@Gay-MART Biography

Gay-MART Biography

The Patrons Of Stonewall

In New York City, just after midnight on June 27/28, 1969, a police inspector and seven other officers from the Public Morals Section of the First Division of the New York City Police Department raided The Stonewall Inn, a notorious gay bar on Christopher Street in Greenwich Village. They served a warrant charging that alcohol was being sold without a licence, and started arresting employees. What started out as a routine raid on one of the cities popular gay nightspots became a confrontation between the police and the lesbigay community that saw rioting for days. It was the dawn of the gay liberation movement.

On that summer night in June, as the police started removing patrons, a crowd began to form outside the Stonewall Inn. The numbers swelled as people strolling by lingered to watch. The crowd remained passive until the paddy wagons started arriving. A woman in male drag began to struggle and protest, and her actions ignited a fuse that fired the crowd into action. People started throwing bottles and cobblestones at the police, some of whom sought refuge inside the bar, while other officers turned a firehouse on the crowd with the hope of dispersing it. More police arrived and the street was eventually cleared, but the story quickly spread through the gay community and there was more rioting over the next couple of nights. Defiant, angry, and vocal, New York's gay community stood up once and for all and said no more. We've never looked back.

As we all celebrate Pride around the world, it's worth looking back and remembering that June night in 1969. Gay people in the 50's, 60's, and 70's lived a clandestine lifestyle, frequenting mafia owned bars, parks and public washrooms hoping to connect with other gay people. Same sex love was illegal, and until 1969 was considered an illness. Most of us were closeted, lived in terror of people finding out, and prayed we wouldn't be exposed publicly and find ourselves unemployed and alienated. The brave few who started the Stonewall riots stood up in Pride and changed the world.

To really get a feel for what happened at Stonewall, you have to listen to the testimony of people who were there. There are a few veterans left from the early days of our struggle, and they have a voice that still reflects the enormity of what happened that night. In September 1998, Andrew Thomas, conductor of the Honolulu Men's Chorus and the Honolulu Women's Chorus, wrote members of Stonewall Veterans' Organization, saying he proposed writing a composition, "The Story of Pride," and asking for some individuals' reminiscences. Here are a few of them.

Cartoonist Howard Cruse:
"I was there only on Friday night (27 June 1969), when I would characterize the crowd as of moderate size but very agitated. I can't comment on Christopher Street activities on the following nights, but I knew something important was going on because of all the Gay Pride and Gay Power fliers that appeared immediately throughout the Village."

Danny Garvin:
"The second night (Saturday, June 28th) a lot of people did not know about the raid the night before. So a larger crowd was there. We decided to liberate the bar and reopen it so we could dance. I really don't think any of us thought that this was the start of the gay rights movement. Someone got a parking meter and smashed open the bar doors. More cops were called in. The riot started again and garbage cans were set on fire, Molotov cocktails were thrown, and it was like a war zone! The thing was that because of the night before we as gay people discovered that we would stand up and fight together, something we never knew before. We were so fragmented when it came to our own rights."

"One myth that seems to have grown about the riot was that drag queens started it. That's not true. There were what we called a lot of Flame Queens there. A Flame Queen wore hip huggers, Tom Jones shirts, and maybe eye make-up. They would tease up their hair and were very effeminate, like Emory in "Boys in the Band." Most young people's clothes at the time had become pretty asexual. You could not be in full drag at the time. You had to have three (3) articles of men's clothing on or you would be arrested for impersonating a woman. Most people were into dressing the new style, unisex. You will find that most of the Vets that are still alive will agree with me on this."

Ironically, the Stonewall drag queens were listed at number 44 in the top 500 lesbian and gay heroes in The Pink Paper in September, 1997. Another famous story is that someone had jumped out the second story window of the police station and impaled himself upon a wrought iron fence spike. Garvin remembers it like this:

"As for your question about a person who was impaled on the fence: that was a year later, not at Stonewall. A raid took place at a bar called the Snakepit on 10th Street, an after-hours bar. The young man was an illegal alien, scared that he would be deported, so he jumped out of the second story window of the Police Station on Charles Street. He landed on the iron fence which had spikes. They got him off with a blow torch and took him to St. Vincent's Hospital. He did not die and was not deported."

Another patron, Stephen van Cline remembers:
"The riots kept recurring throughout the weekend of June 27th, and that is normally interpreted as Friday (27th), Saturday (28th), and Sunday (29th) nights, each night lapsing into the early morning hours. The first night was probably the most dramatic and the most meaningful to me, because that was the night I was directly involved. My lover and I were stunned and thrilled to see our own kind talking back, berating the cops, and throwing pennies. After seeing the gratuitous bloody beatings in front of us and being called names, we began throwing bricks and cobblestones at the bar, which suddenly became the symbol of our oppression. The second night, Saturday, which we observed from the relative safety of the Rivera Café, was more violent and chaotic with more people, including outsider agitators. The third night was reported to be less violent. I got up early Monday morning (June 30th) in my apartment, a few blocks away on 15th Street, to the sound of heavy rain. I returned to my other art gallery in the country and the rain continued through Tuesday (July 1st). Many say the rain kept people from returning to riot. It is my opinion that we were going about getting the week rolling and involved in endless discussions of the meaning of what had happened. We did not get angry again until word got around and the newspaper reports about the riots had widely circulated. Quite a few people returned on Wednesday (July 2nd). My only direct experience with activities that night was seeing bloodied people lying on the 7th Ave. sidewalk and against the buildings around the corner form the bar. There was action on Thursday night (July 3rd). The riots occurred in the midst of a chaotic era in which people were examining their lives, searching for dignity as individuals, and demanding their rights. My lover and I had opened Portfolio Gallery on 10th Street in the next block directly behind the Stonewall two months before the riots. It was our first experience of a gay community and became a kind of gay center where news and gossip was shared. In that gallery I designed and published the first Gay Rainbow as limited edition prints, posters and very daring greetings cards with the inside caption "Gay is Good." (We also had blank rainbow cards on top of the counter for the straight customers.) A month after the riots there was a rally in Washington square and we marched over to Sheridan Square for more speeches. Technically, this was the first gay march. Gay human rights was a need whose time had come. We were weary and angry about the constant fear and harassment we had suffered for many years."

After the Stonewall riots, the gay community adopted a different attitude. No longer were we ashamed to be gay. The time had come to stand up and be proud, to fight back against prejudice and harassment. We all started coming together as a community and thirty years later, during Pride, 1999, we can reflect and appreciate how far our community has come in respect to acceptance and basic human rights. Another patron, Edmund White sums up the post Stonewall attitude quite well:

"It was one of the few historical dates I can think of that had tremendous repercussions on people's intimate lives. For example, before Stonewall I went to a straight shrink and I wanted to be straight, but after Stonewall I went to a gay shrink to learn how to be a "good gay." There are so many people who can look back at that one event and say that it really changed their lives and for the better. So many days with political meanings have had ghastly consequences, like Bastille Day for instance. But Stonewall can only be seen as a positive experience."

As we enter the new millennium, there will be different struggles for our community. The Stonewall riots showed the world what we were truly made of. With the strength, courage and tenacity that was demonstrated in June, 1969, and later during these days of AIDS, we can rise to even greater heights as a community.

And we'll do it together, as always, with Pride.

Find out about the author of this biography by viewing Derek M's biography page.