We'd say, "Here comes Lillian.". I was in the Navy when I was 17 and it was there that I discovered that I was gay. The homosexual, bitterly aware of his rejection, responds by going underground. Raymond Castro:New York City subways, parks, public bathrooms, you name it. That's what gave oxygen to the fire. So anything that would set us off, we would go into action. John O'Brien:I knew that the words that were being said to put down people, was about me. 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. I met this guy and I broke down crying in his arms. Because if you don't have extremes, you don't get any moderation. Dick Leitsch:And I remember it being a clear evening with a big black sky and the biggest white moon I ever saw. Every arrest and prosecution is a step in the education of the public to the solution of the problem. 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. The lights came on, it's like stop dancing. Transcript Enlarge this image To commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Stonewall riots in New York City, activists rode their motorcycles during the city's 1989 gay-pride parade. Because he was homosexual. The newly restored 1984 documentary "Before Stonewall: The Making of a Gay and Lesbian Community," re-released to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the seminal Stonewall riots, remains a . 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. The cops would hide behind the walls of the urinals. Martin Boyce 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.". Dana Gaiser This documentary uses extensive archival film, movie clips and personal recollections to construct an audiovisual history of the gay community before the Stonewall riots. And, I did not like parading around while all of these vacationers were standing there eating ice cream and looking at us like we were critters in a zoo. A CBS news public opinion survey indicates that sentiment is against permitting homosexual relationships between consenting adults without legal punishment. Where did you buy it? 1984 documentary film by Greta Schiller and Robert Rosenberg, "Berlinale 2016: Panorama Celebrates Teddy Award's 30th Anniversary and Announces First Titles in Programme", "Guest Post: What I Learned From Revisiting My 1984 Documentary 'Before Stonewall', "See the 25 New Additions to the National Film Registry, From Purple Rain to Clerks", "Complete National Film Registry Listing", "Before Stonewall - Independent Historical Film", Before Stonewall: The Making of a Gay and Lesbian Community (Newly Restored), https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Before_Stonewall&oldid=1134540821, Documentary films about United States history, Historiography of LGBT in the United States, United States National Film Registry films, Short description is different from Wikidata, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, This page was last edited on 19 January 2023, at 05:30. David Huggins We could easily be hunted, that was a game. Things were just changing. WGBH Educational Foundation 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. That wasn't ours, it was borrowed. Tweet at us @throughlineNPR, send us an email, or leave us a voicemail at (872) 588-8805. From left: "Before Stonewall" director Greta Schiller, executive producer John Scagliotti and co-director Robert Rosenberg in 1985. Stonewall Forever is a documentary from NYC's LGBT Community Center directed by Ro Haber. Daily News Her most recent film, Bones of Contention, premiered in the 2016 Berlin International 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. Danny Garvin:Something snapped. Oddball Film + Video, San Francisco Martin Boyce:You could be beaten, you could have your head smashed in a men's room because you were looking the wrong way. Martin Boyce:It was thrilling. You know, all of a sudden, I had brothers and sisters, you know, which I didn't have before. Dick Leitsch:So it was mostly goofing really, basically goofing on them. Martin Boyce:And I remember moving into the open space and grabbing onto two of my friends and we started singing and doing a kick line. But, that's when we knew, we were ourselves for the first time. TV Host (Archival):Are those your own eyelashes? Martha Shelley:We participated in demonstrations in Philadelphia at Independence Hall. ITN Source I mean I'm talking like sardines. I mean you got a major incident going on down there and I didn't see any TV cameras at all. Seymour Pine, Deputy Inspector, Morals Division, NYPD:There were no instructions except: put them out of business. Yvonne Ritter:It's like people who are, you know, black people who are used to being mistreated, and going to the back of the bus and I guess this was sort of our going to the back of the bus. J. Michael Grey We didn't necessarily know where we were going yet, you know, what organizations we were going