Jerry Hoose:Gay people who had good jobs, who had everything in life to lose, were starting to join in. I'm losing everything that I have. Paul Bosche Stonewall: A riot that changed millions of lives - BBC News 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 was nonsense, it was nonsense, it was all the people there, that were reacting and opposing what was occurring. Dick Leitsch:You read about Truman Capote and Tennessee Williams and Gore Vidal and all these actors and stuff, Liberace and all these people running around doing all these things and then you came to New York and you found out, well maybe they're doing them but, you know, us middle-class homosexuals, we're getting busted all the time, every time we have a place to go, it gets raided. Audience Member (Archival):I was wondering if you think that there are any quote "happy homosexuals" for whom homosexuality would be, in a way, their best adjustment in life? Amber Hall Seymour Pine, Deputy Inspector, Morals Division, NYPD:We had maybe six people and by this time there were several thousand outside. And it's that hairpin trigger thing that makes the riot happen. BEFORE STONEWALL - Alliance of Women Film Journalists Fred Sargeant:Things started off small, but there was an energy that began to flow through the crowd. A word that would be used in the 1960s for gay men and lesbians. Cause I was from the streets. The cops were barricaded inside. Narrator (Archival):Sure enough, the following day, when Jimmy finished playing ball, well, the man was there waiting. The Underground Lounge and someone would say, "Well, they're still fighting the police, let's go," and they went in. David Carter, Author ofStonewall:Most raids by the New York City Police, because they were paid off by the mob, took place on a weeknight, they took place early in the evening, the place would not be crowded. Getty Images It was one of the things you did in New York, it was like the Barnum and Bailey aspect of it. I was wearing my mother's black and white cocktail dress that was empire-waisted. People standing on cars, standing on garbage cans, screaming, yelling. And if enough people broke through they would be killed and I would be killed. 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. And the cops got that. Martin Boyce:That was our only block. Kanopy - Stream Classic Cinema, Indie Film and Top Documentaries . LGBTQ+ History Before Stonewall | Stacker With this outpouring of courage and unity the gay liberation movement had begun. Noah Goldman 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. Watch Before Stonewall | Prime Video - amazon.com This 1968 Film Put Drag Queens In The Spotlight Before Stonewall - HuffPost Doug Cramer Tommy Lanigan-Schmidt:So you're outside, and you see like two people walking toward these trucks and you think, "Oh I think I'll go in there," you go in there, there's like a lot of people in there and it's all dark. and I didn't see anything but a forest of hands. They were afraid that the FBI was following them. Documentary | Stonewall Forever Because that's what they were looking for, any excuse to try to bust the place. Martin Boyce:In the early 60s, if you would go near Port Authority, there were tons of people coming in. Raymond Castro:New York City subways, parks, public bathrooms, you name it. Leroy S. Mobley Dr. Socarides (Archival):I think the whole idea of saying "the happy homosexual" is to, uh, to create a mythology about the nature of homosexuality. Except for the few mob-owned bars that allowed some socializing, it was basically for verboten. Martin Boyce:And then more police came, and it didn't stop. Jerry Hoose:I was chased down the street with billy clubs. I was in the Navy when I was 17 and it was there that I discovered that I was gay. People cheer while standing in front of The Stonewall Inn as the annual Gay Pride parade passes, Sunday, June 26, 2011 in New York. TV Host (Archival):That's a very lovely dress too that you're wearing Simone. Oddball Film + Video, San Francisco 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. The documentary "Before Stonewall" was very educational and interesting because it shows a retail group that fought for the right to integrate into the society and was where the homosexual revolution occurred. Then the cops come up and make use of what used to be called the bubble-gum machine, back then a cop car only had one light on the top that spun around. Tweet at us @throughlineNPR, send us an email, or leave us a voicemail at (872) 588-8805. Somebody grabbed me by the leg and told me I wasn't going anywhere. First Run Features David Carter, Author ofStonewall:There was also vigilantism, people were using walkie-talkies to coordinate attacks on gay men. Mike Nuget Before Stonewall (1984) - IMDb Tommy Lanigan-Schmidt:We would scatter, ka-poom, every which way. There are a lot of kids here. Few photographs of the raid and the riots that followed exist. A New York Police officer grabs a man by the hair as another officer clubs a man during a confrontation in Greenwich Village after a Gay Power march in New York. It was the only time I was in a gladiatorial sport that I stood up in. So anything that would set us off, we would go into action. John O'Brien:I was very anti-police, had many years already of activism against the forces of law and order. Milestones in the American Gay Rights Movement. Even non-gay people. The events that took place in June 1969 have been described as the birth of the gay-rights movement, but that's only partially true. And, it was, I knew I would go through hell, I would go through fire for that experience. And the harder she fought, the more the cops were beating her up and the madder the crowd got. I would wait until there was nobody left to be the girl and then I would be the girl. If there had been a riot of that proportion in Harlem, my God, you know, there'd have been cameras everywhere. And if we catch you, involved with a homosexual, your parents are going to know about it first. I mean I'm talking like sardines. Homosexuality was a dishonorable discharge in those days, and you couldn't get a job afterwards. William Eskridge, Professor of Law: The 1960s were dark ages for lesbians and gay men all over America. We were thinking about survival. Where did you buy it? Mayor John Lindsay, like most mayors, wanted to get re-elected. I was proud. They are taught that no man is born homosexual and many psychiatrists now believe that homosexuality begins to form in the first three years of life. Before Stonewall: The Making of a Gay and Lesbian Community We were winning. Seymour Pine, Deputy Inspector, Morals Division, NYPD:Well, I had to act like I wasn't nervous. And the police were showing up. Eventually something was bound to blow. I told the person at the door, I said "I'm 18 tonight" and he said to me, "you little SOB," he said. I mean it didn't stop after that. It's very American to say, "You promised equality, you promised freedom." You had no