All kinds of designers, boxers, big museum people. And it would take maybe a half hour to clear the place out. That was scary, very scary. 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. Jimmy hadn't enjoyed himself so much in a long time. Martha Shelley: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're nicer ways to do it but the nice ways always fail." 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. "We're not going.". Richard Enman (Archival):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. Prisoner (Archival):I realize that, but the thing is that for life I'll be wrecked by this record, see? Dick Leitsch: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. If that didn't work, they would do things like aversive conditioning, you know, show you pornography and then give you an electric shock. These homosexuals glorify unnatural sex acts. That summer, New York City police raided the Stonewall Inn, a popular gay bar in Greenwich Village. They could be judges, lawyers. Producers Library A New York Police officer grabs a man by the hair as another officer clubs a man during a confrontation in Greenwich Village after a Gay Power march in New York. Franco Sacchi, Additional Animation and Effects And then there were all these 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. But that's only partially true. We knew it was a gay bar, we walked past it. Ed Koch, mayorof New York City from1978 to 1989, discussesgay civil rights in New York in the 1960s. It eats you up inside. Dan Bodner I'm losing everything that I have. 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 inside, in other settings as well. They were getting more ferocious. Everyone from the street kids who were white and black kids from the South. "Daybreak Express" by D.A. Narrator (Archival):This is one of the county's principal weekend gathering places for homosexuals, both male and female. I would get in the back of the car and they would say, "We're going to go see faggots." Eric Marcus, Writer:Before Stonewall, there was no such thing as coming out or being out. Original Language: English. It eats you up inside not being comfortable with yourself. Her most recent film, Bones of Contention, premiered in the 2016 Berlin International The Gay Revolution: The Story of the Struggle, Queer (In)Justice: The Criminalization of LGBT People in the United States. by David Carter, Associate Producer and Advisor Former U.S. President Barack Obama shakes hands with gay rights activist Frank Kameny after signing a memorandum on federal benefits and non-discrimination in the Oval Office on June 17, 2009. Martha Shelley: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. It was a horror story. Stacker put together a timeline of LGBTQ+ history leading up to Stonewall, beginning with prehistoric events and ending in the late 1960s. Fred Sargeant:The effect of the Stonewall riot was to change the direction of the gay movement. Jorge Garcia-Spitz 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. It was right in the center of where we all were. And there was like this tension in the air and it just like built and built. And the police escalated their crackdown on bars because of the reelection campaign. View in iTunes. ABCNEWS VideoSource The Laramie Project Cast at The Calhoun School William Eskridge, Professor of Law:In states like New York, there were a whole basket of crimes that gay people could be charged with. Yvonne Ritter:And then everybody started to throw pennies like, you know, this is what they were, they were nothing but copper, coppers, that's what they were worth. Seymour Pine, Deputy Inspector, Morals Division, NYPD:There were no instructions except: put them out of business. And you felt bad that you were part of this, when you knew they broke the law, but what kind of law was that? Before Stonewall (1984) - Plot Summary - IMDb National History Archive, LGBT Community Center Bettye Lane Dick Leitsch: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. 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? They were the storm troopers. Martin Boyce:For me, there was no bar like the Stonewall, because the Stonewall was like the watering hole on the savannah. It said the most dreadful things, it said nothing about being a person. Mike Wallace (Archival):The average homosexual, if there be such, is promiscuous. Mary Queen of the Scotch, Congo Woman, Captain Faggot, Miss Twiggy. People cheer while standing in front of The Stonewall Inn as the annual Gay Pride parade passes, Sunday, June 26, 2011 in New York. 