99% Invisible - 218- Remembering Stonewall

Episode Date: June 29, 2016

It started with a place called the Stonewall Inn. Gay bars had been raided by police for decades. Gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people had been routinely arrested and subjected to harassment and beatings by the people who were meant … Continue reading →

This is 99% invisible. I'm Roman Mars. It started with a place called the Stonewall Inn. Gay bars had been rated by police for decades. Gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people had been routinely arrested and subjected to harassment and beatings by the people who were meant to protect them. But one night in this place called the Stonewall Inn, when the police stormed in to continue their abuse, the clientele fought back. The uprising that night, led by drag queens, turned into a protest over the next few days and evolved into a movement that is still making the world better for everyone today.

And it started with a place. On June 28, 1969, the patrons at the Stonewall Inn made history, which is why gay pride celebrations all over the country take place in June. And on June 27, 2016, President Obama and the National Park Service designated the Stonewall Inn, Christopher Park and the surrounding streets as the first national monument to LGBTQ rights. In 1989, 20 years after the Stonewall uprising and now nearly 30 years ago, radio producer Dave Isay created the first documentary of Stonewall ever in any medium. It was also Dave's first radio story, if you can believe it. He later went on to found the much beloved and hugely popular story core project.

With the anniversary and national commemoration of the Stonewall Inn and the tragic massacre in Orlando, I thought it would be good to revisit this place, which, like so many other gay bars around the world, is much more than just a place. This is Remembrance Stonewall by Dave I.C. with Michael Scherker, originally broadcast in 1989. I am Jean Harwood and my age is 80. I'm Bruce Marrow. I don't know if it's really true, but now people do refer to us as the two oldest gay men in America, we do, I think, have maybe a record relationship of almost 60 years

together. Being gay before a Stonewall was a very difficult proposition because we felt that in order to survive, we had to try to look and act as rugged and manly as possible to get by in the society that was really very much against us. My name is Randy Wicker. I was the first openly gay person to appear on radio in 1962 and on television in 1964 as a self-identified homosexual. In the year before Stonewall, people felt a need to hide because of the precarious legal position they were in. They would lose their jobs. There was a great hostility, socially speaking, in a sense of people found out you were gay. They assumed you were a communist or a child molester or any of another dozen stereotypes

that were rampant in the public media at the time. I'm Jerry Fair and I'm 80 years old. I started a gay lifestyle in 1948 when I was around 39 or 40. At that time, if there was even a suspicion that you were a lesbian, you were fired from your job, and you were in such a position of disgrace that you slunk out without saying goodbye even to the people that like you and you like, never even bothered to clean your desk. You just disappeared. You just disappeared. You went quietly because you were afraid that the recriminations that would come if you even stood there protested would be worse than just leaving. My name is Sylvia Rivera. My name before that was Brave Rivera until I started dressing

in drag in 1961. There are before Snowmore was a hard-earner. There was always the gay bashings on the drag queens by peddlesexual men, women, and the police. We learned to live with it because it was part of the life style at that time, I guess. But none of us were very happy about it. My name is Simo Pine. In 1968, I was assigned as Deputy Inspector and Charge of Public Morals in the first division in the police department which covered the Greenwich Village area. It was the duty of public morals to enforce or laws concerning

vice and gambling, including prostitution, narcotics, and laws and regulations concerning homosexuality. The part of the penal code which applied to drag queens was section 240.35, section 4. Being masked or in any manner disguised by unusual or unnatural attire or facial alteration, loiter's, remains or congregates in a public place. At that time we looked at the Aristotel. We sit around, just try to figure out when this harassment would come to an end. And we would always dream that one day it would come to an end and we prayed and we looked for it Wanted to be human beings

My name is Red Mahoney I've been hanging out drinking party and and working and the gay boys for the last 30 years In the era before a stone wall all all before Stonewall, all of the boys, 90% of the boys were mafia controlled. There wasn't that many gay boys. It had maybe one, two uptown and the upree side. They would get closed down and they'd be one or two on the west side, they'd get closed down

and midtown they'd be one, two, three, maybe open, as they would get closed down, they'd move around and they would dumps. I'm Joan Nessel, co-founder of what is now the largest collection of lesbian culture in the world. The police raided lesbian bars regularly and they did it, they both did it in the most obvious way, which was hauling women away in patty wagons, but they did, there was regular weak enterasement, which would consist of the police coming in regularly to get their payoffs. And in the Seacone, we had a back room with a red light.