to be or how things would go, but we became something I, as a person, could all of a sudden grab onto, that I couldn't grab onto when I'd go to a subway T-room as a kid, or a 42nd street movie theater, you know, or being picked up by some dirty old man. Is that conceivable? And I had become very radicalized in that time. Seymour Pine, Deputy Inspector, Morals Division, NYPD:Our radio was cut off every time we got on the police radio. With this outpouring of courage and unity the gay liberation movement had begun. The windows were always cloaked. John O'Brien:Whenever you see the cops, you would run away from them. Mary Queen of the Scotch, Congo Woman, Captain Faggot, Miss Twiggy. Raymond Castro:If that light goes on, you know to stop whatever you're doing, and separate. Tommy Lanigan-Schmidt:Those of us that were the street kids we didn't think much about the past or the future. Lucian Truscott, IV, Reporter,The Village Voice:They started busting cans of tear gas. Seymour Pine, Deputy Inspector, Morals Division, NYPD:Well, I had to act like I wasn't nervous. They were afraid that the FBI was following them. But as visibility increased, the reactions of people increased. But the . Few photographs of the raid and the riots that followed exist. We were scared. Greenwich Village's Stonewall Inn has undergone several transformations in the decades since it was the focal point of a three-day riot in 1969. Danny Garvin:Bam, bam and bash and then an opening and then whoa. There are a lot of kids here. Giles Kotcher And it's that hairpin trigger thing that makes the riot happen. 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? In a spontaneous show of support and frustration, the citys gay community rioted for three nights in the streets, an event that is considered the birth of the modern Gay Rights Movement. 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. John O'Brien:They went for the head wounds, it wasn't just the back wounds and the leg wounds. The Underground Lounge Jerry Hoose:And we were going fast. And some people came out, being very dramatic, throwing their arms up in a V, you know, the victory sign. A word that would be used in the 1960s for gay men and lesbians. It was right in the center of where we all were. Lucian Truscott, IV, Reporter,The Village Voice:A rather tough lesbian was busted in the bar and when she came out of the bar she was fighting the cops and trying to get away. Linton Media It was first released in 1984 with its American premiere at the Sundance Film Festival and its European premiere at the Berlinale, followed by a successful theatrical release in many countries and a national broadcast on PBS. William Eskridge, Professor of Law:At the peak, as many as 500 people per year were arrested for the crime against nature, and between 3- and 5,000 people per year arrested for various solicitation or loitering crimes. 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. So you couldn't have a license to practice law, you couldn't be a licensed doctor. Trevor, Post Production It gives back a little of the terror they gave in my life. Interviewer (Archival):What type of laws are you after? And as I'm looking around to see what's going on, police cars, different things happening, it's getting bigger by the minute. It's very American to say, "You promised equality, you promised freedom." Fifty years ago, a riot broke out at the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in New York City's Greenwich Village. It was a real good sound to know that, you know, you had a lot of people out there pulling for you. And once that happened, the whole house of cards that was the system of oppression of gay people started to crumble. Calling 'em names, telling 'em how good-looking they were, grabbing their butts. And Vito and I walked the rest of the whole thing with tears running down our face. "Daybreak Express" by D.A. Martin Boyce:That was our only block. Eric Marcus, Recreation Still Photography 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. Windows started to break. Dan Bodner Today, that event is seen as the start of the gay civil rights movement, but gay activists and organizations were standing up to harassment and discrimination years before. He is not interested in, nor capable of a lasting relationship like that of a heterosexual marriage. Everyone from the street kids who were white and black kids from the South. National Archives and Records Administration Leaflets in the 60s were like the internet, today. Richard Enman (Archival):Present laws give the adult homosexual only the choice of being, to simplify the matter, heterosexual and legal or homosexual and illegal. Eventually something was bound to blow. Tommy Lanigan-Schmidt:As much as I don't like to say it, there's a place for violence. They raided the Checkerboard, which was a very popular gay bar, a week before the Stonewall. And these were meat trucks that in daytime were used by the meat industry for moving dead produce, and they really reeked, but at nighttime, that's where people went to have sex, you know, and there would be hundreds and hundreds of men having sex together in these trucks. We'll put new liquor in there, we'll put a new mirror up, we'll get a new jukebox." They didn't know what they were walking into. I actually thought, as all of them did, that we were going to be killed. 