And I just didn't understand that. A few of us would get dressed up in skirts and blouses and the guys would all have to wear suits and ties. It said the most dreadful things, it said nothing about being a person. Alexis Charizopolis Where did you buy it? For the first time the next person stood up. Heather Gude, Archival Research First you gotta get past the door. Slate:Perversion for Profit(1965), Citizens for Decency Through Law. Doric Wilson:There was joy because the cops weren't winning. Susana Fernandes W hen police raided a Greenwich Village gay bar, the Stonewall Inn, on June 28, 1969 50 years ago this month the harassment was routine for the time. Barbara Gittings and Kay Tobin Lahusen Gay History Papers and Photographs, Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations Leaflets in the 60s were like the internet, today. Before Stonewall - Trailer - YouTube 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. Before Stonewall (1984) - IMDb Transcript Aired June 9, 2020 Stonewall Uprising The Year That Changed America Film Description When police raided the Stonewall Inn, a popular gay bar in the Greenwich Village section of. Your choice, you can come in with us or you can stay out here with the crowd and report your stuff from out here. John O'Brien:Cops got hurt. Yvonne Ritter:It's like people who are, you know, black people who are 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. With this outpouring of courage and unity the gay liberation movement had begun. What Jimmy didn't know is that Ralph was sick. Chris Mara, Production Assistants Judith Kuchar Leroy S. Mobley And it just seemed like, fantastic because the background was this industrial, becoming an industrial ruin, it was a masculine setting, it was a whole world. 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. They were getting more ferocious. Today, that event is seen as the start of the gay civil rights movement, but gay activists and organizations were standing up to harassment and discrimination years before. Martin Boyce Howard Smith, Reporter,The Village Voice:I had been in some gay bars either for a story or gay friends would say, "Oh we're going to go in for a drink there, come on in, are you too uptight to go in?" And I had become very radicalized in that time. For those kisses. You know, Howard's concern was and my concern was that if all hell broke loose, they'd just start busting heads. And we all relaxed. 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 gunna come this way and we're going to be backing up and -- who knows what'll happen. Paul Bosche All I knew about was that I heard that there were people down in Times Square who were gay and that's where I went to. Somebody grabbed me by the leg and told me I wasn't going anywhere. Almost anything you could name. We had been threatened bomb threats. Jimmy knew he shouldn't be interested but, well, he was curious. And they started smashing their heads with clubs. All rights reserved. William Eskridge, Professor of Law:In states like New York, there were a whole basket of crimes that gay people could be charged with. It was a way to vent my anger at being repressed. John O'Brien:Our goal was to hurt those police. Martin Boyce:We were like a Hydra. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. They can be anywhere. A Q-Ball Productions film for AMERICAN EXPERIENCE Dana Kirchoff So anything that would set us off, we would go into action. The term like "authority figures" wasn't used back then, there was just "Lily Law," "Patty Pig," "Betty Badge." Mayor John Lindsay, like most mayors, wanted to get re-elected. Martha Babcock But it's serious, don't kid yourselves about it. A sickness of the mind. The most infamous of those institutions was Atascadero, in California. Frank Simon's documentary follows the drag contestants of 1967's Miss All-American Camp Beauty Pageant, capturing plenty of on- and offstage drama along the way. Before Stonewall: The Making of a Gay and Lesbian Community As kids, we played King Kong. The severity of the punishment varies from state to state. What finally made sense to me was the first time I kissed a woman and I thought, "Oh, this is what it's about." I mean it didn't stop after that. And then as you turned into the other room with the jukebox, those were the drag queens around the jukebox. The windows were always cloaked. 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. [00:00:58] Well, this I mean, this is a part of my own history in this weird, inchoate sense. We'd say, "Here comes Lillian.". Tommy Lanigan-Schmidt:What was so good about the Stonewall was that you could dance slow there. Transcript of Re-Release: The Stonewall | Happy Scribe Seymour Pine, Deputy Inspector, Morals Division, NYPD:Well, we did use the small hoses on the fire extinguishers. Dick Leitsch:And I remember it being a clear evening with a big black sky and the biggest white moon I ever saw. Doric Wilson:That's what happened Stonewall night to a lot of people. Getty Images But we're going to pay dearly for this. Andy Frielingsdorf, Reenactment Actors John O'Brien:The election was in November of 1969 and this was the summer of 1969, this was June. [2][3] Later in 2019, the film was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the United States National Film Registry for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".[4][5][6]. Other images in this film are We didn't want to come on, you know, wearing fuzzy sweaters and lipstick, you know, and being freaks. 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. A year earlier, young gays, lesbians and transgender people clashed with police near a bar called The Stonewall Inn. 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? [1] To commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots in 2019, the film was restored and re-released by First Run Features in June 2019. Noah Goldman But I was just curious, I didn't want to participate because number one it was so packed. And so we had to create these spaces, mostly in the trucks. A word that would be used in the 1960s for gay men and lesbians. 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. 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 or gay men who lived in the closet. As you read, keep in mind that LGBTQ+ is a relatively new term and, while queer people have always existed, the terminology has changed frequently over the years. When you exit, have some identification and it'll be over in a short time." Dick Leitsch:It was an invasion, I mean you felt outraged and stuff like you know what, God, this is America, what's this country come to? Nobody. Not even us. Mike Wallace (Archival):Dr. Charles Socarides is a New York psychoanalyst at the Albert Einstein School of Medicine. Virginia Apuzzo: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. Martin Boyce:It was thrilling. I mean does anyone know what that is? Martin Boyce:Oh, Miss New Orleans, she wouldn't be stopped. Giles Kotcher We were winning. That night, the police ran from us, the lowliest of the low. Virginia Apuzzo: I grew up with that. I have pondered this as "Before Stonewall," my first feature documentary, is back in cinemas after 35 years. Mafia house beer? Before Stonewall. Seymour Pine, Deputy Inspector, Morals Division, NYPD:The moment you stepped out that door there would be hundreds facing you. Do you understand me?". Amber Hall Historic Films Marc Aubin And all of a sudden, pandemonium broke loose. Don't fire until I fire. Jerry Hoose:I was chased down the street with billy clubs. Howard Smith, Reporter,The Village Voice: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. It's like, this is not right. Martin Boyce:In the early 60s, if you would go near Port Authority, there were tons of people coming in. In an effort to avoid being anachronistic . Richard Enman (Archival):Present laws give the adult homosexual only the choice of being, to simplify the matter, heterosexual and legal or homosexual and illegal. 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. Raymond Castro: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. Yvonne Ritter:"In drag," quote unquote, the downside was that you could get arrested, you could definitely get arrested if someone clocked you or someone spooked that you were not really what you appeared to be on the outside. To commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Stonewall riots in New York City, activists rode their motorcycles during the city's 1989 gay-pride parade. MacDonald & Associates A sickness that was not visible like smallpox, but no less dangerous and contagious. Hear more of the conversation and historical interviews at the audio link. And she was quite crazy. Narrator (Archival):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.