Dan Snow's History Hit - The Stonewall Uprising

Episode Date: June 18, 2023

Pride month happens in June in commemoration of the Stonewall Uprising that took place in the summer of 1969 after police undertook a routine raid on an LGBTQ+ bar in New York City and instead of submitting to the usual mistreatment, its patrons resisted. The unrest continued for several nights with clashes between LGBTQ+ individuals, their allies and the police. It escalated with protestors throwing bottles, bricks, and other objects at the police, who responded with force.The story of Stonewall has become something of a mythology. Dan is joined by award-winning broadcaster and writer Matthew Todd who untangles the many threads of hearsay and weaves the facts back together into an incredible story of community resilience and determination to fight back against injustice and oppression. The Stonewall Uprising marked a significant turning point in the LGBTQ+ rights movement in the US and worldwide but was just the beginning. As Matt explains, the history of Pride is about so much more than just what happened at the Stonewall Inn.If you're struggling with any of the issues raised in this episode, you can find help here: https://www.thetrevorproject.org/Produced by Mariana Des Forges and James Hickmann and edited by Dougal Patmore.Discover the past on History Hit with ad-free original podcasts and documentaries released weekly presented by world renowned historians like Dan Snow, Suzannah Lipscomb, Lucy Worsley, Matt Lewis, Tristan Hughes and more.Get 50% off your first 3 months with code DANSNOW. Download the app or sign up here.If you want to get in touch with the podcast, you can email us at [e-mail], we'd love to hear from you!You can take part in our listener survey here.

This is History's Heroes. People with purpose, brave ideas, and the courage to stand alone. Including a pioneering surgeon who rebuilt the shattered faces of soldiers in the First World War. You know, he would look at these men and he would say, don't worry, Sonny, you'll have as good a face as any of us when I'm done with you. Join me, Alex von Tunzelman, for History's Heroes. Subscribe to History's Heroes wherever you get your podcasts. Hi everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History. Let's start with a bit of history, personal history.

When I was born in 1978, it was illegal to be homosexual in Scotland. It was a crime to be homosexual. The story for LGBTQ civil rights over the last decades has been an incredibly difficult one, a very traumatic one for the people involved, but also a remarkably successful one. It's been described, in fact, as the most successful civil rights campaign in history. We now have openly gay senior politicians, figures in show business, athletics. We have a senior MP here in Britain, a man who's been on the podcast, Chris Bryant, who made history by celebrating the first gay civil partnership

in Parliament when he married his partner in Westminster, in the members' dining room overlooking the Thames, in 2010. We all know that we are a long way from real equality for everybody but it's astonishing how far we've come and I get a sense of that in this episode because I talked to Matthew Todd, he's an award-winning writer, he's a broadcaster, he's an occasional stand-up comedian which is a scary thing and he's written several books on the story of the LGBTQ movement. He's on the podcast. Now talk to me about the event that really kicked off what we know as Pride. It was a hot June night in 1969 in New York City, and things were about to get wild. Here's Matthew Todd. Enjoy.

T-minus 10. The Thomas bomb dropped on Hiroshima. God save the king. No black, white unity. Here's Matthew Todd. Enjoy. Matthew, thanks for coming on the pod. Thanks for having me. Nice to be here. Obviously, human beings have been gay, although many would have used other words and identities, and lesbians and bisexuals, etc., all the way back. So what do we mean by a history of pride? When do you identify that beginning and what's it mean? Is this the struggle for legal recognition and equality? Yeah, I'd say it's the struggle for legal recognition and equality,

but also social equality, striving for that, I guess. And they kind of both go on hand in hand. I mean, the political stuff is really, really interesting. I also find the cultural stuff fascinating because I think in a way that's had more impact. Even things like soap operas, you know, having characters in soap operas, I think those things have made a really big impact. it's funny because obviously we're doing this around Pride which is

the end of June usually around the world which is specifically to commemorate the Stonewall riots which happened at the end of June 1969 in Greenwich Village in New York but there were a lot of things going on before that and of course homosexuality was partially decriminalized in England and Wales in 1967. It wasn't until 1981 in Scotland. So things were happening before Stobald. I think there's a narrative, you know, we live in a very American centric world, don't we? And America likes to think that everything began with them and Stobald. That's not the case, but it's still an amazing story. And it's an amazing turning point. And I think it's a very visible thing. And obviously, that's why we have Pride Month in June.