And when that red light went on, it meant the police would be arriving in around 10 minutes. And so we all had to sit down at our tables. And we would be sitting there, almost like school children. And the cops would come in now, depending on who was on, which cop was on. If it was some that really resented the Butch women, who were with many times very beautiful women, we knew were in for it because what would happen is they would start harassing one of these women

and saying, hi, you think your man come outside will show you and the woman would be dragged away, they throw up against a wall and they'd say, so you think your man, let's see what you've got in your pants and they would put their hand down in a pants. The stone wall, oh that was a good plan, that was. Just to get into the stone wall, you'd walk up and you'd knock on the front door. You'd knock and the door would open and... Hey, what do you want? A Mary sent me, good, come on in girls, you know.

The stone wall, like all gay boys at that time, were painted black. Chuck-hole black. And what was the funny part? The place would be so dimly lit. But as soon as the cops are going to come in to collect their percentage or whatever they were coming in for, from it being a nice dimly lit dump, the place was lit up like Luna Park. You felt, wow, two guys, and that's very often all we sent in would be two men could handle 200 people. I mean, you tell them to leave and they leave and you say, show me your identification and they all take out their identification and file out and that's it and you say,

okay, you're not a man, you're a woman or your vice versa and you wait over there. I mean this is a kind of power that you have and you never gave it a second thought. The drag queen took a lot of oppression and we had to... we were at a point where I guess nothing would have stopped us. I guess as they say, or as Shakespeare says, we were ladies waiting, just waiting for the thing to happen. And when it did happen, we were there. On Friday evening of June 27, 1969, at about 1145, eight officers from New York City's public moral squad loaded into four unmarked police cars and headed to the Stonewall

Inn here at Seventh Avenue in Christopher Street. The local precinct had just received a new commanding officer who kicked off his tenure by initiating a series of raids on gay bars. The Stonewall was an inviting target, operated by the Gambino crime family without a liquor license. The dance bar drew a crowd of drag queens, hustlers, and minors. A number of the bars patrons had spent the early part of the day outside the Frank Campbell funeral home, where Judy Garland's funeral was held.

She had died the Sunday before. It was almost precisely at midnight that the moral squad pulled up to the stone while in, led by Deputy Inspector Cymor Pine. There was never any reason to feel that anything of any unusual situation would occur that night. You could actually feel it in the air. You really could. I guess Judy Garley's death just really helped us really hit the fan. For some reason things were different this night. As we were bringing the prisoners out, they were resisting. People started gathering in front of the shepherds where a park right across the street from Stonewall.

People were upset. No, we're not going to go and people started screaming and hollering. One drag queen, as we put her in the car, opened the door on the other side and jumped out. At which time we had to chase that person and he was caught, put back into the car. He made another attempt to get out the same door, the other door. And at that point we had to handcuff the person. From this point on, things really began to get crazy. My name is Robert Rivera, and my nickname is Bertie, and I think crust dressing all of my life.