place to try to find an identity. It was a way to vent my anger at being repressed. William Eskridge, Professor of Law:The Stonewall riots came at a central point in history. Gay people were never supposed to be threats to police officers. Because one out of three of you will turn queer. You needed a license even to be a beautician and that could be either denied or taken away from you. Revisiting 'Before Stonewall' Film for the 50th Anniversary | Time Heather Gude, Archival Research 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. Sophie Cabott Black He pulls all his men inside. And once that happened, the whole house of cards that was the system of oppression of gay people started to crumble. John O'Brien:The election was in November of 1969 and this was the summer of 1969, this was June. John O'Brien:Our goal was to hurt those police. Fred Sargeant:Three articles of clothing had to be of your gender or you would be in violation of that law. Oh, tell me about your anxiety. And then there were all these priests ranting in church about certain places not to go, so you kind of knew where you could go by what you were told not to do. But as we were going up 6th Avenue, it kept growing. I was never seduced by an older person or anything like that. 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. And there was like this tension in the air and it just like built and built. This documentary uses extensive archival film, movie clips . Fred Sargeant:When it was clear that things were definitely over for the evening, we decided we needed to do something more. In 1969 the police raided the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in New York City's Greenwich Village, leading to three nights of rioting by the city's gay community. Calling 'em names, telling 'em how good-looking they were, grabbing their butts. And it's interesting to note how many youngsters we've been seeing in these films. Available on Prime Video, Tubi TV, iTunes. So I run down there. It was not a place that, in my life, me and my friends paid much attention to. 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. The first police officer that came in with our group said, "The place is under arrest. 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. 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 Martha Shelley:Before Stonewall, the homophile movement was essentially the Mattachine Society and Daughters of Bilitis and all of these other little gay organizations, some of which were just two people and a mimeograph machine. Not even us. I first engaged in such acts when I was 14 years old. I could never let that happen and never did. I mean you got a major incident going on down there and I didn't see any TV cameras at all. I entered the convent at 26, to pursue that question and I was convinced that I would either stay until I got an answer, or if I didn't get an answer just stay. I was celebrating my birthday at the Stonewall. Virginia Apuzzo:What we felt in isolation was a growing sense of outrage and fury particularly because we looked around and saw so many avenues of rebellion. If you came to a place like New York, you at least had the opportunity of connecting with people, and finding people who didn't care that you were gay. Raymond Castro:We were in the back of the room, and the lights went on, so everybody stopped what they were doing, because now the police started coming in, raiding the bar. Doric Wilson:Somebody that I knew that was older than me, his family had him sent off where they go up and damage the frontal part of the brain. 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 . Danny Garvin:There was more anger and more fight the second night. And there was tear gas on Saturday night, right in front of the Stonewall. Things were just changing. Raymond Castro:You could hear screaming outside, a lot of noise from the protesters and it was a good sound. 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. Historic Films That was scary, very scary. You see these cops, like six or eight cops in drag. A few of us would get dressed up in skirts and blouses and the guys would all have to wear suits and ties. Lucian Truscott, IV, Reporter,The Village Voice:It was a bottle club which meant that I guess you went to the door and you bought a membership or something for a buck and then you went in and then you could buy drinks. And it would take maybe a half hour to clear the place out. But as visibility increased, the reactions of people increased. Martin Boyce:Oh, Miss New Orleans, she wouldn't be stopped. Lucian Truscott, IV, Reporter,The Village Voice:All of straight America, in terms of the middle class, was recoiling in horror from what was happening all around them at that time, in that summer and the summer before. The history of the Gay and Lesbian community before the Stonewall riots began the major gay rights movement. Before Stonewall (1984) - Plot Summary - IMDb The events of that night have been described as the birth of the gay-rights movement. Raymond Castro:Incendiary devices were being thrown in I don't think they were Molotov cocktails, but it was just fire being thrown in when the doors got open. You know, we wanted to be part of the mainstream society. You cut one head off. I mean they were making some headway. Queer was very big. 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. The Mafia owned the jukeboxes, they owned the cigarette machines and most of the liquor was off a truck hijacking. J. Michael Grey It's the first time I'm fully inside the Stonewall. PDF BEFORE STONEWALL press kit - First Run Features I mean does anyone know what that is? Gay people were told we didn't have any of that. 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. And she was quite crazy. Saying I don't want to be this way, this is not the life I want. Before Stonewall (1984) Movie Script | Subs like Script I actually thought, as all of them did, that we were going to be killed. 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. Narrator (Archival):This is one of the county's principal weekend gathering places for homosexuals, both male and female. Jorge Garcia-Spitz John O'Brien:They had increased their raids in the trucks. All of this stuff was just erupting like a -- as far as they were considered, like a gigantic boil on the butt of America. (158) 7.5 1 h 26 min 1985 13+. 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. Ed Koch, mayorof New York City from1978 to 1989, discussesgay civil rights in New York in the 1960s. 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. Mike Wallace (Archival):The average homosexual, if there be such, is promiscuous. Original Language: English. My father said, "About time you fags rioted.". But everybody knew it wasn't normal stuff and everyone was on edge and that was the worst part of it because you knew they were on edge and you knew that the first shot that was fired meant all the shots would be fired. But that's only partially true.