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. And I said to myself, "Oh my God, this will not last.". Now, 50 years later, the film is back. Sophie Cabott Black We could easily be hunted, that was a game. Louis Mandelbaum It was tremendous freedom. And a couple of 'em had pulled out their guns. Jerry Hoose:The police would come by two or three times a night. First Run Features So it was a perfect storm for the police. Stonewall Uprising | American Experience | PBS It's not my cup of tea. Lucian Truscott, IV, Reporter,The Village Voice: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. That summer, New York City police raided the Stonewall Inn, a popular gay bar in Greenwich Village. First you gotta get past the door. Danny Garvin:Bam, bam and bash and then an opening and then whoa. Mafia house beer? Narrator (Archival):This is a nation of laws. Seymour Pine, Deputy Inspector, Morals Division, NYPD:We told this to our men. Oh, tell me about your anxiety. Historic Films Howard Smith, Reporter,The Village Voice:It was getting worse and worse. The Mafia owned the jukeboxes, they owned the cigarette machines and most of the liquor was off a truck hijacking. John O'Brien:I was with a group that we actually took a parking meter out of theground, three or four people, and we used it as a battering ram. Tom Caruso And so Howard said, "We've got police press passes upstairs." Howard Smith, Reporter,The Village Voice:So at that point the police are extremely nervous. Homosexuality was a dishonorable discharge in those days, and you couldn't get a job afterwards. Your choice, you can come in with us or you can stay out here with the crowd and report your stuff from out here. Other images in this film are He pulls all his men inside. Martin Boyce:You could be beaten, you could have your head smashed in a men's room because you were looking the wrong way. And it's that hairpin trigger thing that makes the riot happen. Raymond Castro:You could hear screaming outside, a lot of noise from the protesters and it was a good sound. Narrated by Rita Mae Brownan acclaimed writer whose 1973 novel Rubyfruit Jungle is a seminal lesbian text, but who is possessed of a painfully grating voiceBefore Stonewall includes vintage news footage that makes it clear that gay men and women lived full, if often difficult, lives long before their personal ambitions (however modest) Lucian Truscott, IV, Reporter,The Village Voice: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. Doing things like that. And when you got a word, the word was homosexuality and you looked it up. Dick Leitsch:And that's when you started seeing like, bodies laying on the sidewalk, people bleeding from the head. William Eskridge, Professor of Law:The federal government would fire you, school boards would fire you. And there was tear gas on Saturday night, right in front of the Stonewall. Then the cops come up and make use of what used to be called the bubble-gum machine, back then a cop car only had one light on the top that spun around. And a whole bunch of people who were in the paddy wagon ran out. The only faces you will see are those of the arresting officers. Martin Boyce:And I remember moving into the open space and grabbing onto two of my friends and we started singing and doing a kick line. 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. We did use humor to cover pain, frustration, anger. They raided the Checkerboard, which was a very popular gay bar, a week before the Stonewall. 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. And it's interesting to note how many youngsters we've been seeing in these films. When police raided the Stonewall Inn, a popular gay bar in the Greenwich Village section of New York City on June 28, 1969, the street erupted into violent protests that lasted for the next six days. "Don't fire. But we're going to pay dearly for this. And I had become very radicalized in that time. The Chicago riots, the Human Be-in, the dope smoking, the hippies. You know, all of a sudden, I had brothers and sisters, you know, which I didn't have before. Raymond Castro:So then I got pushed back in, into the Stonewall by these plain clothes cops and they would not let me out, they didn't let anybody out. Seymour Pine, Deputy Inspector, Morals Division, NYPD:We had maybe six people and by this time there were several thousand outside. And it was those loudest people, the most vulnerable, the most likely to be arrested, were the ones that were doing the real fighting. Why 'Before Stonewall' Was Such a Hard Movie to Make - The Atlantic Oddball Film + Video, San Francisco 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. Also, through this fight, the "LGBT" was born. Lucian Truscott, IV, Reporter,The Village Voice:And then the next night. Martha Shelley: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. [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]. 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. LGBTQ+ History Before Stonewall | Stacker I famously used the word "fag" in the lead sentence I said "the forces of faggotry." They were supposed to be weak men, limp-wristed. 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. People talk about being in and out now, there was no out, there was just in. John O'Brien:Cops got hurt. Gay people were never supposed to be threats to police officers. Fred Sargeant:The tactical patrol force on the second night came in even larger numbers, and were much more brutal. Seymour Pine, Deputy Inspector, Morals Division, NYPD:It was always hands up, what do you want? And we were singing: "We are the Village girls, we wear our hair in curls, we wear our dungarees, above our nellie knees." Remember everything. Getty Images When we got dressed for that night, we had cocktails and we put the makeup on. Danny Garvin:We had thought of women's rights, we had thought of black rights, 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.