.

And every time I went over
and looked out

through one of the pin holes
where he did,

we were shocked at how big
the crowd had become.

They were getting
more ferocious.

Things were being thrown
against the plywood.

We piled things up to try
to buttress it.

Someone at this point

had apparently gone down
to the cigar stand on the corner

and got lighter fluid.

And then somebody
started a fire.

They started with little
lighters and matches.

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.

Well, we did use the small hoses
on the fire extinguishers.

But we couldn't hold out
very long.

I was very anti-police,

had many years already
of activism

against the forces
of law and order.

This was the first time
I could actually sense...

not only see them fearful,
I could sense them fearful.

There was joy

because the cops weren't
winning.

The cops were barricaded inside.

We were winning.

I was with a group that we
actually took a parking meter

out of the ground,
three or four people,

and we used it
as a battering ram.

Oh, Miss New Orleans,
she wouldn't be stopped.

And she was quite crazy.

And when she grabbed that,

everybody knew she couldn't
do it alone,

so all the other queens...

Congo Woman, queens like that...

Started and they were hitting
that door.

I mean they were making
some headway.

Bam, bam, and bash, and then
an opening, and then "Whoa!"

We had maybe six people

and by this time there were
several thousand outside.

You could hear screaming
outside.

A lot of noise
from the protesters,

and it was a good sound.

It was a real good sound to know

that you had a lot of people
out there pulling for you.

I did try to get out of the bar

and I thought that there
might be a way out

through one of the bathrooms.

Somebody grabbed me by the leg

and told me
I wasn't going anywhere.

The moment you stepped out
that door,

there would be hundreds
facing you.

It was terrifying.

It was as bad as any situation

that I had met in...
during the army,

had just as much to worry about.

Our goal was to hurt
those police.

I wanted to kill those cops
for the anger I had in me.

And the cops got that.

And they were lucky
that door was closed.

They were very lucky.

'Cause I was from the streets.

And I keep listening and
listening and listening,

hoping I'm gonna hear sirens
any minute.

And I was very freaked.

Because if they weren't
there fast,

I was worried that there

was something going on
that I didn't know about

and they weren't gonna come.

Our radio was cut off every time
we got on the police radio.

That never happened before.

So at that point the
police are extremely nervous.

And a couple of 'em had
pulled out their guns.

I actually thought,
as all of them did,

that we were going to be killed.

And if enough people
broke through,

they would be killed
and I would be killed.

They'd think I'm a cop

even though I had
a big Jew-fro haircut

and a big handlebar mustache
at the time.

But I'm wearing
this police thing.

I'm thinking, "Well,
if they break through,

I better take it off
really quickly."

But they're gonna come this way

and we're gonna be backing up
and who knows what'll happen.

We told this to our men:

"Don't fire."

"Don't fire until I fire."

And he went to each man
and said it by name.

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.

Do you understand me?"

Well, I had to act
that I wasn't nervous...

that this was normal stuff.

But everybody knew it wasn't
normal stuff

and everyone was on edge

and that was
the worst part of it,

because you knew
they were on edge

and you knew that
the first shot that was fired

meant all the shots
would be fired.

It was getting worse and worse.

People standing on cars,
standing on garbage cans,

screaming, yelling.

The ones that came close,

you could see
their faces in rage.

We were looking
for secret exits,

and one of the policewomen
was able

to squirm through the window,
and they did find a way out.

All of a sudden,

in the background I heard
some police cars.

And we all relaxed.

We heard one,
then more and more.

So the cops came with all
these buses, like five buses,

and they all were full
of tactical police force.

And they wore dark police
uniforms and riot helmets

and they had billy clubs and
they had big plastic shields,

like Roman army, and they
actually formed a phalanx.

And just marched down
Christopher Street

and kind of pushed us
in front of them.

So, finally when they started
taking me out,

arm in arm
up to the paddy wagon,

I jumped up and I put one foot
on one side,

one foot on the other
and I sprung back,

knocking the two
arresting officers,

knocking them to the ground.

And a whole bunch of people who
were in the paddy wagon ran out.

All of a sudden,

Miss New Orleans and
all the people around her

started marching step by step,

and the police started
moving back.

That's what gave oxygen
to the fire.

Because as the police
moved back,

we were conscious, all of us,

of the area we were controlling.

And now we were
in control of the area

because we were... surrounded
the bar, we were moving in,

they were moving back.

And by the time the police would
come back towards Stonewall,

that crowd had gone all the way
around Washington Place,

come all the way back around,

and were back pushing in on them
from the other direction.

And the police would wonder,

"These are the same people
or different people?"

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.