I remember the night of the riots, the police were escorting the queens out of the bar and into the paddy wagon. And there was this one particularly outrageously beautiful queen, stacks and stacks of liberty-style, with a distale-style hair. And she was asking them not to push her and they continued to push her and she turned around and she mashed the cop with her high heel She knocked him down and then she proceeded to frisk him for her the keys to the handcuffs that were on him

She got them and she ended herself and passed them to another queen that was behind her Well, that's when ball held up. And then we were, we had to get back into the stone wall. My name is Howard Smith. On the night of the Stonewall riots, I was reported for the village boys locked inside with the police covering it for my column. It really did appear that that crowd, because we could look for little peep holes in the plywood windows, we could look out, and we could

see that the crowd, while my guess was within 5-10 minutes, it was probably several thousand people, two to two thousand music, and they were yelling, kill the cops, police brutality, let's get them, we're not going to take this anymore. Let's get out of this group of persons attempting to uproot one of the parking meters in which they did succeed. And they then used that parking meter as a battering ram to break down the door. And they did in fact open the door, they crashed it in. And at that point was when they began throwing Molotov cocktails into the place. It was a situation that we didn't know how we were going to be able to. I remember someone throwing a Molotov cocktail, I don't know who the person was, but I mean, I saw that and I just said to myself in Spanish, I said, oh my God, the revolution is finally

here. I just started screaming, freedom. We're free at last, dude, I felt really good. There were a couple of cops stationed on the side of the door with the pistols, like in a combat stand, it's aimed in the door area. A couple others were stationed in other places, behind like a pole, another one behind the bar. All of them were the guns ready. I don't think up to that point I ever had ever seen cops that scared. Remember these were pros that everybody was frightened.

There was no question about that. I know I was frightened. And I'd been in combat situations. And there was never any time that I felt more scared than I felt that moment. And... that I felt more scared than I felt that moment. And, I mean, there was just, you know, there was no place to run. Once the tactical police force showed up, I think I really inc us a little bit more. My name is Martin Boyz. In 1969 I was a drag queen known as Miss Mark. I remember on that night when we saw the riot police, all of us drag queens with link

to arms, lighted our heads and sang the song we used to sing. We are the village girls. We wear our hands and girls. We wear our dungaries, our above our nailing knees, and the police went crazy hearing that and they just immediately rushed us. We gave one kick and three. My name is Rudy and the night of the storm while I was 18 and to tell you this truth that night I was doing more running than fighting. I remember looking back from Tenth Street and there on Waverly Street there was a police I believe on his cop and his on his stomach in his tactical uniform and his helmet and

everything else with a drag queen straddling him. She was beating the hell out of him with her shoe whether it was a high heel or not I don't know but she was beaten the hell out of them It was hysterical My name is mama Jean I'm a lesbian. I remember on that night. I was in the gay bar a woman's bar called cookies We were coming out of the gay bar going towards aid street and That's when we saw everything happen blasting Blasting away, people getting beat up. Please come from every direction.

Hitting women, as well as men with their night sticks. Game men running down the street with blood all over their face. We decided right then and there whether we scared or not, we didn't think about it. We just jumped in. Here, the screen is going completely bananas, you know, jumping and hitting the windshield. And next thing you know, it attacks the cabers, being turned over. Other cars would be in turned over. When those were shattering all over the place, wires were burning around the place.

It was beautiful. It really was. It was really beautiful. I remember one cop coming at me, hitting me with the night stick in the back of my legs. I broke loose and I went after him. I grabbed his night stick. My girlfriend went behind him. She was a strong servant again. I wanted to feel the same pain I felt. And I kept them saying to him, how do you like the pain? Do you like it? Do you like it? I kept them hitting them and hitting them. I was angry. I wanted to the kill him. At that particular minute I went to kill him. I wanted to do every destructive thing that I could think of at that time to hurt anyone that had hurt us through the years.

It's like just when you see a man protecting his own life. They weren't the queens that people called him. They were men fighting for their lives. And I'd fight alongside them any day, no matter how old I was. There were a lot of heads were bashed. There's not much of a people there. But it didn't hurt their true feelings.

They all came back from real. And nothing, that's when you could tell that nothing could stop us at that time, at any time in the future. I'll be loving you. every time I'm all again. The riots were well covered in the media. The New York Daily News featured it on the front page. There were reports on all of the local television and radio stations. By the next day, graffiti calling for gay power had started to show up all over the West

Village. The next night, thousands of men and women came back to the Stonewall to see what would happen next. While a couple of trash cans were set on fire and some stones were thrown, the 400 riot police, milling around outside the bar, ensured that the previous evening's violence would not be repeated. But on this night gay couples could be spotted walking hand in hand and kissing in the streets. Just by being at the Stonewall, surrounded by reporters, photographers, and onlookers, thousands of men and women were proclaiming that they were gay.

