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. 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. I am not alone, there are other people that feel exactly the same way.". Alfredo del Rio, Archival Still and Motion Images Courtesy of You were alone. It premiered at the 1984 Toronto International Film Festival and was released in the United States on June 27, 1985. These homosexuals glorify unnatural sex acts. Jerry Hoose:Who was gonna complain about a crackdown against gay people? We were thinking about survival. The New York State Liquor Authority refused to issue liquor licenses to many gay bars, and several popular establishments had licenses suspended or revoked for "indecent conduct.". Fifty years ago, a gay bar in New York City called The Stonewall Inn was raided by police, and what followed were days of rebellion where protesters and police clashed. We knew it was a gay bar, we walked past it. And it was those loudest people, the most vulnerable, the most likely to be arrested, were the ones that were doing the real fighting. Because its all right in the Village, but the minute we cross 14th street, if there's only ten of us, God knows what's going to happen to us.". Long before marriage equality, non-binary gender identity, and the flood of new documentaries commemorating this month's 50th anniversary of the Greenwich Village uprising that begat the gay rights movement, there was Greta Schiller's Before Stonewall.Originally released in 1984as AIDS was slowly killing off many of those bar patrons-turned-revolutionariesthe film, through the use of . We love to hear from our listeners! This was in front of the police. The events of that night have been described as the birth of the gay-rights movement. The homosexual, bitterly aware of his rejection, responds by going underground. That was our world, that block. The idea was to be there first. More than a half-century after its release, " The Queen " serves as a powerful time capsule of queer life as it existed before the 1969 Stonewall uprising. Finally, Mayor Lindsay listened to us and he announced that there would be no more police entrapment in New York City. The mob was saying, you know, "Screw you, cops, you think you can come in a bust us up? Danny Garvin:It was a chance to find love. They put some people on the street right in front ofThe Village Voiceprotesting the use of the word fag in my story. I didn't think I could have been any prettier than that night. John O'Brien:Cops got hurt. Jerry Hoose:I remember I was in a paddy wagon one time on the way to jail, we were all locked up together on a chain in the paddy wagon and the paddy wagon stopped for a red light or something and one of the queens said "Oh, this is my stop." There was at least one gay bar that was run just as a hustler bar for straight gay married men. It was a leaflet that attacked the relationship of the police and the Mafia and the bars that we needed to see ended. But as visibility increased, the reactions of people increased. It was a down at a heels kind of place, it was a lot of street kids and things like that. On June 27, 1969, police raided The Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in New York. From left: "Before Stonewall" director Greta Schiller, executive producer John Scagliotti and co-director Robert Rosenberg in 1985. 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 were scared. Milestones in the American Gay Rights Movement. Mary Queen of the Scotch, Congo Woman, Captain Faggot, Miss Twiggy. Hunted, hunted, sometimes we were hunted. Doric Wilson:And I looked back and there were about 2,000 people behind us, and that's when I knew it had happened. Dick Leitsch:There were Black Panthers and there were anti-war people. It was nonsense, it was nonsense, it was all the people there, that were reacting and opposing what was occurring. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. Atascadero was known in gay circles as the Dachau for queers, and appropriately so. The groundbreaking 1984 film "Before Stonewall" introduced audiences to some of the key players and places that helped spark the Greenwich Village riots. Doric Wilson:There was joy because the cops weren't winning. They were afraid that the FBI was following them. Newly restored for the 50th Anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, Before Stonewall pries open the . To celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Teddy Awards, the film was shown at the 66th Berlin International Film Festival in February 2016. And I just didn't understand that. Danny Garvin:With Waverly Street coming in there, West Fourth coming in there, Seventh Avenue coming in there, Christopher Street coming in there, there was no way to contain us. William Eskridge, Professor of Law:Ed Koch who was a democratic party leader in the Greenwich Village area, was a specific leader of the local forces seeking to clean up the streets. Patricia Yusah, Marketing and Communications Tommy Lanigan-Schmidt:The Stonewall pulled in everyone from every part of gay life. [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. And today we're talking about Stonewall, which were both pretty anxious about so anxious. 