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. First Run Features I famously used the word "fag" in the lead sentence I said "the forces of faggotry." That this was normal stuff. Jimmy knew he shouldn't be interested but, well, he was curious. I really thought that, you know, we did it. A medievalist. Pennebaker courtesy of Pennebaker Hegedus Films 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. Mayor John Lindsay, like most mayors, wanted to get re-elected. Creating the First Visual History of Queer Life Before Stonewall Making a landmark documentary about LGBTQ Americans before 1969 meant digging through countless archives to find traces of. Jerry Hoose:And I got to the corner of Sixth Avenue and Eighth Street, crossed the street and there I had found Nirvana. Available on Prime Video, Tubi TV, iTunes. Tommy Lanigan-Schmidt He said, "Okay, let's go." It was one of the things you did in New York, it was like the Barnum and Bailey aspect of it. Virginia Apuzzo:It's very American to say, "This is not right." They can be anywhere. 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 . This documentary uses extensive archival film, movie clips . 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. Homosexuality was a dishonorable discharge in those days, and you couldn't get a job afterwards. The idea was to be there first. Somehow being gay was the most terrible thing you could possibly be. And a couple of 'em had pulled out their guns. We did use humor to cover pain, frustration, anger. For those kisses. Seymour Pine, Deputy Inspector, Morals Division, NYPD:Well, we did use the small hoses on the fire extinguishers. Raymond Castro:You could hear screaming outside, a lot of noise from the protesters and it was a good sound. This was ours, here's where the Stonewall was, here's our Mecca. John O'Brien:The election was in November of 1969 and this was the summer of 1969, this was June. 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. Slate:Boys Beware(1961) Public Service Announcement. Doric Wilson:In those days, the idea of walking in daylight, with a sign saying, "I'm a faggot," was horren--, nobody, nobody was ready to do that. Transcript A gay rights march in New York in favor of the 1968 Civil Rights Act being amended to include gay rights. It was not a place that, in my life, me and my friends paid much attention to. John Scagliotti 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's like, this is not right. Do you understand me?". TV Host (Archival):Ladies and gentlemen, the reason for using first names only forthese very, very charming contestants is that right now each one of them is breaking the law. Activists had been working for change long before Stonewall. And today we're talking about Stonewall, which were both pretty anxious about so anxious. Few photographs of the raid and the riots that followed exist. 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. It was an age of experimentation. That summer, New York City police raided the Stonewall Inn, a popular gay bar in Greenwich Village. Homo, homo was big. And it was fantastic. I was wearing my mother's black and white cocktail dress that was empire-waisted. Doric Wilson:And I looked back and there were about 2,000 people behind us, and that's when I knew it had happened. Doric Wilson:That's what happened Stonewall night to a lot of people. I had never seen anything like that. Abstract. They were the storm troopers. Never, never, never. Jerry Hoose:The police would come by two or three times a night. They call them hotels, motels, lovers' lanes, drive-in movie theaters, etc. 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. 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. Fred Sargeant:In the '60s, I met Craig Rodwell who was running the Oscar Wilde Bookshop. It said the most dreadful things, it said nothing about being a person. I mean I'm only 19 and this'll ruin me. 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. ", Martin Boyce:People in the neighborhood, the most unlikely people were starting to support it. And I just didn't understand that. But we had to follow up, we couldn't just let that be a blip that disappeared. 