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In 1969, homosexuality was illegal in almost every state. But that was about to change. On June 28, 1969, New York City police raided a Greenwich Village gay bar, the Stonewall Inn, setting off a six-day riot that launched the modern American gay rights movement.
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00:00:22Thank you for listening.
00:00:50For me, there was no bar like the Stonewall, because the Stonewall was like the watering
00:00:55hole on the savannah, you know. It was just everybody was there. We were all there.
00:01:04Gay bars were the social centers of gay life. Gay bars were to gay people what churches were
00:01:10to blacks in the south.
00:01:18There were no instructions except put them out of business.
00:01:26The first police officer that came in with our group said, the place is under arrest.
00:01:33When you exit, have some identification, and it'll be over in a short time.
00:01:45This time they said, we're not going. That's it. We're not going.
00:01:57Something snapped. It's like, what? This is not right.
00:02:06That's what happens Stonewall Knight to a lot of people. We went, oh my god. I'm not alone.
00:02:13There are other people that feel exactly the same way.
00:02:20We didn't have the manpower. And the manpower for the other side was coming like there was
00:02:30a real war. And then that's what it was. It was a war.
00:02:37This was the Rosa Parks moment. The time that gay people stood up and said no. And once that
00:02:44happened, the whole house of cards that was the system of oppression of gay people started
00:02:50to crumble.
00:02:55In the civil rights movement, we ran from the police. In the peace movement, we ran from the police.
00:03:03That night, the police ran from us. The lowliest of the low. And it was fantastic.
00:03:31Do you want your son enticed into the world of homosexuals? Or your daughter lured into lesbianism?
00:03:53Do you want them to lose all chance of a normal, happy, married life?
00:04:11The 1960s were dark ages for lesbians and gay men all over America. The overwhelming number of medical authorities said
00:04:23that homosexuality was a mental defect, maybe even a form of psychopathy.
00:04:30The average homosexual, if there be such, is promiscuous. He is not interested in nor capable of a lasting relationship
00:04:38like that of a heterosexual marriage.
00:04:41I was wondering if you think that there are any, quote, happy homosexuals for whom homosexuality would be, in a
00:04:47way, their best adjustment to life.
00:04:49I think the whole idea of saying the happy homosexual is to create a mythology about the nature of homosexuality.
00:05:01Dr. Charles Socorides is a New York psychoanalyst at the Albert Einstein School of Medicine.
00:05:07They are taught that no man is born homosexual. And many psychiatrists now believe that homosexuality begins to form in
00:05:13the first three years of life.
00:05:17Homosexuality is, in fact, a mental illness which has reached epidemiological proportions.
00:05:30In those days, what they would do, these psychiatrists, is they would try to talk you into being heterosexual.
00:05:37If that didn't work, they would do things like aversive conditioning, you know, show you pornography, and then give you
00:05:44an electric shock.
00:05:48This involves showing the gay man pictures of nude males and shocking him with a strong electric current.
00:06:00Over a short period of time, he will be unable to get sexually aroused to the pictures.
00:06:06And hopefully, he will be unable to get sexually aroused outside in other settings as well.
00:06:17Gay people who were sentenced to medical institutions because they were found to be sexual psychopaths
00:06:24were subjected sometimes to sterilization, occasionally to castration,
00:06:31sometimes to medical procedures such as lobotomies, which were felt by some doctors
00:06:36to cure homosexuality and other sexual diseases.
00:06:43The most infamous of those institutions was Atascadero in California.
00:06:53Atascadero was known in gay circles as the Dachau for queers, and appropriately so.
00:07:01The medical experimentation in Atascadero included administering to gay people a drug that simulated the experience of drowning.
00:07:11In other words, a pharmacological example of waterboarding.
00:07:22Somebody that I knew that was older than me, his family had him sent off where they go up and
00:07:27damage the frontal part of the brain.
00:07:30The last time I saw him, he was a walking vegetable because he was homosexual.
00:07:43Society expected you to grow up, get married, have kids, which is what a lot of people did to satisfy
00:07:53their parents.
00:07:59I never believed in that.
00:08:04It eats the open side.
00:08:05It eats the open side, not being comfortable with yourself.
00:08:12When I was growing up in the 50s, I was supposed to get married to some guy, produce, you know,
00:08:19the usual 2.3 children.
00:08:23And I could look at a guy and say, well, objectively, he's good looking.
00:08:28I didn't feel anything.
00:08:30It just didn't make any sense to me.
00:08:34What finally made sense to me was the first time I kissed a woman.
00:08:38And I thought, oh, this is what it's about.
00:08:42And I knew that I was a lesbian.
00:08:45And it was, I knew that I would go through hell.
00:08:50I would go through fire for that experience, for those kisses.
00:09:00Note how Albert delicately pats his hair and adjusts his collar.
00:09:05His movements are not characteristic of a real boy.
00:09:17I wasn't labeled gay, just different.
00:09:23Somehow being gay was the most terrible thing you could possibly be.
00:09:29And I just didn't understand that.
00:09:32I just thought you had to get through this.
00:09:34And I thought I could get through it.
00:09:36But you really had to be smart about it.
00:09:39Clever.
00:09:40Remember everything.
00:09:42Because I really realized I was being trained as a straight person.
00:09:44So I could fool these people.
00:09:48As kids we played King Kong, I would wait till there was nobody left to be the girl.
00:09:53And then I would be the girl.
00:09:55If anybody should find out I was gay and would tell my mother was in a wheelchair,
00:09:58it would have broken my heart.
00:10:00And she would have thought she did something wrong.
00:10:02I could never let that happen and it never did.
00:10:08I knew that the words that were being said to put down people was about me.
00:10:14I learned very early that those horrible words were about me.
00:10:19That I was one of those people.
00:10:21He was a faggot.
00:10:22He was a sissy.
00:10:23Queer.
00:10:24Queer was very big.
00:10:25Homo.
00:10:27Homo was big.
00:10:29My last name being Garvin.
00:10:31I'd be called Danny Gavin.
00:10:36I was in the Navy when I was 17.
00:10:38And it was there that I discovered that I was gay.
00:10:44Homosexuality was a dishonorable discharge in those days.
00:10:47And you couldn't get a job afterwards.
00:10:51So I attempted suicide by cutting my wrist.
00:11:02I met this guy.
00:11:04I broke down crying in his arms.
00:11:06Saying I don't want to be this way.
00:11:08This is not the life I want.
00:11:10I'm losing everything that I have.
00:11:14To get out of the church.
00:11:15To be damned to hell.
00:11:19Because to be gay represented to me either very super effeminate men.
00:11:27Or older men who hung out in the upper movie theaters of 42nd Street.
00:11:34Or in the subway tea rooms.
