The Stonewall Reader
A study guide of the New York Public Library’s 2019 book ‘The Stonewall Reader.’
Summary, part 4
During Stonewall
“Who exactly was and was not at the Stonewall uprising is probably the most debated question in both the scholarship and popular opinion” (p. 24).
This section is made up mostly of eyewitness accounts from those who were there at Stonewall and aims to answer the question, “if the Stonewall uprising was not the beginning of LGBTQ political activism and not the first time LGBTQ people fought back against police repression, then why was it singled out as a defining moment in our history?” (p. 25)
The accounts also can help answer some of the questions historians and others have about how Stonewall occurred as an event. There was a culture of resistance in America and this was a convergence of all of them. Stonewall was a spontaneous revolution. It was not a planned protest like many others, such as the March on Washington. Stonewall was a response to something happening in the moment.
“The Hairpin Drop Heard Around the World” by Dick Leitsch
Leitsch was a journalist who gave an eyewitness account of the uprising that occurred June 28th to 29th, in New York's Greenwich Village.
First Night
According to Leitch, the Police raided Stonewall Club, and this set off a series of events. He stated, “Plainclothes officers entered the club at about 2 a.m., armed with a warrant, and closed the place on grounds of illegal selling of alcohol. Employees were arrested and the customers told to leave” (p. 196). The police’s use of excessive force prompted the crowd that had gathered to start throwing coins at them. The police went into the bar and it was set on fire by the protesters.
Second Night
Stonewall management found all the money gone after police left and they decided to reopen the bar as a “free store” (p. 197). The “free store” was “open to all and with everything being given away, rather than sold” (Ibid). Tourists joined the growing crowd under the idea that there was protesting over the closure of a gay club. “Gay Power,” “We Want Freedom Now,” and “Equality for homosexuals” were some of the chants and slogans from the protests. The demonstration shifted from the Stonewall to the corner of the block. The Tactical Police Force (TPF) arrived to break the demonstration up. It ended early in the morning with 13 people arrested on Saturday, and four more arrested the next day.
After the arrests, “The Stonewall was again a ‘free store’ and the citizenry was treated to the sight of the cops begging homosexuals to go inside the bar that they had chased everyone out of a few nights before” (p. 203).
“1969 Mother Stonewall and the Golden Rats” by Thomas Lanigan-Schmidt
“The mystery of history happened again in the least likely of places” (p. 208).
In this essay, Lanigan-Schmidt describes their experience as a queen at Stonewall and the experience of being present during the police raid. All kinds of people came to Stonewall as a place of gathering: some were there who had been rejected by the army for being Queer, some, like Lanigan-Schmit, left their homes because their families did not want to accept them, and many were victims of hate crimes: one queen Lanigan Schmidt knew had a burn scar on her face because “her mother didn’t want men to be ‘tempted’ by her son’s beauty.” All kinds of people found themselves on the street and came together at places such as Stonewall.
Mother Stonewall was raided by the police while Schmidt was there: “It was not only a raid but a bust. Mother Stonewall was being violated. They forcibly entered her with nightsticks” (p. 207).
The battle that went on at Stonewall was just another battle for many people there because they faced discrimination like this constantly. The moment was not about creating a historical event, but about protecting a place where they could dance together. In reflection, Lanigan-Schmidt says, “Our Mother Stonewall was giving birth to a new era and we were the midwives” (p. 208).
“View from Inside: Full Moon over the Stonewall” by Howard Smith
Smith was a journalist shadowing police during their raid of the Stonewall and was inside the bar during the raid. Smith was specifically following Deputy Inspector Pine who was leading the raid. Once the patrons of Stonewall were forcibly removed, the scene continued to be tense. Smith noted that the turning point of the night was when the police tried to arrest one of the patrons. The police were aggressive and the surrounding crowd took notice, yelling “Police brutality” (p. 210). The crowd started throwing coins at the police and they moved inside the bar with Smith. Barricaded in Stonewall, the police tried to grab folks from the crowd, physically assaulting one man, as Smith describes. The man was later identified as Dave Van Ronk. The crowd outside continued to throw objects at the bar and sounded “like a powerful rage bent on vendetta” (p. 214).
The police inside Stonewall started to threaten to shoot those outside as the situation progressed. When the police squad arrived to disperse the crowd outside, Smith and the rest of the police exited the bar. The police’s justification was that Stonewall was an unlicensed establishment. It only happened that all of these unlicensed places served gay patrons. Smith also gathered the owners and managers of Stonewalls statement on the bar and its position:
“We are just honest businessmen who are being harassed by the police because we cater to homosexuals and because our names are Italian so they think we are part of something bigger. We haven’t done anything wrong and have never been convicted in no court. We have rights, and the courts should decide and not let the police do things like what happened here” (p. 216)
“View from Outside: Gay Power Comes to Sheridan Square” by Lucian Truscott IV
Truscott is a journalist who covered what was going on outside of Stonewall during the police raid and protest. From Truscott’s perspective, it started out as a small raid on Stonewall. Police released patrons one by one and the crowd started to grow outside. It became almost a performance, with patrons strutting out in defiance as the police released them from the bar.