And that's why we have Pride. That's why we have the rainbow flags everywhere that you can't avoid. So, yes, Stonewall was a kind of key moment, I'd say. Take me through what was going on there in the late 60s in the US. Well, the Stonewall riots were a riot at a gay bar that was raided on the night of June the 27th into the morning of June the 28th, 1969. Gay bars were illegal, so they were run by the mafia illegally who would have illicit arrangements with the police. So the locals who lived near these bars would often complain about, you know, the people, the salubrious people

kind of leaving the bars. And so they had this arrangement that the police would raid these bars, they would let the mafia know that they were coming. And so the mafia could make sure they weren't in the bar, they could take out most of the booze and take out the money from the registers and the police would raid the bars, arrest some people, hold people overnight, let them go. This was the same all over Manhattan. There was a number of bars. The Stonewall Inn was a particularly grubby bar. It was a real dive bar. There wasn't running water. There'd been cases of people catching hepatitis. It's become mythologized now. So there's a lot of discussion and debate about it and why it

happened then and why people kind of fought back for the first time, despite the fact that this was a kind of usual occurrence. And I think the key thing was that because the Stonewall Inn was so grubby, it was populated by very young people. So it was very normal for, I mean, it still happens now, but it's very, very common at that time, that if you came out to your parents, you'd be kicked out of home. So young people who would be kicked out of home by their parents all over America would go to these big cities like San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York. Greenwich Village, where Stonewall is, there's a park there. And so lots of young people would sleep in that park. And then they go to the Stonewall Inn, which was cheap, kind of sleazy, and dance. And that was a key thing as well, that it was a bar where they allowed you to dance, even though it was illegal, they allowed you to dance. It was a place for young people.

There's some school of thought that the Stonewall Inn was raided twice, that the police were upping their activity and trying to shut down as many bars as possible because people on Wall Street, you know, middle class men who were gay and married, leading double lives, were being blackmailed by people. Some of these young people were engaging in prostitution and so the blackmailing these older men so the police were taking it very seriously so they sent plainclothes officers into the inn just to check it was illegal to be dressed in i think more than three garments of the opposite sex so two female officers two male officers went in to check that yes this is definitely a gay bar there are definitely people doing doing that. There's definitely men dancing with men, women dancing with women.

There was a guy called Deputy Inspector Seymour Pine, who was the officer who led the raid. And I think about 1.20 in the morning, he went in, they turned the lights on, they said, police, this is a raid. And the music stopped. They lined everybody up. They would normally send everybody who was gender non-conforming. We didn't have those terms like transgender at that point. So who's to say exactly how people identified? They would send those people into the toilets, they would check their identification. If they were wearing the opposite gender clothes, they'd be arrested. They would check people's identification. And then the people they would release, they would let them go one by one. And normally, people would just dispersese they wouldn't want to be arrested they wouldn't

want to be associated with this police raid but that night was a very hot night some of the men were refusing to show their identification when the people released they didn't disperse they stood there and watched there was a growing anger uh what was happening and i had always been led to believe actually there's this kind of mythology that this all kicked off because everyone was upset because Judy Garland had died the week before. Wherever there's a piece of gay history, there's always a diva. And I'm sure people were upset by the fact that Judy Garland had died. She died in London. She was buried on that Friday, the Friday that happened. It was an incredible piece of history that she was buried. The ultimate gay icon who played Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, which is this kind of film that really connects with LGBT people

for unknown reasons. You know, it's not as if it's about gayness or whatever. So she had been buried that night. But actually, that turned out to be a report in a local newspaper, which was quite homophobic. And I think they referred to Queen Bees are stinging because they were all so upset that Judy had died and Judy had been buried. But actually, it wasn't true. What's really fascinating, actually, if you just look at the history of the 60s, where the civil rights movement was happening, Rosa Parks had protested and refused to sit at the back of the bus. There'd been all these massive assassinations like JFK and then Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King, I think, which was the year before. So this incredibly febrile, heady time

where people were demanding change and the Vietnam riots and then the Miss America protests when women kind of burnt some kind of female accoutrements. Everyone thinks they burnt bras, but they didn't actually. But there was this kind of, I think, a fever for social change. And I think that really keyed into gay people at that time and LGBT people, queer people, however you want to define them, feeling like this wasn't OK and that there was a time coming where people needed to revolt. So there was a very tense atmosphere outside the bar and some people were laughing and giggling.