00:11:36Who would be masturbating.
00:11:40Sure enough.
00:11:41The following day when Jimmy finished playing ball.
00:11:44Well the man was there waiting.
00:11:59Jimmy hadn't enjoyed himself so much in a long time.
00:12:06Then during lunch.
00:12:08Ralph showed him some pornographic pictures.
00:12:11Jimmy knew he shouldn't be interested.
00:12:12But well he was curious.
00:12:14What Jimmy didn't know was that Ralph was sick.
00:12:17A sickness that was not visible like smallpox.
00:12:20But no less dangerous and contagious.
00:12:22A sickness of the mind.
00:12:24You see Ralph was a homosexual.
00:12:28One never knows when the homosexual is about.
00:12:31He may appear normal.
00:12:32And it may be too late when you discover he is mentally ill.
00:12:43I was a poor young gay person.
00:12:52All I knew about was that I heard that there were people down in Times Square who were gay.
00:13:00And that's where I went to.
00:13:02And I found them in the movie theaters.
00:13:04Sitting there next to them.
00:13:12I had cousins.
00:13:14Ten years older than me.
00:13:16And they had a car sometimes.
00:13:20And I would get in the back of the car and then they would say we're going to go see
00:13:23faggots.
00:13:32That was one of the things you did in New York.
00:13:34It was like a Barnum and Bailey aspect of it.
00:13:36It was fun to see fags.
00:13:43Two out of three Americans look upon homosexuals with disgust, discomfort or fear.
00:13:50The CBS News public opinion survey indicates that sentiment is against permitting homosexual relationships between consenting adults without legal punishment.
00:14:00The severity of the punishment varies from state to state.
00:14:05The homosexual, bitterly aware of his rejection, responds by going underground.
00:14:10They frequent their own clubs and bars and coffee houses where they can escape the disapproving eye of the society
00:14:16that they call straight.
00:14:28This is one of the county's principal weekend gathering places for homosexuals, both male and female.
00:14:35The scenes were photographed with telescopic lenses.
00:14:40It is usually after the day at the beach that the real crime occurs.
00:14:44And it's interesting to note how many youngsters we've been seeing in these films.
00:14:54There may be some in this auditorium.
00:14:57There may be some here today that will be homosexual in the future.
00:15:01There are a lot of kids here.
00:15:03There may be some girls that will turn lesbian.
00:15:05We don't know.
00:15:07But it's serious.
00:15:08Don't kid yourselves about it.
00:15:10They can be anywhere.
00:15:12They can be judges, lawyers.
00:15:14We ought to know we've arrested all of them.
00:15:18So if any one of you have let yourself become involved with an adult homosexual or with another boy,
00:15:24and you're doing this on a regular basis, you better stop quick.
00:15:29Because one out of three of you will turn queer.
00:15:34And if we catch you involved with a homosexual, your parents are going to know about it first.
00:15:40And you will be caught.
00:15:42Don't think you won't be caught.
00:15:43Because this is one thing you cannot get away with.
00:15:46This is one thing that if you don't get caught by us, you'll be caught by yourself.
00:15:50And the rest of your life will be a living hell.
00:15:57I grew up with that.
00:15:58I grew up in a very Catholic household.
00:16:01And the conflict of issues of redemption, of is it possible that if you are this thing called a homosexual,
00:16:11is it possible to be redeemed?
00:16:14Is that conceivable?
00:16:16And that was a very haunting issue for me.
00:16:23I entered the convent at 26 to pursue that question.
00:16:27And I was convinced that I would either stay until I got an answer, or if I didn't get an
00:16:33answer, just stay.
00:16:44The Stonewall riots came at a central point in history.
00:16:53Gay rights, like the rights of blacks, were constantly under attack.
00:17:00And while blacks were protected by constitutional amendments coming out of the Civil War,
00:17:07gays were not protected by law, and certainly not the Constitution.
00:17:13This is a nation of laws.
00:17:17These homosexuals glorify unnatural sex acts.
00:17:22Every arrest and prosecution is a step in the education of the public to the solution of the problem.
00:17:37If a gay man is caught by the police, and is identified as being involved in what they call lewd
00:17:44and moral behavior,
00:17:46they would have their person's name, their age, and many times their home address listed in the major newspapers.
00:18:00You are alone.
00:18:04We arrested homosexuals who committed their lewd acts in public places.
00:18:10This 19-year-old serviceman left his girlfriend on the beach to go to a men's room in a park
00:18:16nearby
00:18:17where he knew that he could find a homosexual contact.
00:18:20The men's room was under police surveillance.
00:18:23The only faces you will see are those of the arresting officers.
00:18:28Anyone can walk into that men's room.
00:18:30Any child can walk in there and see what you guys were doing.
00:18:34Well, how do you think that would affect them mentally for the rest of their lives they saw an act
00:18:39like that?
00:18:40I realize that.
00:18:41But the thing is that, for life, I'll be wrecked by this record, see?
00:18:48I mean, I'm only 19.
00:18:51And this will ruin me.
00:19:02Federal government would fire you.
00:19:04School boards would fire you.
00:19:07So you couldn't have a license to practice law.
00:19:09You couldn't be a licensed doctor.
00:19:11You needed a license even to be a beautician.
00:19:13And that could be either denied or taken away from you.
00:19:23It was an invasion.
00:19:25I mean, you felt outraged and stuff like that.
00:19:26You went, God, this is America.
00:19:28What's this country come to?
00:19:30But you lived with it.
00:19:31You know, you were used to it.
00:19:32After the third time that it happened or the third time you heard about it,
00:19:35that's the way the world is.
00:19:36It's like, you know, black people got used to being mistreated and going to the back of the bus.
00:19:42And I guess this was sort of our going to the back of the bus.
00:20:02Before Stonewall, there was no such thing as coming out or being out.
00:20:07The very idea of being out, it was ludicrous.
00:20:11People talk about being in and out now.
00:20:12There was no out.
00:20:13There was just in.
00:20:16If you were in a small town somewhere, everybody knew you and everybody knew what you did.
00:20:21And you couldn't have a relationship with a member of your own sex.
00:20:25Period.
00:20:27If you came to a place like New York, you at least had the opportunity of connecting with people.
00:20:31And finding people who didn't care that you were gay.
00:20:40In the early 60s, if you would go near Port Authority, there were tons of people coming in.
00:20:47And they were gay.
00:20:49There were always articles in like Life magazine about how the village was liberal.
00:20:54And people that were called homosexuals went there.
00:20:59And then there were always priests ranted in church about certain places not to go.
00:21:03So you kind of knew where you could go by what you were told not to do.
00:21:10And I got to the corner of 6th Avenue and 8th Street, crossed the street, and there I had found
00:21:18Nirvana.