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. As president of the Mattachine Society in New York, I tried to negotiate with the police and the mayor. Revealing and. Mike Wallace (Archival):The average homosexual, if there be such, is promiscuous. It was an age of experimentation. Martha Shelley:They wanted to fit into American society the way it was. First you gotta get past the door. Glenn Fukushima In an effort to avoid being anachronistic . View in iTunes. Fred Sargeant Jerry Hoose Obama signed the memorandum to extend benefits to same-sex partners of federal employees. There may be some here today that will be homosexual in the future. But, that's when we knew, we were ourselves for the first time. Urban Stages 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. Mike Wallace (Archival):Two out of three Americans look upon homosexuals with disgust, discomfort or fear. Eric Marcus has spent years interviewing people who were there that night, as well as those who were pushing for gay rights before Stonewall. Other images in this film are Before Stonewall was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at the 1985 Sundance Film Festival. 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. We were going to propose something that all groups could participate in and what we ended up producing was what's now known as the gay pride march. They'd go into the bathroom or any place that was private, that they could either feel them, or check them visually. Martin Boyce:You could be beaten, you could have your head smashed in a men's room because you were looking the wrong way. 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. There were occasions where you did see people get night-sticked, or disappear into a group of police and, you know, everybody knew that was not going to have a good end. Fred Sargeant:The press did refer to it in very pejorative terms, as a night that the drag queens fought back. Before Stonewall. John van Hoesen We had been threatened bomb threats. People that were involved in it like me referred to it as "The First Run." And we all relaxed. American Airlines And then as you turned into the other room with the jukebox, those were the drag queens around the jukebox. I met this guy and I broke down crying in his arms. She was awarded the first ever Emmy Award for Research for her groundbreaking work on Before Stonewall. We'd say, "Here comes Lillian.". It was the only time I was in a gladiatorial sport that I stood up in. And, you know,The Village Voiceat that point started using the word "gay.". Martin Boyce 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. It said the most dreadful things, it said nothing about being a person. Dick Leitsch:And so the cops came with these buses, like five buses, and they all were full of tactical police force. It's not my cup of tea. by David Carter, Associate Producer and Advisor That night, the police ran from us, the lowliest of the low. And I found them in the movie theatres, sitting there, next to them. And I raised my hand at one point and said, "Let's have a protest march." And she was quite crazy. Martin Boyce:I wasn't labeled gay, just "different." All the rules were off in the '60s. Narrator (Archival):Sure enough, the following day, when Jimmy finished playing ball, well, the man was there waiting. Before Stonewall pries open the closet door, setting free dramatic stories from the early 1900's onwards of public and private existence as experienced by LGBT Americans. He pulls all his men inside. A person marching in a gay rights parade along New York's Fifth Avenue on July 7th, 1979. At least if you had press, maybe your head wouldn't get busted. The first police officer that came in with our group said, "The place is under arrest. It was a 100% profit, I mean they were stealing the liquor, then watering it down, and they charging twice as much as they charged one door away at the 55. Because that's what they were looking for, any excuse to try to bust the place. The New York Times / Redux Pictures John O'Brien:It was definitely dark, it was definitely smelly and raunchy and dirty and that's the only places that we had to meet each other, was in the very dirty, despicable places. And the Stonewall was part of that system. Narrator (Archival):This is one of the county's principal weekend gathering places for homosexuals, both male and female. They really were objecting to how they were being treated. Gay people were not powerful enough politically to prevent the clampdown and so you had a series of escalating skirmishes in 1969. I never saw so many gay people dancing in my life. Raymond Castro:If that light goes on, you know to stop whatever you're doing, and separate. John O'Brien:They went for the head wounds, it wasn't just the back wounds and the leg wounds. Chris Mara, Production Assistants Martin Boyce:It was thrilling. I mean I'm talking like sardines. It was not a place that, in my life, me and my friends paid much attention to. Tommy Lanigan-Schmidt:There were all these articles in likeLife Magazineabout how the Village was liberal and people that were called homosexuals went there. So you couldn't have a license to practice law, you couldn't be a licensed doctor. 