It was kind of a heady atmosphere. Some people shouted things like gay power. Slowly, people were being let out. And then these kind of police wagons were turning up to take people away. Slowly, people were being let out. And then these kind of police wagons were turning up to take people away. We think a drag queen was being taken away, arrested. And she was kind of resisting arrest to some degree of a police officer. Police officer shoved her. She hit him with her handbag.

He punched her to the ground. And there were kind of like people responding, you know, people reacting when normally they should have just scattered. And then we think, and bearing in mind in mind actually with all of this history because sternwall has become this iconic thing everybody says they were there we don't really know exactly what happened there's so many different accounts there's so many different people and everyone claims to have been there and everyone claims to have thrown a punch and everyone claims to have done this and claims to have done that there's huge amounts of quite heated discussion and debate. But there's a great book called Stonewall by a guy called David Carter, who sadly died, I think, last year, which is, I think, the most authoritative account. He went and interviewed as many people as he could, people who were survivors and who were there and so on.

And he suggests that there was a described as a butch lesbian woman of color who was being arrested by the police and was resisting arrest. And she turned around and said, well, you're just standing there watching Do Something Guys. And that's the moment where someone, we believe it might have been a Puerto Rico man, who was watching, picked up a cobble from the ground and threw it. And then a full-scale riot kicked off. And it was very, very very intense the police were not expecting it their wagons were being rocked there were stones people picking up anything they could I get quite emotional talking about this actually not just from a gay perspective but I just think the world is such a crazy place and especially right now I think there's lots of things which

connect now I mean I'm very passionate about climate change and just support and all those kind of people. I think we forget how important people standing up for themselves is in history. And I think, especially in the UK, we're told that protest is wrong. And I think protest, and I'm not advocating riots by any means, but I think people standing up against authority when it's clearly wrong is just so fundamental to who we are as a democracy and a civilization, really. You listen to Dan Snow's History Hit, talking about pride more after this. Hey, I'm Don Wildman, and on American History Hit, my expert guests and I journey across the nation and through the years to uncover the stories that have made the United States.

From first flight to first ladies, from stitching the Star-Spangled Banner to striking gold in California, to shooting for the moon with Apollo, we've got you covered. Catch new episodes of American History Hit, a podcast by History Hit, every Monday and Thursday, wherever you get your podcasts.

This is History's Heroes. People with purpose, brave ideas, and the courage to stand alone. Including a pioneering surgeon who rebuilt the shattered faces of soldiers in the First World War. You know, he would look at these men and he would say, don't worry, Sonny, you'll have as good a face as any of us when I'm done with you. Join me, Alex von Tunzelman, for History's Heroes. Subscribe to History's Heroes wherever you get your podcasts. it's also just the way you tell it the how of you know people turn into violence is this last resort this how they've been dispossessed they've been thrown out of home they're sleeping on the streets

and now they're being treated like this by the police by the mafia and it's just this kind of this bestial cry out and yeah i agree you can feel that how emotional that must have been that moment absolutely I mean and when you consider as well I mean I'm sure gay people know and it's not just gay people that face problems in the world is it of course we know that but to not be able to be yourself with your parents I mean most people gay people know that now when you're young when you first realize who you are to not be able to socialize to not be able to have a guilt-free kind of sex life, let alone a romantic life, let alone be able to have a relationship or to be open about the fact at those times,