00:21:20There was all these drag queens and these crazy people and everybody was carrying on.
00:21:27I made friends that first day.
00:21:30It was the perfect time to do the village.
00:21:32I mean, music was great, cafes were good, you know, the coffee houses were good.
00:21:41There was one street called Christopher Street where actually I could sit and talk to other gay people beyond just
00:21:50having sex.
00:22:02The open gay people that hung out on the streets were basically the have-nothing-to-lose types.
00:22:12Which I was.
00:22:17A lot of them had been thrown out of their families.
00:22:21And that crowd between Howard Johnson's and Mama's Chicken Rib was like the basic crowd of the gay community at
00:22:31that time in the village.
00:22:32You got to remember, the Stonewall Bar was just down the street from there.
00:22:38It was right in the center of where we all were.
00:22:46That was our only block. That was our world, that block.
00:22:51I mean, I came out in Central Park and other places.
00:22:54That wasn't ours. It was borrowed.
00:22:57This was ours.
00:22:59Here's where the Stonewall was, here's our Mecca.
00:23:07I had a column in the Village Voice that ran from 66 all the way through 84.
00:23:14The idea was to be there first.
00:23:19It was an age of experimentation.
00:23:22In the sexual area, in psychology, psychiatry, almost anything you could name, things were just changing.
00:23:29All the rules were off in the 60s.
00:23:32It was tremendous freedom.
00:23:37It was free, but not quite free enough for us.
00:23:43You had no place to try to find an identity.
00:23:47And when you got a word, the word was homosexuality, and you looked it up, it said the most dreadful
00:23:55things.
00:23:55It said nothing about being a person.
00:23:59It was as if they were identifying a thing.
00:24:05In the 60s, I met Craig Rodwell, who was running the Oscar Wilde Bookshop.
00:24:14He brought in gay-positive materials and placed that in a setting that people could come to and feel comfortable
00:24:21in.
00:24:26But as visibility increased, the reactions of people increased.
00:24:33The shop had been threatened.
00:24:35We would get hang-up calls, calls where people would curse at us on the phone.
00:24:40We'd had vandalism, windows broken.
00:24:44Streams of profanity.
00:24:51You could be beaten.
00:24:54You could have your head smashed in a men's room because you were looking the wrong way.
00:25:01We could lose our memory from the beating.
00:25:04We could be in wheelchairs like some were.
00:25:08Hunted, hunted.
00:25:09Sometimes we were hunted.
00:25:11We could easily be hunted.
00:25:12That was a game.
00:25:21All throughout the 60s in New York City, the period when the New York World's Fair was attracting visitors from
00:25:27all over America and all over the world,
00:25:30the mayor of New York City, the police commissioner, were under pressure to clean up the streets of any kind
00:25:37of, quote-unquote, weirdness,
00:25:39a word that would be used in the 1960s for gay men and lesbians.
00:25:46They were sexual deviates.
00:25:51I guess they're deviates.
00:25:53They were to us.
00:25:59Ed Koch, who was a Democratic Party leader in the Greenwich Village area, was a specific leader of the local
00:26:07forces seeking to clean up the streets.
00:26:14There were complaints from people who objected to the wrongful behavior of some gays who would have sex on the
00:26:26street.
00:26:27And the village has a lot of people with children.
00:26:30And they were offended.
00:26:36In states like New York, there were a whole basket of crimes that gay people could be charged with.
00:26:45One was the 1845 statute that made it a crime in the state to masquerade.
00:26:58Oh, yes.
00:26:58Are those your own eyelashes?
00:27:01No.
00:27:03And, Sonia, is that your own hair?
00:27:06No.
00:27:08That's a very lovely dress, too, that you're wearing, Simone. Where did you buy it?
00:27:11Oh, I made it myself.
00:27:13Ladies and gentlemen, the reason for using first names only for these very, very charming contestants is that right now,
00:27:20each one of them is breaking the law.
00:27:28In drag, quote unquote, the downside was that you could get arrested.
00:27:33You could definitely get arrested if someone had, someone clocked you or someone spooked that you were not really, you
00:27:39know, what you appeared to be on the outside.
00:27:46Three articles of clothing had to be of your gender, or you would be in violation of that law.
00:27:52Mind you, socks didn't count. So it was underwear and undershirt. Now the next thing was going to ruin the
00:27:59outfit.
00:28:06If someone was dressed as a woman, you had to have a female police officer go in with her.
00:28:14They'd go into the bathroom or any place that was private that they could either feel them or check them
00:28:24visually.
00:28:35I remember I was in a paddy wagon one time on the way to jail.
00:28:40We were all locked up together on a chain in the paddy wagon, and the paddy wagon stopped for a
00:28:45red light or something.
00:28:47And one of the queens said, oh, this is my stop.
00:28:51We did use humor to cover pain, frustration, anger.
00:29:08Very often they would put the cops in dresses with makeup, and they usually weren't very convincing.
00:29:17You see these cops, like six or eight cops, in drag.
00:29:23They sent them out on the street, and of course they did make arrests, because, you know, there's all these
00:29:27guys who cruise around looking for drag queens.
00:29:29And so there was this drag queen standing in the corner, so they go and make a sexual offer, and
00:29:33they get busted.
00:29:40The police would zero in on us, because sometimes they would be in plain clothes, and sometimes they would even
00:29:45entrap.
00:29:48Yes, entrapment did exist, particularly in the subway system, in the bathrooms.
00:30:00The cops would hide behind the walls of the urinals.
00:30:17New York City subways, parks, public bathrooms, you name it.
00:30:25Naturally, you get careless, you fall for it, and the next thing you know you have silver bracelets on both
00:30:29arms.
00:30:35You read about Truman Capote, and Tennessee Williams, and Gore Vidal, and all these actors and stuff.
00:30:41Liberace and all these people running around doing all these things.
00:30:44And then you came to New York, and you found out, well, maybe they're doing them, but, you know, us
00:30:48middle-class homosexuals, we're getting busted all the time.
00:30:52Every time we go, every time we have a place to go, it gets raided.
00:31:00Everybody would just freeze, would clam up.
00:31:03The lights came on, it's like, stop dancing.
00:31:09If that light goes on, you know to stop whatever you're doing, and separate.
00:31:15Because that's what they were looking for, any excuse to try to bust the place.
00:31:23It was always, hands up, what do you want? Here are my ID cards, you knew they were phonies.
00:31:34And it would take maybe a half hour to clear the place out.
00:31:43At the peak, as many as 500 people per year were arrested for the crime against nature.
00:31:49And between 3,000 and 5,000 people per year arrested for various solicitation or loitering crimes.
00:31:55This is every year in New York City.