And the blocks were small enough

that we could run around the
block and come in behind them

before they got
to the next corner.

And this went on for hours.

We were like a hydra.

You'd cut one head off,

for the first time
the next person stood up.

All of a sudden the police
faced something

they had never seen before.

Gay people were never supposed
to be threats

to police officers.

They were supposed to be
weak men, limp-wristed,

not able to do anything.

And here they were lifting
things up and fighting them

and attacking them
and beating them.

I remember moving
into the open space

and grabbing on
to two of my friends

and we started singing
and doing a kick line.

And we were singing

♪ We are the Village girls ♪

♪ We wear our hair in curls ♪

♪ We wear our dungarees
above our Nellie knees. ♪

This was in front of the police.

I mean, the riot squad
was used to riots.

They were not used
to a bunch of drag queens

doing a Rockettes kick line

and sort of like giving them
all the finger in a way.

And the cops just charged them.

And they started smashing
their heads with clubs.

And then more police came.

And it didn't stop;
windows were starting to break.

And all of a sudden
pandemonium broke loose.

What they did in
the Stonewall that night...

I went in there
and they took bats

and just busted that place up.

The mirrors,
all the bottles of liquor,

the jukebox,
the cigarette machines.

There were mesh garbage cans
being lit up on fire

and being thrown at the police.

Tires were slashed
on police cars,

and it just went on
all night long.

Cops got hurt.

It must have been terrifying
for them.

I hope it was.

It gives back a little of the
terror they gave in my life.

Those of us that were
the street kids,

we didn't think much
about the past or the future.

We were thinking about survival.

So anything that would
set us off,

we would go into action.

And it's that hairpin
trigger thing

that makes the riot happen.

The police weren't
letting us dance.

If there's one place
in the world where you can dance

and feel yourself fully
as a person,

and that's threatened
with being taken away,

those words are fighting words.

The day after the first riot,

when it was all over,
and I remember sitting...

The sun was soon to come...
And I was sitting on the stoop,

and I was exhausted,
and I looked at that street.

It was dark enough
to allow the street lamps

to pick up the glitter
of all the broken glass,

and all the debris, and all
the different colored cloth

that was in different places,
as if an artist had arranged it.

It was beautiful.

It was like mica.

It was like the streets
we fought on

were strewn with diamonds.

It was like a reward.

I really thought that,
you know, "We did it.

But we're going to pay
dearly for this."

When it was clear that things
were definitely over

for the evening,

we decided we needed to do
something more.

We knew that this was a moment

that we didn't want
to let slip past,

because it was something
that we could use

to bring more of the groups
together.

Leaflets, in the '60s,
were like the Internet today.

That night, we printed a box...
We had 5,000.

It was a leaflet that attacked
the relationship

of the police and the Mafia
and the bars

that we needed to see ended.

I was afraid

it was over.

And there was like
this tension in the air

and it just like
built and built.

Saturday night, there it was.

The Stonewall had reopened.

The mob was saying, you know,
"Screw you, cops.

"You think you can come in
and bust us up?

"We'll put new liquor in there,
we'll put a new mirror up,

we'll get a new jukebox."

And gay people were standing
around outside

and the mood on the street was,

"They think that they could
disperse us last night

"and keep us from doing
what we want to do,

"being on the street saying
'I'm gay and I'm proud, '

just let's see if they can."

People in the neighborhood,

the most unlikely people were
starting to support it.

My father said,
"About time you fags rioted."

Gay people who had good jobs,

who had everything in life
to lose,

were starting to join in.

Even non-gay people.

There were Black Panthers and
there were anti-war people.

There were these two black,
like, banjee guys,

and they were saying,
"What's going on, man?"

And then someone said,

"They're still fighting
the police, let's go,"

and they went in.

The tactical patrol force
on the second night

came in even larger numbers
and were much more brutal.

There were occasions when you
did see people get nightsticked,

or disappear into
a group of police

and, you know, everybody knew
that was not going to have

a good end.

You know, they went
for the head wounds.

It wasn't just the back wounds
and the leg wounds.

And that's when you
started seeing, like,

bodies laying on the sidewalk,
people bleeding from the head.

They started busting
cans of tear gas.

And there was tear gas
on Saturday night,

right in front of the Stonewall.

There was more anger and more
fight the second night.

There was no going back now.

There was no going back.

There was no...
we had discovered a power

that we weren't even aware
that we had.

And then the next night.

I mean, it didn't stop
after that.

Once it started, once that genie
was out of the bottle,

it was never going
to go back in.

Gay power! Gay power!

It really should have been
called "Stonewall uprising."

They really were objecting to
how they were being treated.

That's more an uprising
than a riot.