you know, if you're in a partnership living with somebody, people having to lie and pretend. And either the U.S. Postal Service at that point would report people who were receiving gay magazines through the Post. You could be fired legally for your job, like you could could be here women would have their children legally taken away from them just because they were lesbian or bisexual and people were sent to mental institutes because of their sexuality i mean it's i think decades of rage really erupted on that night it's funny because it's what we celebrate now it's what pride is now it's a commemoration of that but it was quite You know, the police ended up barricading themselves back in the bar that they had come to raid. There were people throwing Molotov cocktails. Deputy Inspector Seymour Pine, who I think died in the early 2000s, maybe it was the late 90s, but he said obviously he regretted it. And he's

aware that he played this key part in history. But he said that they were fearing for their lives, the police at that point, because this huge mob was just rampaging at the bar that they were all locked in. And they were starting to break through and they had drawn their guns. The crowd were about to break in. The police would have shot them, could have shot a hell of a lot of people on that night. But then reinforcements turned up and kind of pushed the crowd on. But it did continue. It continued for two days over that weekend. And it's such a strange thing because gayness and the LGBTQ community, you know, there's trans people and there's gender non-conforming people and there's drag queens and there's this kind of real intense connection with entertainment and cabaret. And that's partly

because we've had to live our lives in bars and kind of certainly like with Paul O'Grady during the time of the 80s and AIDS these were like Dame Vera Lynn for the gay community you know people coming in and keeping people going in bars so that night there were drag queens and maybe people we might consider to be trans who all lined up and were kind of taunting the police and chanting at them we are the Stonewall girls we wear our hair in curls they were just kind of taunting them through kind of entertainment and like high kicking their legs in like big long lines of people it was an incredible thing but i think the key reason there had actually been a few pushbacks from people in the years before

there was a skirmish at a place called the cooper's donut bar in los angeles just off skid row where lots of gender non-conforming people very near a place that was used as a gay club. And the police had raided that bar and there'd been a skirmish there. There's also a place called the Black Cat Tavern. And also, strangely enough, the Black Cat Bar, one was in San Francisco, one was in Los Angeles. There'd been kind of small kickbacks against the police there, but they don't really get reported. Everyone focuses on Stonewall. And I think the key reason for that is there was a guy called Craig Rodwell, who had opened New York's first gay bookstore. I think it was called the Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookstore in Manhattan. And he had also dated Harvey Milk, the famous supervisor of San Francisco, who was sadly murdered within a year of taking office. He was played by Sean Penn in the film Milk, which won Oscars and things. Penn in the film Milk, which won Oscars and things. Harvey Milk had actually split up with him, but he and his then partner, a guy called Fred Sargent, were walking back. They weren't out to the Stonewall, but they were walking back to Greenwich Village that night and came across

this thing. And I think Craig is someone that is a real key person in gay history that we don't understand. I don't think most gay people know about him or talk about him, but he was really key because he was a young person and very media savvy. And he realized that this could be a galvanizing moment. So the key thing he did was phone up the local press, phone up the New York Times, all the local media, as well as lots of other gay people to say, come down here, this is happening. This is a moment we can take advantage of. And so the press reported what had happened over that weekend. And I think that's the key thing. It gave this kind of profile to the fact that the community was fighting back. After it all finished, they then organized. So he, Craig Rudwell, got his partner, Fred Sargent, a woman called Brenda Howard, and a few other people got together. They would have these meetings, but how can we

capitalize on this? And so a year afterwards, they held what is considered to be the first gay pride event, which was the Christopher Street Memorial Day. That was basically the first gay pride in New York, which happened at the end of June in 1970 to commemorate the Stonewall uprising, riots, whatever you want to call it. And that's where it's all come from, basically. What was the immediate aftermath of the riots, though? A year later, it was commemorated and there was an event, but did the policing get heavier, more aggressive? And in the battle of public opinion, what happened? No one really took it seriously. I mean, even though it's considered to be this seismic event now, it wasn't at that time. The bar was

boarded up. They shut the bar afterwards. There's always been this push and pull in the gay community between kind of respectability politics and people who think we should be a bit more radical. I mean, this happens in all politics, doesn't it, in all movements. But that was a very strong point. So even at that time, there were lots of older people who did support what was happening. But there were lots of older people saying, oh, no, don't do this. You shouldn't be kicking off. You shouldn't be complaining.