“And Then I Danced” by Mark Segal
“Whoever assumes that a swishy queen can’t fight should have seen them, makeup dripping and gowns askew, fighting for their home and fiercely proving that no one would take it away from them.” (p. 233)
Segal founded the activist’s group Gay Youth and the newspaper Philadelphia Gay News. He had left his home of Philadelphia to go to New York, in search of a community they could see themselves in. He arrived in Greenwich Village, a counterculture hub in the 1960s. Segal attributed much of the foundation of the gay rights movement in the women’s movement. Those who participated in the Stonewall uprising are often referred to as a “Stonewall vet.”
“Stonewall was filled that night with the usual clientele: drag queens, hustlers, older men who liked younger guys, and stragglers like me” (p. 231). When the police raided Stonewall it caught many of its patrons by surprise. Despite that, they immediately resisted the police. Segal recounted, “The screams were not of fear, but resistance. That was the beginning of the Stonewall riots. It was not the biggest riot ever—it has been tremendously blown out of proportion—but it was still a riot” (p. 232). The crowd was challenging the police and protested the aggressiveness of the police.
All the anger that folks felt was directed at the police and was a culmination of emotions. Stonewall was never about one night. It was a catalyst to organize a movement and bring people together to fight back. Segal continued that, “The nights following the Stonewall raid consisted primarily of loosely organized speeches. Various LGBT factions were coming together publicly for the first time, protesting the oppressive treatment of the community” (p. 235).
The Action Group joined with other organizations and became the Gay Liberation Front (GLF). The GLF’s impact and activism has often been ignored in history. Stonewall was the presentation of the LGBTQ+ Community fighting back successfully and organizing movements in ways they hadn't before. As the jumping-off point for the GLF, Stonewall was the spark for this movement. Similar events were also occurring in tandem with Stonewall.
San Francisco’s Compton Cafeteria riot in 1966
Police were harassing drag queens at the Compton cafeteria. The staff at the cafeteria would specifically chastise the drag queens who frequented the place, telling them to “settle down” (pg. 240). These drag queens sustained the cafeteria by being consistent paying patrons. Management of the cafeteria worked to control these patrons specifically because they were drag queens. This led to an act of resistance on the part of the drag queens against the treatment they had been enduring.
The Dewey’s sit-in in Philadelphia in 1965
The Dewey sit-in happened before Compton but occurred for similar reasons. Again, the clientele was being targeted and harassed because of how they expressed themselves.
“The restaurant management decided not to serve people who demonstrated ‘improper behavior.’ The reality was that they didn’t want to serve homosexuals, especially those who didn’t wear the acceptable clothing. Meaning drag queens” (p. 239).
The Janus Society, a gay rights organization, had picketers at the site. The people involved in the protests didn't have much to lose at that point. Both Compton and Dewey’s are examples of how the mid-1960s Civil Rights movement influenced the gay community.
Revisionist History
Drag queens and Trans women have been left out of the history of protests. Revisionist history has been used to erase their contributions to the movement, and this has been accepted by popular culture: “Oppression within oppression was and is still of concern. Even recently, with the transgender issue finally being taken seriously, there is still a backlash from the community about including them in the general gay movement” (p. 238). Mark Segal states that “For some historians, drag queens are not the ideal representatives of the LGBT community” (p. 238).
With exclusions of certain people from the history of Stonewall and LGBTQ+ activism, there have also been discrepancies around Stonewall as a historical event. One of the fallacies is that Judy Garland’s death had anything to do with it. Segal points out that this trivializes what happened and the years of oppression experienced.
“The riot was about the police doing what they constantly did: indiscriminately harassing us. The police represented every institution of America that night: religion, media, medical, legal, and even our families, most of whom had been keeping us in our place. We were tired of it” (p. 241).
“Interview with Eric Marcus” by Morty Manford
“This festering wound, the anger of oppression and discrimination was coming out very fast at the point of Stonewall” (p. 251).
Morty Manford was a founding member of the Gay Activists Alliance. Manford described the patrons of Stonewall as a wide range of people, be they students, young, old, businessmen, and everything in between. Manford noted that the treatment of gay bars was drastically different than straight bars in that police raids were common. Despite that, gay bars were a mecca for people to meet others like them.
Manford talked about being at the Stonewall bar and what he saw. The Tactical Police Force/TPF was sent to Stonewall and the crowd rebelled against the TPF’s confrontation and assault. He spoke about the way the TPF was treating the crowd: “People who did not have identification or people who were underage and transvestites as a whole group were being detained. Those people who didn’t meet their standards were incarcerated temporarily in the coatroom” (p. 244). He pointed to a moment of change in the first minutes. A couple hundred LGBTQ+ people stood in front of the bar––they stood in defiance.