Well, little did he know that what was gonna to happen later on was to make history. I was a man. Raymond Castro:There were mesh garbage cans being lit up on fire and being thrown at the police. Scott McPartland/Getty Images Judith Kuchar So you couldn't have a license to practice law, you couldn't be a licensed doctor. And the Village has a lot of people with children and they were offended. All kinds of designers, boxers, big museum people. You know. and I didn't see anything but a forest of hands. I say, I cannot tell this without tearing up. America thought we were these homosexual monsters and we were so innocent, and oddly enough, we were so American. Fred Sargeant:Things started off small, but there was an energy that began to flow through the crowd. A CBS news public opinion survey indicates that sentiment is against permitting homosexual relationships between consenting adults without legal punishment. Producers Library Slate:The Homosexuals(1967), CBS Reports. New York City's Stonewall Inn is regarded by many as the site of gay and lesbian liberation since it was at this bar that drag queens fought back against police June 27-28, 1969. John van Hoesen Before Stonewall: The Making of a Gay and Lesbian Community is a 1984 American documentary film about the LGBT community prior to the 1969 Stonewall riots. 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. So gay people were being strangled, shot, thrown in the river, blackmailed, fired from jobs. That night, the police ran from us, the lowliest of the low. First you gotta get past the door. Fred Sargeant:The press did refer to it in very pejorative terms, as a night that the drag queens fought back. For the first time the next person stood up. But the . And the first gay power demonstration to my knowledge was against my story inThe Village Voiceon Wednesday. Jerry Hoose It eats you up inside not being comfortable with yourself. The Stonewall riots, as they came to be known, marked a major turning point in the modern gay civil rights movement in the United States and around the world. We went, "Oh my God. On this episode, the fight for gay rights before Stonewall. John O'Brien:The election was in November of 1969 and this was the summer of 1969, this was June. Danny Garvin:It was the perfect time to be in the Village. We assembled on Christopher Street at 6th Avenue, to march. Martin Boyce:There were these two black, like, banjee guys, and they were saying, "What's goin' on man?" Almost anything you could name. And Dick Leitsch, who was the head of the Mattachine Society said, "Who's in favor?" Ed Koch, Councilman, New York City:Gay rights, like the rights of blacks, were constantly under attack and while blacks were protected by constitutional amendments coming out of the Civil War, gays were not protected by law and certainly not the Constitution. There's a little door that slides open with this power-hungry nut behind that, you see this much of your eyes, and he sees that much of your face, and then he decides whether you're going to get in. Lauren Noyes. Hugh Bush Howard Smith, Reporter,The Village Voice:That night I'm in my office, I looked down the street, and I could see the Stonewall sign and I started to see some activity in front. Danny Garvin:Bam, bam and bash and then an opening and then whoa. It was a down at a heels kind of place, it was a lot of street kids and things like that. Martin Boyce:And then more police came, and it didn't stop. Read a July 6, 1969excerpt fromTheNew York Daily News. 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. "You could have got us in a lot of trouble, you could have got us closed up." The term like "authority figures" wasn't used back then, there was just "Lily Law," "Patty Pig," "Betty Badge." Director . Howard Smith, Reporter,The Village Voice:But there were little, tiny pin holes in the plywood windows, I'll call them the windows but they were plywood, and we could look out from there and every time I went over and looked out through one of those pin holes where he did, we were shocked at how big the crowd had become. Howard Smith, Reporter,The Village Voice:I had a column inThe Village Voicethat ran from '66 all the way through '84. This was a highly unusual raid, going in there in the middle of the night with a full crowd, the Mafia hasn't been alerted, the Sixth Precinct hasn't been alerted. They were afraid that the FBI was following them. And as I'm looking around to see what's going on, police cars, different things happening, it's getting bigger by the minute. It's the first time I'm fully inside the Stonewall. 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. BBC Worldwide Americas All the rules were off in the '60s. Doric Wilson:When I was very young, one of the terms for gay people was twilight people, meaning that we never came out until twilight, 'til it got dark. I made friends that first day. People could take shots at us. He may appear normal, and it may be too late when you discover he is mentally ill. John O'Brien:I was a poor, young gay person. Tommy Lanigan-Schmidt:There were all these articles in likeLife Magazineabout how the Village was liberal and people that were called homosexuals went there. It premiered at the 1984 Toronto International Film Festival and was released in the United States on June 27, 1985. With this outpouring of courage and unity the gay liberation movement had begun. Dick Leitsch:And that's when you started seeing like, bodies laying on the sidewalk, people bleeding from the head. The award winning film Before Stonewall pries open the closet door, setting free the dramatic story of the sometimes horrifying public and private existences experienced by gay and lesbian Americans since the 1920s. Because as the police moved back, we were conscious, all of us, of the area we were controlling and now we were in control of the area because we were surrounded the bar, we were moving in, they were moving back. This is every year in New York City. It was fun to see fags. This produced an enormous amount of anger within the lesbian and gay community in New York City and in other parts of America. Geoff Kole But as visibility increased, the reactions of people increased. 