00:32:13Well, it was a nightmare for the lesbian or gay man who was arrested and caught up in this juggernaut.
00:32:19But it was also a nightmare for the lesbians and gay men who lived in the closet.
00:32:28This produced an enormous amount of anger within the lesbian and gay community in New York City and in other
00:32:34parts of America.
00:32:42Gay people were not powerful enough politically to prevent the clampdown.
00:32:47And so you had a series of escalating skirmishes in 1969.
00:32:54Eventually, something was bound to blow.
00:33:03When I was very young, one of the terms for gay people was twilight people.
00:33:10Meaning that we never came out until twilight, until it got dark.
00:33:15Gay bars were always on side streets out of the way in neighborhoods that nobody would go into.
00:33:22The windows were always cloaked.
00:33:29There were gay bars all over town.
00:33:32Not just in Greenwich Village.
00:33:33There were gay bars in midtown.
00:33:36There were gay bars uptown.
00:33:37There were certain kinds of gay bars on the Upper East Side.
00:33:40You know, really, really, really buttoned up straight gay bars.
00:33:47There was at least one gay bar that was run just as a hustler bar for straight gay married men.
00:33:58New York State Liquor Authority had a rule that one known homosexual and a licensed premise made the place disorderly.
00:34:07So nobody would set up a place where we could meet because they were afraid that the cops would come
00:34:11in and close it.
00:34:13And that's how the mafia got into the gay bar business.
00:34:20The mob raised its head and said, oh, we'll volunteer, you know, we'll set up some gay bars and serve
00:34:25overpriced watered down drinks to you guys.
00:34:28And the Stonewall was part of that system.
00:34:33The mafia owned the jukeboxes.
00:34:36They owned the cigarette machines.
00:34:38And most of the liquor was off a truck hijacking.
00:34:43It was 100% profit.
00:34:45I mean, they were stealing the liquor, then watering it down, and then charging twice as much as they charged
00:34:50it one door away at the 55.
00:34:59The Stonewall, they didn't have a liquor license.
00:35:03And they were raided by the cops regularly, and there were payoffs to the cops.
00:35:08It was awful.
00:35:14I had been in some gay bars either for a story or gay friends would say, oh, we're going to
00:35:19go in for a drink there.
00:35:20Come on in. Are you too uptight to go in?
00:35:23But I had only stuck my head in once at the Stonewall.
00:35:29It was a down in the heels kind of place.
00:35:32It was a lot of street kids and things like that.
00:35:34It was not a place that, in my life, me and my friends paid much attention to.
00:35:40We knew it was a gay bar. We walked past it.
00:35:42It meant nothing to us.
00:35:47It was a bottle club, which meant that I guess you went to the door and you bought a membership
00:35:52or something for a buck,
00:35:53and then you went in and then you could buy drinks.
00:35:57We knew that they were serving drinks out of vats and buckets of water,
00:36:01and believed that there had been some disease that had been passed.
00:36:06I never bought a drink at the Stone.
00:36:10Never, never, never.
00:36:14Mafia house beer? I mean, does anyone know what that is?
00:36:21The bar itself was a toilet.
00:36:24But it was a refuge. It was a temporary refuge from the street.
00:36:33The Stonewall pulled in everyone from every part of gay life.
00:36:39Everyone from the street kids who were white and black kids from the south.
00:36:44All kinds of designers, boxers, big museum people, medievalists.
00:36:59First, you've got to get past the door.
00:37:01There's a little door that slides open with this power-hungry nut behind it that you see this much of
00:37:06his eyes, he sees that much of your face, and then he decides where you're going to get in.
00:37:14Well, in the front part of the bar would be like a gays, like regular gays that didn't go in
00:37:20any kind of drag, didn't use the word she, that type.
00:37:25But they were gay, 100% gay. And then as you turn into the other room with the jukebox, those
00:37:31were the drag queens around the jukebox.
00:37:35Mary Queen of the Scotch, Congo Woman, Captain Faggot, Miss Twiggy.
00:37:52What was so good about the Stonewall was that you could dance slow there, because we could feel a sense
00:38:00of love for each other that we couldn't show out in the street, because you couldn't show any affection out
00:38:05in the street.
00:38:10It was a chance to find love, you know? I had never seen anything like that. I never saw so
00:38:17many gay people dancing in my life. And I said to myself, oh my God, this will not last.
00:38:31Heterosexuals legally had lots of sexual outlets. They call them hotels, motels, lovers' lanes, drive and movie theaters, etc. Gay
00:38:43people were told we didn't have any of that, and we had no rights as such.
00:38:50Except for the few mob-owned bars that allowed some socializing, it was basically foreboding.
00:38:58And so we had to create these spaces, mostly in the trucks.
00:39:07And these were meat trucks that in the daytime were used by the meat industry for moving dead produce. And
00:39:14they really reeked. But at night time, that's where people went to have sex, you know?
00:39:20And there would be hundreds and hundreds of men having sex together in these trucks.
00:39:28I heard about the trucks, which to me was fascinating. You know, I had an imagination thinking it was like
00:39:33Marseille. How could it be only a few blocks away?
00:39:35But we went down to the trucks and there, people would have sex in the trucks or around the trucks.
00:39:41And it just seemed like fantastic because the background was this industrial, becoming an industrial ruin.
00:39:47It was a masculine setting. It was a whole world. I'd go in there and I would look and I
00:39:58would just cringe because, you know, people would start touching me. And, hello, what are you doing there if you
00:40:04don't want to be touched?
00:40:07But I was just curious. I didn't want to participate because, number one, it was so packed. I mean, I'm
00:40:16talking like sardines.
00:40:20It was definitely dark. It was definitely smelly and raunchy and dirty. And that's the only places that we had
00:40:26to meet each other, was in the very dirty, despicable places. And there we weren't allowed to be alone.
00:40:33They police would raid us still.
00:40:35So you're outside and you see like two people walking toward these trucks. And you think, oh, I think I'll
00:40:41go in there. You go in there and there's like a lot of people in there. It's all dark.
00:40:45Then the cops come up and make what used to be called the bubble gum machine. That was back then
00:40:49a cop car only had one light on the top that spun around.
00:40:55The term like authority figures wasn't used back then. That was just Lily Law, Patty Pig, Betty Badge. It was
00:41:04done in our little street talk.
00:41:07The police would come by two or three times a night. They would bang on the trucks. We'd say, here
00:41:14comes Lillian.
00:41:15We would scatter, boom, every which way.
00:41:19I was chased down the street with Billy Clubs. One time, a bunch of us ran into somebody's car and
00:41:26locked the door and they smashed the windows in. That was scary. Very scary.
00:41:35Whenever you see the cops, you run away from them. Absolutely. And many people who were not lucky felt the
00:41:43cops.