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. Ed Koch, Councilman, New York City:The Stonewall, they didn't have a liquor license and they were raided by the cops regularly and there were pay-offs to the cops, it was awful. I'm losing everything that I have. Ed Koch, mayorof New York City from1978 to 1989, discussesgay civil rights in New York in the 1960s. Louis Mandelbaum Other images in this film are either recreations or drawn from events of the time. Alan Lechner And we were singing: "We are the Village girls, we wear our hair in curls, we wear our dungarees, above our nellie knees." And I found them in the movie theatres, sitting there, next to them. The most infamous of those institutions was Atascadero, in California. "You could have got us in a lot of trouble, you could have got us closed up." Tommy Lanigan-Schmidt:What was so good about the Stonewall was that you could dance slow there. 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. And if we catch you, involved with a homosexual, your parents are going to know about it first. Seymour Pine, Deputy Inspector, Morals Division, NYPD:The moment you stepped out that door there would be hundreds facing you. Somebody grabbed me by the leg and told me I wasn't going anywhere. So in every gay pride parade every year, Stonewall lives. Andy Frielingsdorf, Reenactment Actors Danny Garvin:He's a faggot, he's a sissy, queer. Dick Leitsch:And that's when you started seeing like, bodies laying on the sidewalk, people bleeding from the head. Michael Dolan, Technical Advisors Revisiting the newly restored "Before Stonewall" 35 years after its premiere, Rosenberg said he was once again struck by its "powerful" and "acutely relevant" narrative. (158) 7.5 1 h 26 min 1985 13+. The police weren't letting us dance. The overwhelming number of medical authorities said that homosexuality was a mental defect, maybe even a form of psychopathy. 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. It eats you up inside not being comfortable with yourself. Danny Garvin:Everybody would just freeze or clam up. So I got into the subway, and on the car was somebody I recognized and he said, "I've never been so scared in my life," and I said, "Well, please let there be more than ten of us, just please let there be more than ten of us. And they were having a meeting at town hall and there were 400 guys who showed up, and I think a couple of women, talking about these riots, 'cause everybody was really energized and upset and angry about it. Martin Boyce:In the early 60s, if you would go near Port Authority, there were tons of people coming in. Seymour Pine, Deputy Inspector, Morals Division, NYPD:We told this to our men. 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. Narrator (Archival):Do you want your son enticed into the world of homosexuals, or your daughter lured into lesbianism? 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. All of the rules that I had grown up with, and that I had hated in my guts, other people were fighting against, and saying "No, it doesn't have to be this way.". WPA Film Library, Thanks to 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. John O'Brien:Heterosexuals, legally, had lots of sexual outlets. Alfredo del Rio, Archival Still and Motion Images Courtesy of 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. And here they were lifting things up and fighting them and attacking them and beating them. And this went on for hours. William Eskridge, Professor of Law: The 1960s were dark ages for lesbians and gay men all over America. Patricia Yusah, Marketing and Communications Homosexuals do not want that, you might find some fringe character someplace who says that that's what he wants. One time, a bunch of us ran into somebody's car and locked the door and they smashed the windows in. 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. My father said, "About time you fags rioted.". and someone would say, "Well, they're still fighting the police, let's go," and they went in. I never saw so many gay people dancing in my life. Dick Leitsch:Mattachino in Italy were court jesters; the only people in the whole kingdom who could speak truth to the king because they did it with a smile. The Gay Revolution: The Story of the Struggle, Queer (In)Justice: The Criminalization of LGBT People in the United States. Janice Flood To commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Stonewall riots in New York City, activists rode their motorcycles during the city's 1989 gay-pride parade. Martin Boyce:All of a sudden, Miss New Orleans and all people around us started marching step by step and the police started moving back. Danny Garvin:There was more anger and more fight the second night. Mike Wallace (Archival):The average homosexual, if there be such, is promiscuous. Before Stonewall 1984 Unrated 1 h 27 m IMDb RATING 7.5 /10 1.1K YOUR RATING Rate Play trailer 2:21 1 Video 7 Photos Documentary History The history of the Gay and Lesbian community before the Stonewall riots began the major gay rights movement.

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