You're going to draw more attention to us. We should just let things lie. So in the aftermath, I don't think a huge amount did change. It wasn't until they did the first Pride event, essentially, a year later, and which also happened in Chicago and Los Angeles and San Francisco. So there were networks of people that came together. There was the first big male gay group for political rights was called the Mattachine Society, which started in 1950, I think it was, by a communist called Harry Hay. And that's kind of contributed to what happened at Stonewall, because they were doing pickets, they were holding placards, and they had a thing called a sip-in, where they went to a bar

in Manhattan, and they said, we are gay men, please serve us a drink, because that was a radical thing to do. So there was this kind of growing movement in America already. And there was also a group called the Daughters of Belitis, which was set up in 1955 by a lesbian couple, which they set up just as a social group because they didn't know any other lesbian women. And again, it's another thing. People can't imagine what it's like to feel completely isolated

because people just could not. It was so risky to come out. So they started that as a social group. Gradually, they became more politicized and eventually combined to some degree with the Mattachine society. So all this kind of political awakening was happening, which led up to the Stonewall riots. Also after Stonewall, they set up what was called the Gay Liberation Front. And that then was set up in the UK. There was a UK group. So at the same time, That then was set up in the UK. There was a UK group.

So at the same time, UK was growing in confidence, becoming more political. And then we had the first impromptu gay pride march in the UK, which I think was just up the road from where I'm now in Highbury Fields, where they were having a picnic and then they decided to have a little march at the end of, I think it was November 1970. And the police were there and weren't particularly supportive. Apparently some people were giving thumbs up and clapping, and other people were more aggressive and expressing negative reactions towards them. What's the purpose of organising a march to commemorate those riots? Is it about being seen? Is it, as you say, like walking into a bar and asking for a drink, even though you're gay? Like what was the initial purpose? Just banding being in public together did that give strength and solace yeah i'd say it's all those things i mean it's still that now i mean it's very social

yeah it's a protest isn't it i mean there's a picture in my book pride of not the very first i think it's the third gay pride march in london the very first proper one we had that first one but the proper one was 1972 july 1972 and on the picture in my book we've got these people holding placards that say things like homosexuals are revolting so again i think just to re-emphasize just how oppressive it was you know no gay mps no gay celebrities huge numbers of people closeted this narrative that basically if you came out as gay, you'd end up killing yourself. And I'm sure, you know, suicides are disproportionate even now. So I'm sure it must have been much worse then.

So, yeah, so it's a political march. It's a social thing because people can have a nice time and socialize. It's really important just to be with people who are like you, but also just the visibility, I think. And that's still what prides are arguably about now. You know, we're seeing a backlash, a really massive backlash, certainly in America and certainly here. You know, there's a lot of constant narrative that trans people are about to collapse civilization. So it's about saying, look, the strength in numbers and saying, look, we're here and we're people. And a friend of mine who's trans actually would say, how did it change for gay people? And I think the key thing was that people

came out. And it's not always easy. It takes a lot of bravery. But I think coming out, showing the world that there are LGBTQ people in every workplace, in every street, in every family, whether people accept it or like it, there are, that's fact. So it's all of those things, I think. it or like it there are that's fact so it's all of those things i think and after those riots after those first pride marches it's interesting how the landmarks come sort of thick and fast don't they the mile posts go past in terms of achieving equality um i learned from your book 1973 the american psychiatric association removed homosexuality from its list of mental disorders but within decades you've got full recognition of same-sex relationships, gay people in the military, the senior levels of government. I guess it felt like a long time, but perhaps when we look back, in a

way, it's remarkable how far we've come since the late 60s. Well, Peter Tatchell always talks about it being the most successful human rights movement in history. That just so radically changed so quickly. But I don't imagine it felt like that at the time. It certainly didn't feel like that to me. I mean, I came out when I was 16 in 1990. And I could never have imagined we'd have same-sex marriage, considering how hostile the world was then. You know, there were surveys at the time that showed that the vast majority of people thought homosexuality was mostly or always wrong. Peter Tatchell's been physically assaulted because