00:41:45They would not always just arrest. They would many times use clubs and beat.
00:41:59Before Stonewall, the homophile movement was essentially the Mattachine Society and Daughters of Belitis and all of these other little
00:42:07gay organizations, some of which were just two people and a mimeograph machine.
00:42:15The Mattachine Society was the first gay rights organization. And they literally met in a space with the blinds drawn.
00:42:24They were afraid that the FBI was following them.
00:42:28Mattachine in Italy were court jesters. The only people in the whole kingdom who could speak truth to the king
00:42:35because they did it with a smile.
00:42:40As president of the Mattachine Society in New York, we tried to negotiate with the police and the mayor.
00:42:46Finally, Mayor Lindsey listened to us and he announced that there would be no more police entrapment in New York
00:42:51City.
00:42:58We participated in demonstrations in Philadelphia at Independence Hall.
00:43:05A few of us would get dressed up in skirts and blouses and the guys would all have to wear
00:43:11suits and ties.
00:43:14And I did not like parading around while all of these vacationers were standing there eating ice cream and looking
00:43:22at us like we were critters in a zoo.
00:43:24We are seeking our human dignity, our equality and our acceptance as the homosexuals.
00:43:29We wore suits and ties because we wanted people in the public who were wearing suits and ties to identify
00:43:34with us.
00:43:35We didn't want to come on wearing, you know, fuzzy sweaters and lipstick, you know, and being freaks.
00:43:41You know, we wanted to be part of the mainstream society.
00:43:45Richard Inman, president of the Mattachine Society of Florida, whose goal is to legalize homosexuality between consenting adults, was a
00:43:53reluctant participant in tonight's program.
00:43:57Now, present laws give the adult homosexual only the choice of being, to simplify the matter, heterosexual and legal or
00:44:06homosexual and illegal.
00:44:08This to a homosexual is no choice at all.
00:44:11What type of laws are you after?
00:44:13Well, let me say first of all what type of laws we are not after.
00:44:17Because there has been much to do that the society was in favor of the legalization of marriage between homosexuals
00:44:27and the adoption of children and such as that.
00:44:29And that is not at all factual at all.
00:44:32Homosexuals do not want that.
00:44:34You might find some fringe character someplace who says that that's what he wants.
00:44:39Are you a homosexual?
00:44:42Well, that's yes and no.
00:44:45I was a homosexual.
00:44:46I first engaged in such acts when I was 14 years old.
00:44:51I was never seduced by an older person or anything like that.
00:44:55But I gave it up about, oh, I forget, some years ago, over four years ago.
00:45:01It's not my cup of tea.
00:45:09They wanted to fit into American society the way it was.
00:45:13And I had become very radicalized in that time.
00:45:22There was the hippie movement.
00:45:24There was the Summer of Love.
00:45:27Martin Luther King.
00:45:28And all of these affected me terribly.
00:45:34All of the rules that I had grown up with and that I had hated in my guts.
00:45:40Other people were fighting against and saying, no, it doesn't have to be this way.
00:45:58And deep down, I believe, because I was gay and couldn't speak out for my rights, was probably one of
00:46:05the reasons that I was so active in the civil rights movement.
00:46:07It was a way to vent my anger at being repressed.
00:46:20What we felt in isolation was a growing sense of outrage and fury, particularly because we looked around and saw
00:46:28so many avenues of rebellion.
00:46:38We had thought of women's rights, we had thought of black rights, we had thought of all kinds of human
00:46:44rights, but we never thought of gay rights.
00:46:47Whenever we got kicked out of a bar before, we never came together.
00:46:56The election was in November of 1969, and this was the summer of 1969.
00:47:02This was June.
00:47:05Mayor John Lindsay, like most mayors, wanted to get reelected.
00:47:09And the police escalated their crackdown on bars because of the reelection campaign.
00:47:32All of straight America, in terms of the middle class, was recoiling in horror from what was happening all around
00:47:40them at that time.
00:47:41In that summer, in the summer before, the Chicago riots, the human being, the dope smoking, the hippies.
00:47:50All of this stuff was just erupting like a giant, as far as they were concerned, you know, like a
00:47:56gigantic boil on the butt of America.
00:47:59Who was going to complain about a crackdown against gay people?
00:48:03Nobody, not even us.
00:48:09They had increased their raids in the trucks.
00:48:12They raided the checkerboard, which was a very popular gay bar, a week before the Stonewall.
00:48:18There was also vigilantism.
00:48:21People were using walkie-talkies to coordinate attacks on gay men.
00:48:26So gay people were being strangled, shot, thrown in the river, blackmailed, fired from jobs.
00:48:35It was a horror story.
00:48:41I had just turned 18 on June 27th, 1969.
00:48:46And I was celebrating my birthday at the Stonewall.
00:48:50Beginning of our night out started early.
00:48:54When we got dressed for that night, we had cocktails and we put the makeup on.
00:49:00I was wearing my mother's black and white cocktail dress that was Empire Wasted.
00:49:06I didn't think I could have been any prettier than that night.
00:49:11I told the person at the door, I said, I'm 18 tonight.
00:49:14And he said to me, little SOB, he said, you could have got us in a lot of trouble.
00:49:19You could have got us closed up.
00:49:20Well, little did he know that what was going to happen later on, you know, was to make history.
00:49:31I remember it being a clear evening with a big black sky and the biggest white moon I ever saw.
00:49:42It was incredibly hot.
00:49:44You throw into that that the Stonewall was raided the previous Tuesday night.
00:49:49So it was a perfect storm for the police.
00:49:51They didn't know what they were walking into.
00:50:02Most raids by the New York City police, because they were paid off by the mob, took place on a
00:50:08weeknight.
00:50:08It took place early in the evening.
00:50:10The place would not be crowded.
00:50:14This was a highly unusual raid.
00:50:16Going in there in the middle of the night with a full crowd, the Mafia hasn't been alerted.
00:50:22The 6th Precinct hasn't been alerted.
00:50:26We only had about six people altogether from the police department,
00:50:32knowing that you had a precinct right nearby that would send assistance.
00:50:41We were in the back of the room, and the lights went on.
00:50:46So everybody stopped what they were doing.
00:50:48Because now the police that are coming in are raiding the bar.
00:50:55They pushed everybody, like, to the back room and slowly asking for IDs.
00:51:00Meanwhile, there was crowds forming outside the Stonewall wanting to know what was going on.
00:51:07We were talking about the revolution happening, and we were walking up 7th Avenue, and we were thinking that it
00:51:12was either Black Panthers or the Young Lords are going to start it.
00:51:16And we turned the corner from 7th Avenue onto Christopher Street, and we saw the paddy wagon pull up there.