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. Raymond Castro:If that light goes on, you know to stop whatever you're doing, and separate. Andy Frielingsdorf, Reenactment Actors The most infamous of those institutions was Atascadero, in California. Dana Gaiser And that crowd between Howard Johnson's and Mama's Chik-n-Rib was like the basic crowd of the gay community at that time in the Village. Lucian Truscott, IV, Reporter,The Village Voice:This was the Rosa Parks moment, the time that gay people stood up and said no. Doric Wilson:And we were about 100, 120 people and there were people lining the sidewalks ahead of us to watch us go by, gay people, mainly. But I had only stuck my head in once at the Stonewall. The police weren't letting us dance. We didn't want to come on, you know, wearing fuzzy sweaters and lipstick, you know, and being freaks. Andrea Weiss is a documentary filmmaker and author with a Ph.D. in American History. And they were lucky that door was closed, they were very lucky. I mean you got a major incident going on down there and I didn't see any TV cameras at all. That's what happened on June 28, but as people were released, the night took an unusual turn when protesters and police clashed. It was like a reward. Jimmy knew he shouldn't be interested but, well, he was curious. A sickness of the mind. Where did you buy it? Mary Queen of the Scotch, Congo Woman, Captain Faggot, Miss Twiggy. Martin Boyce:We were like a Hydra. We don't know. So I got into the subway, and on the car was somebody I recognized and he said, "I've never been so scared in my life," and I said, "Well, please let there be more than ten of us, just please let there be more than ten of us. A Q-Ball Productions film for AMERICAN EXPERIENCE And a whole bunch of people who were in the paddy wagon ran out. Prisoner (Archival):I realize that, but the thing is that for life I'll be wrecked by this record, see? It was an age of experimentation. 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. Raymond Castro:Society expected you to, you know, grow up, get married, have kids, which is what a lot of people did to satisfy their parents. Dick Leitsch:And so the cops came with these buses, like five buses, and they all were full of tactical police force. The medical experimentation in Atascadero included administering, to gay people, a drug that simulated the experience of drowning; in other words, a pharmacological example of waterboarding. The severity of the punishment varies from state to state. He brought in gay-positive materials and placed that in a setting that people could come to and feel comfortable in. Now, 50 years later, the film is back. Colonial House Slate:Perversion for Profit(1965), Citizens for Decency Through Law. We were thinking about survival. And I ran into Howard Smith on the street,The Village Voicewas right there. [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. Danny Garvin:We became a people. A New York Police officer grabs a man by the hair as another officer clubs a. But it was a refuge, it was a temporary refuge from the street. And these were meat trucks that in daytime were used by the meat industry for moving dead produce, and they really reeked, but at nighttime, that's where people went to have sex, you know, and there would be hundreds and hundreds of men having sex together in these trucks. You see, Ralph was a homosexual. It was one of the things you did in New York, it was like the Barnum and Bailey aspect of it. And they were having a meeting at town hall and there were 400 guys who showed up, and I think a couple of women, talking about these riots, 'cause everybody was really energized and upset and angry about it. Stonewall: The Riots that Sparked the Gay Revolution I never believed in that. 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. ", Howard Smith, Reporter,The Village Voice:And he went to each man and said it by name. People started throwing pennies. That was our world, that block. In an effort to avoid being anachronistic . The windows were always cloaked. Ed Koch, Councilman, New York City:Yes, entrapment did exist, particularly in the subway system, in the bathrooms. It was tremendous freedom. Gay people were not powerful enough politically to prevent the clampdown and so you had a series of escalating skirmishes in 1969. kui Tommy Lanigan-Schmidt:As much as I don't like to say it, there's a place for violence. Here are my ID cards, you knew they were phonies. Daily News Ed Koch, Councilman, New York City:The Stonewall, they didn't have a liquor license and they were raided by the cops regularly and there were pay-offs to the cops, it was awful. Never, never, never. And so Howard said, "We've got police press passes upstairs." Before Stonewall, the activists wanted to fit into society and not rock the boat. 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. 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. Franco Sacchi, Additional Animation and Effects Jay Fialkov John O'Brien:Our goal was to hurt those police. In the sexual area, in psychology, psychiatry. Things were just changing. Narrator (Archival):This is one of the county's principal weekend gathering places for homosexuals, both male and female. Jeremiah Hawkins Louis Mandelbaum Before Stonewall. Available via license: Content may be subject to . Martin Boyce Homo, homo was big. Seymour Pine, Deputy Inspector, Morals Division, NYPD:They were sexual deviates. Sign up for the American Experience newsletter! Things were being thrown against the plywood, we piled things up to try to buttress it. People cheer while standing in front of The Stonewall Inn as the annual Gay Pride parade passes, Sunday, June 26, 2011 in New York. In 1969 it was common for police officers to rough up a gay bar and ask for payoffs. Atascadero was known in gay circles as the Dachau for queers, and appropriately so. 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 Tommy Lanigan-Schmidt:The police would zero in on us because sometimes they would be in plain clothes, and sometimes they would even entrap. It won the Best Film Award at the Houston International Film Festival, Best Documentary Feature at Filmex, First Place at the National Educational Film Festival, and Honorable Mention at the Global Village Documentary Festival. Remember everything. Because one out of three of you will turn queer. NBC News Archives For those kisses. You know, it's just, everybody was there. A word that would be used in the 1960s for gay men and lesbians. They were just holding us almost like in a hostage situation where you don't know what's going to happen next. Tommy Lanigan-Schmidt:What was so good about the Stonewall was that you could dance slow there. If there had been a riot of that proportion in Harlem, my God, you know, there'd have been cameras everywhere.

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