Seeing as June is just around the corner and it’s traditionally the month when the annual ‘Gay Pride’ marches and festivals are held, I thought I’d share an article I did about the historical origins of the ‘Gay Pride’ movement. It’s not that long ago that being gay was a criminal offence! Click below to read the article as it appeared in magazine format or keep scrolling for a text only version.
The Stonewall Riots – Text only version:
America in the 1950’s & 60’s saw Gay men being treated with the same suspicion and contempt as communists. There was a genuine fear that any gay man in government could be compromised and blackmailed if the enemy were to discover their secret. Gay men were just un-American.
A senate enquiry resulted in the belief that “those who engage in overt acts of perversion lack the emotional stability of other persons.” It was believed that homosexuality was a disorder, the root cause of this being a phobia of women caused by childhood trauma.
This drove the gay social scene underground. There were a number of dive bars that catered to gay clientele – most of them unlicensed and mafia owned. It was thought that the mafia made far more through the blackmail of clients than through alcohol sales. The level of attention that the police paid to these bars ebbed and flowed with the political tides.
The Stonewall Inn, in Greenwich Village, NY was owned by the Genovese crime family. It had the distinction of being the only gay-friendly club that allowed dancing, although in every other aspect it was a dive. The toilets were grim and there was no running water behind the bar – glasses were generally swilled out in a bucket between uses and the booze was watered down. However, the owners paid their weekly bribes to the local police and were generally tipped off before any raids.
When the police raided a gay club they would filter through the clients and check ID cards. Any who refused to show ID, or that were deemed to be overly effeminate or cross-dressed would be arrested, photographed and exposed in the newspapers. There was a rule that women had to wear at least three pieces of ‘feminine clothing’ or they too faced arrest.
The owners of the Stonewall Inn had received a tip-off about a raid scheduled for 28th June 1969, but as the clock passed midnight it was assumed the tip off was wrong – raids were usually conducted far earlier. The occupants of the bar continued to party until 1-2am when the police announced themselves – but the raid didn’t go according to plan.
There were over 200 people in the bar that night. The police technique was to line patrons up and check their ID. Some were familiar with the routine for a raid but others were confused and tried to run for it.
Any female patrons would be taken aside by female police officers to have their gender confirmed. If they were found to be male they were arrested. One such patron, Maria Ritter, recalled “My biggest fear was that I would get arrested. My second biggest fear was that my picture would be in a newspaper or on a television report in my mother’s dress!”
But that night in the Stonewall something changed. The men refused to produce their ID. The women refused to be ‘checked’. The tension on the night grew after allegations of inappropriate touching by police officers that had man-handled some lesbian customers. The police decided that they would arrest all non-compliant patrons. While they waited for backup they began to load the club’s booze into the patrol wagons. Usually, the patrons that had avoided arrest would count their blessings and fade away into the night – but on this night they lingered outside. Within a few minutes there were more than 100 people outside and the commotion was drawing even more attention. Some of the patrons that had been released from Stonewall began to “camp it up” outside. They began posing, flirting and taunting the police which drew applause from the crowd – as the applause grew louder the performances grew even more outlandish.
Michael Fader is quoted as saying, “We all had a collective feeling like we’d had enough of this kind of shit. It wasn’t anything tangible anybody said to anybody else, it was kind of like everything over the years had come to a head on that one particular night in the one particular place, and it was not an organised demonstration. Everyone in the crowd felt that we were never going to go back. It was like the last straw. It was time to reclaim something that had always been taken from us … We weren’t going to be walking around meekly in the night and letting them shove us around – it’s like standing your ground for the first time and in a really strong way, and that’s what caught the police by surprise. There was something in the air, freedom a long time overdue, and we’re going to fight for it.”
A newsletter from the Mattachine Society tried to explain the motivation for the riot when it described the Stonewall, “It catered largely to a group of people who are not welcome in, or can’t afford, other places of homosexual social gathering … The Stonewall became home to these kids. When it was raided, they fought for it. That, and the fact that they had nothing to lose other than the most tolerant and broadminded gay place in town, explains why.”
By the time that the first back up wagon had arrived, the crowd had swollen to multiple hundreds. When a transvestite was shoved by a police man she promptly spun and hit him over the head with her purse. Witnesses state that the ultimate catalyst for the riot involved a “New York Butch” lesbian. Despite being handcuffed, she had repeatedly escaped and kept fighting her four captors. When she was finally hit with a truncheon she is said to have asked the watching crowd, “Why don’t you guys do something?” This action drew an angry response from the watching crowds.