00:51:27And some people came out, and we were being very dramatic, throwing their arms up in a V, you know,
00:51:32there's a victory sign.
00:51:37That night, I'm in my office, I looked down the street, and I could see the Stonewall sign, and I
00:51:48started to see some activity in front.
00:51:51So I run down there, and as I'm looking around to see what's going on, police cars, different things happening,
00:51:59it's getting bigger by the minute.
00:52:03And the people coming out weren't going along with it so easily.
00:52:11A rather tough lesbian was busted in the bar, but when she came out of the bar, she was fighting
00:52:17the cops and was trying to get away.
00:52:20And the harder she fought, the more the cops were beating her up, and the madder the crowd got.
00:52:27And I ran into Howard Smith on the street.
00:52:29The Village Voice was right there, and Howard said, boy, there's like a riot going to happen here.
00:52:34And I said, yeah, and the police were showing up.
00:52:36And so Howard said, we've got police press passes upstairs.
00:52:41You know, Howard's concern was, and my concern was, if all hell broke loose, they'd just start busting heads.
00:52:45At least if you had press, maybe your head wouldn't get busted.
00:52:52Things started off small, but there was an energy that began to flow through the crowd.
00:52:57Pigs! Pigs! Pigs! Pigs! Pigs! Pigs!
00:53:00People were screaming, pig, copper, people started throwing pennies.
00:53:04And then everybody started to throw pennies.
00:53:06Like, you know, like they were, this is what they were, nothing but copper.
00:53:09You know, coppers, that's what they were worth.
00:53:12So it was mostly goofing, really, basically goofing on them, getting them in the car,
00:53:15mocking them back and forth, calling them names, telling them how good-looking they were,
00:53:19grabbing their butts, doing things like that.
00:53:21You know, just making their lives miserable for once.
00:53:27At a certain point, it felt pretty dangerous to me.
00:53:31But I noticed that the cop that seemed in charge, he said, you know what?
00:53:36We have to go inside for safety.
00:53:39Your choice, you can come in with us, or you can stay out here with the crowd
00:53:45and report your stuff from out here.
00:53:48I said, I can go in with you.
00:53:51He said, okay, let's go. He pulls all his men inside.
00:53:54It's the first time I'm fully inside the stone wall.
00:53:59So then I got pushed back in, into the stone wall by these plainclothes cops,
00:54:04and they would not let me out.
00:54:06They didn't let anybody out.
00:54:07They were just holding us almost like in a hostage situation
00:54:11where you don't know what's going to happen next.
00:54:15But there were little, tiny pinholes in the plywood windows.
00:54:19I'll call them the windows, but they were plywood.
00:54:21And we could look out from there.
00:54:23And every time I went over and looked out through one of the pinholes where he did,
00:54:27we were shocked at how big the crowd had become.
00:54:32They were getting more ferocious.
00:54:35Things were being thrown against the plywood.
00:54:37We piled things up to try to buttress it.
00:54:42Someone at this point had apparently gone down to the cigar stand on the corner
00:54:47and got lighter fluid.
00:54:50And then somebody started a fire.
00:54:52They started with little lighters and matches.
00:54:58Incendiary devices were being thrown in.
00:55:00I don't think they were Molotov cocktails.
00:55:01But it was just fire being thrown in when the doors got open.
00:55:06Well, we did use the small hoses on the fire extinguishers.
00:55:14But we couldn't hold out very long.
00:55:23I was very anti-police.
00:55:25Had many years already of activism against the forces of law and order.
00:55:30This was the first time I could actually sense, not only see them fearful, I could sense them fearful.
00:55:42There was joy because the cops weren't winning.
00:55:47The cops were barricaded inside.
00:55:49We were women.
00:55:56I was with a group that we actually took a parking meter out of the ground.
00:56:01We had three or four people.
00:56:02And we used it as a battering ram.
00:56:04Oh, Miss New Orleans, she wouldn't be stopped.
00:56:08And she was quite crazy.
00:56:10And when she grabbed that, everybody knew she couldn't do it alone.
00:56:12So all the other queens, Congo women and queens like that started,
00:56:15and they were hitting that door.
00:56:17I mean, they were making some headway.
00:56:19Bam! Bam!
00:56:20And bam!
00:56:21And it opened up.
00:56:22Whoa!
00:56:22Whoa!
00:56:28We had maybe six people.
00:56:30And by this time, there were several thousand outside.
00:56:38You could hear screaming outside.
00:56:42A lot of noise from the protesters.
00:56:45And it was a good sound.
00:56:48It was a real good sound to know that, you know, you had a lot of people out there.
00:56:51Uh, pulling for you.
00:56:54I did try to get, to get out of the bar.
00:56:56And I thought that there might be a way out through one of the bathrooms.
00:57:01Somebody grabbed me by the leg and told me I wasn't going anywhere.
00:57:08The moment you stepped out that door, there would be hundreds facing you.
00:57:14It was terrifying.
00:57:18It was as bad as any situation that I had met in, during the army.
00:57:24Uh, had just as much to worry about.
00:57:31You know, our goal was to hurt those police.
00:57:35I wanted to kill those cops for the anger ahead of me.
00:57:39I, I, and they, and the cops got that.
00:57:41And they were lucky that door was closed.
00:57:44They were very lucky.
00:57:46Because I was from the streets.
00:57:49And I keep listening and listening and listening, hoping sirens,
00:57:52I'm going to hear sirens any minute.
00:57:54And I was very freaked.
00:57:56Because if they weren't there fast, I was worried that there was something going on
00:58:00that I didn't know about and they weren't going to come.
00:58:02Okay.
00:58:03Okay.
00:58:04Okay.
00:58:06Our radio was cut off every time we, we got on the police radio.
00:58:13That never happened before.
00:58:18So at that point, the police are extremely nervous.
00:58:21And a couple of them had pulled out their guns.
00:58:25I actually thought, as all of them did, that we were going to be killed.
00:58:31And if enough people broke through, they would be killed and I would be killed.
00:58:35They'd think I'm a cop, even though I had a big Jufro haircut
00:58:37and a big handlebar mustache at the time.
00:58:40But I'm wearing this police thing.
00:58:42I'm thinking, well, if they break through, I better take it off really quickly.
00:58:44But they're going to come this way and we're going to be backing up.
00:58:48Who knows what'll happen.
00:58:53We told this to our men, don't fire.
00:58:57Don't fire until I fire.
00:59:00And he went to each man and said it by name, like,
00:59:03Joe, if you fire your gun without me saying your name and the words fire,
00:59:10you will be walking a beat on Staten Island, all alone on a lonely beach
00:59:16for the rest of your police career. Do you understand me?
00:59:19Well, I had to act that I wasn't nervous.
00:59:23That this is normal stuff.