The crowds grew and came back the next night night and for one more night the following week. What happened at the Stonewall on those nights helped usher in a new era for gay men and lesbians. When Stonewall happened, Bruce and I were still in the closet, where we had been for nearly 40 years. But we realized that this was a tremendous thing that had happened at Stonewall and it gave us a feeling that we were not going to be remaining closeted for very much longer. And soon thereafter we did come out of the closet. So, in 1969 I was in the Convent, and when Stonewall hit the press, it hit me with a bolt of lightning.

It was as if I had an incredible release of my own outrage at having to sequester so much of my life. I made my way down. I seemed to recall in subsequent nights being down on the, you know, kind of just in the periphery looking observer, clearly an observer, clearly longing to have that courage to come out. And it was a matter, as I recall, it was only a matter of weeks before I left the convent and started a new life. I'm Henry Beard. In 1969, I was in the US Army, a specialist three stationed at Long Bend Post near Saigon in Vietnam.

I remember I was having lunch in the Army mess, reading the Armed Forces' new summary of the day. And there was a short paragraph describing a riot led by homosexuals and Greenwich Village against the police. And my heart was filled with joy. I thought about what I had read frequently, but I had no one to discuss it with. And secretly within myself I decided that when I came back state-side, if I should, survived to come back state-side, I would come out as a gay person and I did.

For those of us in public morals after the Stonewall incident things were completely changed from what they had previously been. They suddenly were not submissive anymore. They now suddenly had gained a new type of courage. And it seemed as if they didn't care anymore about whether their identities were made known. We were now dealing with human beings. Today I live in a senior citizen apartment building. What's different now is that I can be free. I have a daughter who's a senior citizen and my son is 58. They

know about my homosexuality. My three grandchildren in the thirties know about their grandmother. I have a great granddaughter who at the age of ten learned that grandma Jerry was a lesbian and she thought that was most interesting and yet I still don't have the personal courage to not care if these yanders in the building know that Jerry's a lesbian. Well, I retired from the police department in 1976. 20 years have passed. I'm going to be 17 in a few months. I still don't know the answers.

I would still like to know the answer. I would like to know whether I was wrong, or whether I was right, in ever thinking that there was a difference, in ever thinking that maybe you shouldn't trust a homosexual because something is missing in his personality. The archives of lesbian culture which surrounds us now and was created four years after Stonewall owes at least from my part its creation to that night in the courage that found its voice in the streets. That night, in some very deep way, we finally found our place in history. Not as a dirty joke, not as a doctor's case study not as a freak but as a people.

Today I'm a 38-year-old drag queen. I can keep my long hair, I can pluck my eyebrows and I can work wherever the hell I want and I'm not going to change for anybody. If I change, then I feel that I'm losing what 1969 brought into my life. And that was to be totally free. ever call the door and be the same as I was before. No, I can't anymore It's true, very long Remembering Stonewall was produced by Dave Isay with Michael Scherker in 1989. This documentary was a production of Sound Portraits, which went on to spawn StoryCore, which is dedicated to collecting, sharing, and preserving people's stories from around the world. You might have heard story core on the radio, but their podcast, which is hosted by their producers, offers longer stories that go more in depth and offer more back story.

It's even better than it is on the radio. You can get it and get more information about story core at storycore.org. 99% Invisible is Sam Green span to Laney Hall, Kurt Colessted, Katie Mingle, Avery, Truffleman, Sharif, Yousef, and me Roman Mars. We are a project of 91.7KALW San Francisco and produced out of the offices of Arxine, an architecture and interior's firm. In Beautiful, Downtown, Oakland, California. You can find this show and like the show on Facebook, you can follow us all on Twitter and you. Radio Tapio. From PRX.