As the levels of violence and protest increased it was suggested that the reason for the raid was because police had not received their weekly pay-off. The crowd started to pelt the police with thrown coins. This was followed by bottles and anything else that was to hand. When the police retreated back inside the Stonewall, the crowd started to light rubbish from the trash cans and toss it through the windows of the bar. The police inside must have been horrified when they realised that the fire hoses inside were not connected to any running water.
But before any serious damage could be done, back up arrived in the form of the (TPF) Tactical Police Force. Their first task was to free their trapped colleagues; their second was to exact retribution. One passer-by described the scene “I had been in enough riots to know the fun was over. The cops were totally humiliated. This never, ever happened. They were angrier than I guess they had ever been, because everybody else had rioted … but the fairies were not meant to riot … no group had ever forced the cops to retreat before, so the anger was enormous.”
The TPF grabbed whoever they could and led them towards the wagons. Their commander, Inspector Pine recalled, “Fights erupted with the transvestites, who wouldn’t go into the patrol wagon.” Others there confirmed this account, that wherever there was fighting, there was a transvestite in the thick of it.
The TPF then set about trying to control the situation and subdue the rioters. They formed a shield wall and started to march, hoping to push the crowds back. But rather than being intimidated, the reaction of the crowd was quite bizarre.
I wonder what the TPF must have thought when the rioters facing them began to link arms. Whatever they might have expected, I am confident they were shocked when the rioters began to sway from side to side in a chorus-girl-style kick-line while singing ‘Ta-ra-ra Boom-de-ay!”
As the crowd cheered, the kicks flew higher and voices rang out, “We are the Stonewall girls – we wear our hair in curls – we don’t have underwear – we show our pubic hair.”
A bystander also described events, “I just can’t get that one sight out of my mind. The cops with the sticks and the kick line on the other side. It was the most amazing thing … because people were getting smashed with bats. And for what? A kick line.”
The rioting continued until about 4 am as the police chased rioters down side streets, only to see them reappear behind them like Road Runner teasing Wile E Coyote.
There are no definitive numbers recorded but it is estimated that there were more than 1,000 rioters involved in that first night’s disturbances, but the Stonewall Riots did not end there.
The following night the Stonewall reopened and drew thousands of people to Christopher Street. Tensions increased as impromptu marches dragged the entirety of Greenwich Village to a halt. Once again the police tried to control and disperse the crowds, and once again the kick lines appeared, vanished and reappeared to taunt them. Cars were overturned, rubbish set alight and streets were barricaded to prevent the police from reaching protestors.
There next few weeks saw a sea-change in attitudes, both of gay rights campaigners and of the media. Perhaps the most significant change was the use of ‘Gay’ in literature and organisations.
Prior to the Stonewall riots, the ‘homophile’ campaigners had organised marches wearing suits and formal attire – their aim had been to show that they were respectable individuals and that they could fit into mainstream society. The new Gay movement was brash, proud and unapologetic.
After the riots, the Stonewall Inn became too notorious and was put up for rent. The police and authorities still targeted gay bars and multiple arrests were still being made through 1969 and 1970. In March 1970 a raid on the Snake Pit resulted in 167 arrests. But tragedy struck when an Argentinian man, who feared deportation, ran and jumped out of a police window. He died when he impaled himself on a spike below the 2nd floor window. When the New York Daily News printed a photograph of the scene it was another watershed moment. It prompted a march and vigil by hundreds of gay men, women and straight sympathisers. The tragedy also prompted an upsurge in a letter writing campaign to both the mayor and the governor of New York.
The following year, on 28th June 1970, the first anniversary of the Stonewall riots was commemorated with a gathering on Christopher Street with simultaneous events being held in Los Angeles and Chicago. These are widely regarded as the first Gay Pride events. The following year saw the inaugural Gay Pride marches in Boston, Dallas, Milwaukee, London, Paris, Berlin and Stockholm.
The 1960’s had already seen the birth of the Civil Rights Movement. But as the historian Adam Nagourney, speaking about gay rights wrote, “They were invisible. Unlike the African Americans, women, Native Americans, Jews, the Irish, Italians, Asians, Hispanics, or any other cultural group who struggled … [they] had no physical or cultural markings, no language or dialect which could identify them to each other … From that night the lives of millions of gay men and lesbians, and the attitude toward them … began to change rapidly. People began to appear in public as homosexuals, demanding respect.”