00:59:26But everybody knew it wasn't normal stuff.
00:59:29And everyone was on edge.
00:59:32And that was the worst part of it.
00:59:34Because you knew they were on edge.
00:59:38And you knew that the first shot that was fired
00:59:41meant all the shots would be fired.
00:59:52It was getting worse and worse.
00:59:54People standing on cars, standing on garbage, screaming, yelling.
00:59:59The ones that came close, you could see their faces in rage.
01:00:06We were looking for secret exits.
01:00:11And one of the police women was able to squirm through the window.
01:00:17And they did find a way out.
01:00:25All of a sudden, in the background, I heard some police cars.
01:00:29And we all relaxed.
01:00:30We heard one, then more, and more.
01:00:38So the cops came with all these buses, like five buses, and they all were full of tactical police force.
01:00:45And they wore dark police uniforms, and riot helmets, and they had billy clubs, and they had big plastic shields,
01:00:53like Roman army.
01:00:54And they actually farmed the phalanx.
01:01:01And just marched down Christopher Street, and kind of pushed us in front of them.
01:01:09So, finally, when they started taking me out, arm in arm, up to the paddy wagon, I jumped up, and
01:01:16I put one foot on one side, one foot on the other.
01:01:18And I sprung back, knocking the two arresting officers, knocking to the ground.
01:01:24And a whole bunch of people in the paddy wagon ran out.
01:01:28All of a sudden, Miss New Orleans and all the people around her started marching step by step.
01:01:33And the police started moving back.
01:01:36That's what gave oxygen to the fire.
01:01:40Because as the police moved back, we were conscious, all of us, of the area we were controlling.
01:01:45And now, we were in control of the area.
01:01:48Because we surrounded the bar, we were moving in, they were moving back.
01:01:53And by the time the police would come back towards Stonewall, that crowd had gone all the way around a
01:01:58Washington place, come all the way back around, and were back pushing in on them from the other direction.
01:02:04And the police would wonder, these are the same people or different people?
01:02:15With Waverly Street coming in there, West Forth coming in there, 7th Avenue coming in there, Bristol Street coming in
01:02:21there, there was no way to contain us.
01:02:24And the blocks were small enough that we could run around a block and come in behind them before they
01:02:28got to the next corner.
01:02:31And this went on for hours.
01:02:34We were like a hydra.
01:02:38You cut one head off, for the first time, the next person stood up.
01:02:49All of a sudden, the police faced something they had never seen before.
01:02:54Gay people were never supposed to be threats to police officers.
01:02:58They were supposed to be weak men.
01:02:59Limp-wristed.
01:03:00Not able to, you know, do anything.
01:03:03And here they were, lifting things up, and fighting them, and attacking them, and beating them.
01:03:18I remember moving into the open space, and grabbing onto two of my friends, and we started singing, and doing
01:03:25a kick line.
01:03:26And we were singing, we are the village girls, we wear our herring girls, we wear our dungarees above our
01:03:33nailing knees.
01:03:34This was in front of the police.
01:03:35I mean, the riot squad was used to riots.
01:03:39They were not used to a bunch of drag queens doing a Rockettes kick line, and sort of like, giving
01:03:45them all the finger, in a way.
01:03:52And the cops just charged them, and they started smashing their heads with the clubs.
01:03:59And then more police came, and it didn't stop.
01:04:02Windows had started to break.
01:04:06And all of a sudden, pandemonium broke loose.
01:04:15What they did in the Stonewall that night, I went in there, and they took bats, and just busted that
01:04:22place up.
01:04:23The mirrors, all the bottles of liquor, the jukeboxes, the cigarette machines.
01:04:34Those mesh garbage cans, being lit up on fire, and being thrown at the police, tires were slashed, on police
01:04:40cars, and it just went on all night long.
01:04:46And then, cops got hurt.
01:04:48It must have been terrifying for them.
01:04:50I hope it was.
01:04:52It gives back a little of the terror they gave in my life.
01:04:58Those of us that were the street kids, we didn't think much about the past or the future.
01:05:06We were thinking about survival.
01:05:09So anything that would set us off, we would go into action.
01:05:16And it's that hairpin trigger thing that makes the riot happen.
01:05:24The police weren't letting us dance.
01:05:27If there's one place in the world where you can dance, and feel yourself fully as a person, and that's
01:05:34threatened with being taken away,
01:05:38those words are fighting words.
01:05:57The day after the first riot, when it was all over, and I remember sitting.
01:06:04The sun was soon to come.
01:06:06And I was sitting on the stoop, and I was exhausted.
01:06:09And I looked at that street.
01:06:14It was dark enough to allow the street lamps to pick up the glitter of all the broken glass.
01:06:21And all the debris.
01:06:22And all the different colored cloth that was in different places.
01:06:26As if an artist had arranged it, it was beautiful.
01:06:29It was like mica.
01:06:30It was like the streets we fought on was strewn with diamonds.
01:06:34It was like a reward.
01:06:39I really thought that, you know, we did it, but we're going to pay dearly for this.
01:06:50When it was clear that things were definitely over for the evening, we decided we needed to do something more.
01:06:56We knew that this was a moment that we didn't want to let slip past, because it was something that
01:07:03we could use to bring more of the groups together.
01:07:09Leaflets in the 60s were like the internet today.
01:07:13That night, we printed a box. We had 5,000.
01:07:19It was a leaflet that attacked the relationship of the police and the mafia and the bars that we needed
01:07:26to see ended.
01:07:39I was afraid it was over.
01:07:42And there was like this tension in the air and it just like built and built.
01:07:51Saturday night, there it was. The stone wall had reopened. The mob was saying, you know, screw you, cops.
01:07:57You think you can come in and bust us up? We'll put new liquor in there. We'll put a new
01:08:00mirror up. We'll get a new jukebox.
01:08:04And gay people were standing around outside and the mood on the street was, they think that they could disperse
01:08:10us last night and keep us from doing what we want to do, being on the street saying, I'm gay
01:08:15and I'm proud. Just, let's see if they can.
01:08:23People in the neighborhood, the most unlikely people, were starting to support it. My father said, I'll charm you, fags
01:08:31rioted.
01:08:35Gay people who had good jobs, who had everything in life to lose, were starting to join in. Even non
01:08:46-gay people.
01:08:48There were black panthers and there were anti-war people.
01:08:57They were these true black, like, banjee guys. And they were saying, well, what's going on, man?
01:09:03And then someone told me, it's still, they're still fighting the police. Let's go. And they went in.
01:09:17The tactical patrol force on the second night came in even larger numbers and were much more brutal.
01:09:24There were occasions when you did see people get nightsticked or disappear into a group of police.
01:09:30And, you know, everybody knew that was not going to have a good end.