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. Scott McPartland/Getty Images 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. Seymour Pine, Deputy Inspector, Morals Division, NYPD:We were looking for secret exits and one of the policewomen was able to squirm through the window and they did find a way out. Tires were slashed on police cars and it just went on all night long. Fred Sargeant:Three articles of clothing had to be of your gender or you would be in violation of that law. The events. Raymond Castro We knew that this was a moment that we didn't want to let slip past, because it was something that we could use to bring more of the groups together. Dick Leitsch:So it was mostly goofing really, basically goofing on them. Charles Harris, Transcriptions The very idea of being out, it was ludicrous. And here they were lifting things up and fighting them and attacking them and beating them. One of the world's oldest and largest gay pride parades became a victory celebration after New York's historic decision to legalize same-sex marriage. We heard one, then more and more. TV Host (Archival):And Sonia is that your own hair? Homosexuality was a dishonorable discharge in those days, and you couldn't get a job afterwards. You throw into that, that the Stonewall was raided the previous Tuesday night. And in a sense the Stonewall riots said, "Get off our backs, deliver on the promise." That's what gave oxygen to the fire. Jay Fialkov Nobody. Samual Murkofsky 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. Some of the pre-Stonewall uprisings included: Black Cat Raid, Los Angeles, California, 1967 Black Night Brawl, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, August 5, 1961. Martha Shelley Geoff Kole The last time I saw him, he was a walking vegetable. Well, little did he know that what was gonna to happen later on was to make history. Participants of the 1969 Greenwich Village uprising describe the effect that Stonewall had on their lives. 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. One time, a bunch of us ran into somebody's car and locked the door and they smashed the windows in. Here are my ID cards, you knew they were phonies. Raymond Castro:You could hear screaming outside, a lot of noise from the protesters and it was a good sound. The term like "authority figures" wasn't used back then, there was just "Lily Law," "Patty Pig," "Betty Badge." It was as bad as any situation that I had met in during the army, had just as much to worry about. 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." Dan Martino This, to a homosexual, is no choice at all. Abstract. It gives back a little of the terror they gave in my life. In addition to interviews with activists and scholars, the film includes the reflections of renowned writer Allen Ginsberg. Everyone from the street kids who were white and black kids from the South. The mayor of New York City, the police commissioner, were under pressure to clean up the streets of any kind of quote unquote "weirdness." But we're going to pay dearly for this. Raymond Castro:I'd go in there and I would look and I would just cringe because, you know, people would start touching me, and "Hello, what are you doing there if you don't want to be touched?" The Mafia owned the jukeboxes, they owned the cigarette machines and most of the liquor was off a truck hijacking. Slate:The Homosexual(1967), CBS Reports. Seymour Pine, Deputy Inspector, Morals Division, NYPD:They were sexual deviates. Alan Lechner This 1955 educational film warns of homosexuality, calling it "a sickness of the mind.". Like, "Joe, if you fire your gun without me saying your name and the words 'fire,' you will be walking a beat on Staten Island all alone on a lonely beach for the rest of your police career. And it would take maybe a half hour to clear the place out. In 1924, the first gay rights organization is founded by Henry Gerber in Chicago. 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. and someone would say, "Well, they're still fighting the police, let's go," and they went in. Gay people were never supposed to be threats to police officers. Andrea Weiss is a documentary filmmaker and author with a Ph.D. in American History. Louis Mandelbaum Danny Garvin:Something snapped. My father said, "About time you fags rioted.". Kanopy - Stream Classic Cinema, Indie Film and Top Documentaries . That's what happened on June 28, but as people were released, the night took an unusual turn when protesters and police clashed. Lauren Noyes. Virginia Apuzzo: I grew up with that. Director . Dick Leitsch:And I remember it being a clear evening with a big black sky and the biggest white moon I ever saw. Martin Boyce:Well, in the front part of the bar would be like "A" gays, like regular gays, that didn't go in any kind of drag, didn't use the word "she," that type, but they were gay, a hundred percent gay. Oh, tell me about your anxiety. Barak Goodman "Don't fire. But you live with it, you know, you're used to this, after the third time it happened, or, the third time you heard about it, that's the way the world is. The Gay Revolution: The Story of the Struggle, Queer (In)Justice: The Criminalization of LGBT People in the United States. Dick Leitsch:New York State Liquor Authority had a rule that one known homosexual at a licensed premise made the place disorderly, so nobody would set up a place where we could meet because they were afraid that the cops would come in to close it, and that's how the Mafia got into the gay bar business. Lucian Truscott, IV, Reporter,The Village Voice:The mob raised its hand and said "Oh, we'll volunteer," you know, "We'll set up some gay bars and serve over-priced, watered-down drinks to you guys." 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. Amber Hall William Eskridge, Professor of Law:All throughout the 60s in New York City, the period when the New York World's Fair was attracting visitors from all over America and all over the world. It was terrifying. 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. And that's what it was, it was a war. 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. Frank Kameny, co-founder of the Mattachine Society, and Shirley Willer, president of the Daughters of Bilitis, spoke to Marcus about being gay before the Stonewall riots happened and what motivated people who were involved in the movement.