As much as I don't
like to say it,

there's a place for violence.

Because if you don't
have extremes,

you don't get any moderation.

And as awful as people
might think that sounds,

it's the way history
has always worked.

I don't know if you remember
the Joan Baez song,

"It isn't nice to block
the doorway,

"it isn't nice to go to jail.

There are nicer ways to do it
but the nice ways always fail."

For the first time we weren't
letting ourselves

be carted off to jails.

Gay people were actually
fighting back

just the way people in
the peace movement fought back.

It was thrilling.

It was the only time I was
in a gladiatorial sport

that I stood up in.

I was proud... I was a man.

- The New York Times
- I guess printed a story,

but it wasn't a major story.

I mean, you got a major incident
going on down there

and I didn't see any TV cameras
at all.

If there had been a riot
of that proportion in Harlem,

my God, you know, there'd have
been cameras everywhere.

Well, I famously used
the word "fag."

In the lead sentence I said
"the forces of faggotry."

And the first gay power
demonstration, to my knowledge,

was against my story in the
Village Voice on Wednesday.

They put some people
on the street

right in front of
the Village Voice protesting

the use of the word "fag"
in my story.

And, you know, the Village Voice
at that point

started using the word "gay."

The press did refer to it
in very pejorative terms,

as a night that the drag queens
fought back.

It was nonsense,
it was nonsense.

It was all the people there
that were reacting and opposing

what was occurring.

We became a people.

We didn't necessarily know
where we were going yet...

You know, what organizations
we were going to be

or how things would go,

but we became something I,
as a person,

could all of a sudden grab onto
that I couldn't grab onto

when I'd go to a subway
T-room as a kid,

or a 42nd Street
movie theater, you know,

or being picked up
by some dirty old man.

You know, all of a sudden,
I had brothers and sisters,

you know, which I didn't
have before.

The riot could have been buried.

It could have been a few days
in the local newspaper

and that was that.

But we had to follow up.

We couldn't just let that be
a blip that disappeared.

And I hadn't had enough sleep,

so I was in a somewhat feverish
state, and I thought,

"We have to do something,
we have to do something."

And I thought, "We have to have
a protest march of our own."

And they were having
a meeting at Town Hall

and there were 400 guys
who showed up,

and I think a couple of women,
talking about these riots,

because everybody was really
energized and upset

and angry about it.

And I raised my hand
at one point and said,

"Let's have a protest march."

And Dick Leitsch, who was the
head of the Mattachine Society,

said, "Who's in favor?"

And I didn't see anything
but a forest of hands.

The effect of the Stonewall riot

was to change the direction
of the gay movement.

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.

In those days, the idea
of walking in daylight,

with a sign saying
"I'm a faggot"

was horren... nobody, nobody
was ready to do that.

So I got into the subway,

and on the car was somebody
I recognized,

and he said, "I've never been
so scared in my life."

I said, "Well, please let there
be more than ten of us.

Just please let there be
more than ten of us."

Because it's 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.

We had no idea we were gonna
finish the march.

We had no speakers planned
for the rally in Central Park,

where we had hoped to get to.

We didn't expect we'd ever get
to Central Park.

We assembled on Christopher
Street at Sixth Avenue to march.

And we were about a hundred,
120 people,

and there were people lining
the sidewalks ahead of us

to watch us go by...
Gay people, mainly.

And we were going fast.

People that were involved
in it like me

referred to it as the first run.

We had been threatened
bomb threats.

You know, people could take
shots at us.

We were scared.

But as we were going up
Sixth Avenue, it kept growing.

And I looked back

and there were about
2,000 people behind us,

and that's when I knew
it had happened.

I say I cannot tell this
without tearing up.

And Peter and I walked the rest
of the whole thing

with tears running down
our face.

But that's when we knew.

We were ourselves
for the first time.

A people united
will never be defeated!

A people united
will never be defeated!

America thought

we were
these homosexual monsters

and we were so innocent,
and oddly enough,

we were so American.

It's very American to say,

"This is not right."

It's very American to say,

"You promised equality,
you promised freedom."

And, in a sense,
the Stonewall riots said,

"Get off our backs.

Deliver on the promise."

So, in every Gay Pride parade
every year, Stonewall lives.

It was another
great step forward

in the story of human rights,
that's what it was.

And it was those loudest people,

the most vulnerable,
the most likely to be arrested,

were the ones that were doing
the real fighting.

They were the storm troopers.

And they were... they were kids.

You knew you could ruin them
for life.

And you felt bad
that you were part of this,

when you knew
they broke the law,

but what kind of law was that?

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Someone needs to stop Clearway Law.
Public shouldn't leave reviews for lawyers.