01:09:38You know, they went for the head wounds. It wasn't just the back wounds and the leg wounds.
01:09:45And that's when you started seeing, like, bodies laying on the sidewalk. People bleeding from the head.
01:09:57They started busting cans of tear gas.
01:10:00And there was tear gas on Saturday night, right in front of the stone wall.
01:10:12There was more anger and more fight the second night.
01:10:21There was no going back now. There was no going back. There was no...
01:10:27We had discovered a power that we weren't even aware that we had.
01:10:37And then the next night, I mean, it didn't stop after that.
01:10:41Once it started, once that genie was out of the bottle, it was never going to go back in.
01:10:54It really should have been called Stonewall Uprising.
01:10:58They really were objecting to how they were being treated.
01:11:02That's more an uprising than a riot.
01:11:13As much as I don't like to say it, there's a place for violence.
01:11:18Because if you don't have extremes, you don't get any moderation.
01:11:24And as awful as people might think that sounds, it's the way history has always worked.
01:11:32I don't know if you remember the Joan Baez song,
01:11:34It isn't nice to block the doorway. It isn't nice to go to jail.
01:11:37There are nicer ways to do it, but the nice ways always fail.
01:11:45For the first time, we weren't letting ourselves be carted off to jails.
01:11:51Gay people were actually fighting back just the way people in the peace movement fought back.
01:11:59It was thrilling.
01:12:01It was the only time I was in a gladiatorial sport that I stood up in.
01:12:09I was proud. I was a man.
01:12:18The New York Times, I guess, printed a story, but it wasn't a major story.
01:12:22I mean, you got a major incident going on down there, and I didn't see any TV cameras at all.
01:12:31There'd been a riot of that proportion in Harlem.
01:12:34Oh, my God.
01:12:35You know, there would have been cameras everywhere.
01:12:41Well, I famously used the word fag.
01:12:44In the lead sentence, I said, the forces of faggotry.
01:12:48And the first gay power demonstration, to my knowledge, was against my story in the Village Voice.
01:12:55On Wednesday, they put some people on the street right in front of the Village Voice protesting the use of
01:13:00the word fag in my story.
01:13:02And, you know, the Village Voice at that point started using the word gay.
01:13:12The press did refer to it in very pejorative terms as a night that the drag queens fought back.
01:13:19And it was nonsense. It was nonsense.
01:13:22It was all the people there that were reacting and opposing what was occurring.
01:13:33We became a people.
01:13:35We didn't necessarily know where we were going yet.
01:13:38You know, what organizations were going to be or how things would go.
01:13:43But we became something I, as a person, could all of a sudden grab onto that I couldn't grab onto
01:13:53when I would go to a subway tea room as a kid.
01:13:56Or a 42nd Street movie theater.
01:13:59You know, or being picked up by some dirty old man.
01:14:03You know, all of a sudden I had brothers and sisters.
01:14:07You know, which I didn't have before.
01:14:25The riot could have been buried.
01:14:27It could have been a few days in the local newspaper and that was that.
01:14:31But we had to follow up.
01:14:33We couldn't just let that be a blip that disappeared.
01:14:39And I hadn't had enough sleep so I was in a somewhat feverish state.
01:14:43And I thought, we have to do something.
01:14:44We have to do something.
01:14:45And I thought, we have to have a protest march of our own.
01:14:52And they were having a meeting at Town Hall.
01:14:54And there were 400 guys who showed up.
01:14:56And I think a couple of women talking about these riots.
01:14:59Because everybody was really energized and upset and angry about it.
01:15:05And I raised my hand at one point and said, let's have a protest march.
01:15:10And Dick Leitch, who was the head of the Mattachine Society, said, who's in favor?
01:15:15And I didn't see anything but a forest of hands.
01:15:22The effect of the Stonewall riot was to change the direction of the gay movement.
01:15:28We were going to propose something that all groups could participate in.
01:15:33And what we ended up producing was what's now known as the Gay Pride March.
01:15:47And those days, the idea of walking in daylight with a sign saying, I'm a faggot, was horrendous.
01:15:54Nobody, nobody was ready to do that.
01:15:59So I got into the subway.
01:16:01And on the car was somebody I recognized.
01:16:04And he said, I've never been so scared in my life.
01:16:07I said, well, please let there be more than ten of us.
01:16:09Just please let there be more than ten of us.
01:16:12Because it's all right in the village, but the minute we cross 14th Street,
01:16:16if there's only ten of us, God knows what's going to happen to us.
01:16:23We had no idea we were going to finish the march.
01:16:27We had no speakers planned for the rally in Central Park, where we had hoped to get to.
01:16:31We didn't expect we'd ever get to Central Park.
01:16:35We assembled on Christopher Street and Sixth Avenue to march.
01:16:42And we were about 100, 120 people.
01:16:44And there were people lining the sidewalks ahead of us to watch us go by, gay people, mainly.
01:16:57And we were going fast.
01:16:59People that were involved in it, like me, refer to it as the first run.
01:17:06We had been threatened bomb threats.
01:17:09We had been, you know, people could take shots at us.
01:17:14We were scared.
01:17:17But as we were going up Sixth Avenue, it kept growing.
01:17:40And I looked back, and there were about 2,000 people behind us, and that's when I knew it had
01:17:45happened.
01:17:47I say I cannot tell this without tearing up.
01:17:52And Peter and I walked the rest of the whole thing with tears running down our face.
01:17:58But that's when it, that's when we knew we were ourselves for the first time.
01:18:17America thought we were these homosexual monsters, and we were so innocent.
01:18:20And oddly enough, we were so American.
01:18:37It's very American to say, this is not right.
01:18:41It's very American to say, you promised equality, you promised freedom.
01:18:46And in a sense, the Stonewall riots said, get off our backs, deliver on the promise.
01:18:57So in every gay pride parade, every year, Stonewall lives.
01:19:08It was another great step forward in the story of human rights.
01:19:13That's, that's what it was.
01:19:17And it was those loudest people, the most vulnerable, the most likely to be arrested,
01:19:22were the ones that were doing the real fighting.
01:19:25They were the stormtroopers.
01:19:31And they were, they were kids.
01:19:36You knew you could ruin them for life.
01:19:40And, and you felt bad that you were part of, of this when you knew they broke the law.
01:19:52But what kind of law was that?
01:20:09And you were the first and the last time they were approaching.
01:20:12You know, they were people that were from the limit, you thought you were having such a long time.
01:20:12You know, you were or the first one was while you were.
01:20:12If you were home, then, you were to be a millionaire.
01:20:12You were the gli past.
01:20:12And you were the one and two were parked.
01:20:20They were even the nine out of the death, and they were so many africans.
01:20:49Transcription by CastingWords
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