he was such a public figure, you know, multiple times had teeth knocked out, had bullets posted through his letterbox. I mean, I remember the, you know, the front page of The Sun when East Enders had its first gay character and the headline was EastEnders. And I remember seeing that. I remember my friends and my mum, my friends seeing that and it's just completely hostile and also of course AIDS in the 80s throughout the 70s you had this growing confidence and you had people coming out David Bowie said that he was bisexual and then Elton John came out which I don't think Elton gets enough credit for the fact that he was the biggest rock and pop star on the planet selling zillions and zillions of records and he said in an interview with Rolling Stone acknowledged that he was bisexual at that time and his career really

took a massive hit from that and then there were all these films you know like the Rocky Horror Show and Cabaret and La Cage a Faux and theatre plays and things like that that contributed but then AIDS happened and set everything back I mean just the carnage that occurred you know President Reagan I don't think said the word AIDS for two or three years after thousands of people were dying. There's a famous audio clip of his press secretary at the time when someone had asked about AIDS. And the guy says something like, have you got AIDS? Maybe I've got AIDS.

Just laughing and joking about it. I mean, the world, prime ministers and presidents and all the rest of them, just completely failed to take it seriously, because it was mostly gay and bisexual men in the West and people who've been using drugs. It just was an appalling time. But what I think is also really fascinating about that, that through the carnage of the 80s, and that's when I was a teenager, and I mean, my other book is called Straightjacket. And it's about mental health, about the mental health impacts of growing up LGBT, gay especially. And it's absolutely damaged me growing up during that time. And the vast majority of people I know, the amount of people I have known who have died of drug overdoses or killed themselves is unbelievable.

It's almost like I've stopped counting now. That's not to say everything's really bleak, because that's a minority, but we do have disproportionately higher numbers of addiction and body image issues and all these kind of things. And it's because we've grown up in this time where you're told that you're not acceptable. But the positive that did come out of the 80s, which were the real low point, was in 1989 Stonewall was set up

and then outraged with Peter Tatchell the year afterwards. The same thing happened in America. You had ACT UP and a group called Queer Nation who were fighting for gay rights and also fighting for better access to drugs for HIV and AIDS. So those things really galvanized people. And actually, the media helped at that point. There's kind of fight back that came about. And Stonewall were great. There's, like I said earlier on, about the division between respectability politics and people who are a bit more radical,

like you see now with Just Up Oil and people who made Greenpeace or people that you think should be a bit more conservative. With the gay story, certainly in the UK, I think we realised that you need both of those groups. So you'd have Peter Tatchell and Outrage, who I'm sure you'll remember back at the time, the Daily Mail called him public enemy number one.

You know, he staged protests in, I think, on Easter service with the Archbishop of Canterbury and held up these big signs. And they did similar things to climate change protesters. They lay in roads and blocked traffic and they were very radical and they called out the police. They got their hands dirty and, you know, a bit more kind of gritty.

Whereas Stonewall were a bit more formal. They had lots of dinners and they had the big equality show, which I worked on, which was really great. And celebrities and lobbying MPs and wearing suits and ties. And I think actually there was a big tension between those two groups and those two tactics. And they were really at each other's throats in the early 90s. But I think everybody would agree now that you needed both.

people to kick off and cause a fuss and upset people that then drives the kind of elected officials to discuss what can be done on a more formal, legislative, can't say the word, legislative, that word, change the laws. So yeah, I think you need both those tactics. Well, that's a really interesting thought to leave it on. And as you say, with huge contemporary resonance there. Matthew Todd, thank you very much for coming on to talk about Pride. What is the book called? It's called Pride, the Story of the LGBTQ Equality Movement in all good bookshops. All good bookshops. Thank you for coming on. Thanks for having me. me. This is History's Heroes. People with purpose, brave ideas, and the courage to stand alone, including a pioneering surgeon who rebuilt the shattered faces of soldiers in the First World War. You know, he would look at these men and he would say, don't worry, Sonny, you'll have as good a face as any of us when I'm done with you. Join me, Alex von Tunzelman, for History's Heroes.

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