The Stonewall Inn: 53 Years Later
Explore the explosive events that sparked LGBTQ+ liberation at Stonewall Inn. If you are looking to learn what really happened the night at The Stonewall Inn Riots, then stick around as we explore LGBTQ+ history together. In this audio only episode, we will dive into what the world looked like for LGBTQ+ people prior to the uprising, what really happened that faithful night, and the impact and legacy of The Stonewall Inn today.
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📕 TABLE OF CONTENTS 📕
00:00 Start
01:12 Introduction
06:08 Prior to Stonewall
07:22 That Faithful Night: The Stonewall Inn Uprising
15:27 Stonewall's Legacy
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Hi, welcome to Closeted History! Your number #1 spot to learn the Queer and Trans history you never knew! To learn more, check out our website ➡️ [www.closetedhistory.com](http://www.closetedhistory.com)
My name is Destiny (she/they) and I am the creator behind the podcast. Educator, creative, and fellow LG(B)T(Q)+ community member.
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Full Transcript
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Hey everyone, this is Destiny Clarke from "DiscoverED with Destiny," and you're listening to "Closeted History: LGBTQ+ Stories in the Past," the show where together we out the queer history you never knew. It's all about education, learning, and making the LGBTQ+ stories of the past that have previously been hidden from our society more accessible for everyone.
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Welcome to the very first episode of "Closeted History: LGBTQ+ Stories of the Past." I'm your host, Destiny Clarke, and let's get learning. This episode is all about the historic night 53 years ago that changed the world for LGBTQ+ rights and liberation. It's arguably one of the most important moments in LGBTQ+ history, and I'm so excited to talk to you about it. In this episode, we will dive into what the world looked like for LGBTQ+ people prior to the uprising, what really happened that faithful night, and the impact and legacy of the Stonewall Inn today.
Let's begin by acknowledging that it did not start at Stonewall. While Stonewall is important, there were many prior gay rights movements before 1969. So first, you have the Daughters of Bilitis. They were the first lesbian rights group in the United States, founded in 1955. Then you have the Mattachine Society, which was originally called the Mattachine Foundation and began as a secret organization in LA in the year 1950. This organization is also responsible for the Sip-In at Julius's, which was a staged sip-in where they would go into a bar, say that they were part of the LGBTQ+ community, and wait to either be served or to be turned away. Those who were turned away ended up suing. The LGBTQ+ movement in the world dates back to 1897 in Berlin with Magnus Hirschfeld's organization, which was the first gay rights group.
If you're interested in hearing more about any of these movements or groups, be sure to send me a message on the podcast Instagram page at @closetedhistory to let me know what you'd like to see on the show. I just want to acknowledge that there were movements and groups fighting for LGBTQ+ rights prior to the Stonewall Uprising, which is a really common misconception in LGBTQ+ history.
Unfortunately, violent police raids were the norm for queer spaces and bars. I found an article published by The Advocate that listed 30 infamous police raids of gay bars and bathhouses. There are several raids recounted all over the globe included in the list, and some as late as 2016. I'll leave it linked in the show notes, but there were a few that I wanted to highlight.
The first is New York's first anti-gay raid, and this happened at the Ariston Bathhouse, which eventually led to the 1903 Ariston trials. So, on February 21st, 1903, two undercover police officers came to the bathhouse after spending several weeks collecting evidence against the people who went there. And at 1:45 a.m., a group of police officers entered the Ariston Bathhouse and blocked the exits of the building so no one could escape. Out of the total 78 men in the bathhouse, the raid resulted in 34 arrests and 16 charges of sodomy. The rest were let go with a warning. Twelve of the men were sent to trial that same year, of which five of those trials actually have transcripts that have survived the years and are viewable today. It's definitely worth checking out some of the language and the way that they were talking with each other. I'll also leave that link down below for you. And seven of those men received sentences of multiple years in prison. Unfortunately, as with many of these raids, this information isn't as widely known as The Stonewall Inn uprising, but it's still an important part of setting the scene prior to that night at Stonewall.
So, there are two more raids I'd like to highlight with you. One is at the Black Cat in 1967. On this occasion, it was New Year's Eve, and the police burst in as soon as the balloons dropped to mark the new year. The undercover cops used force and their weapons to terrorize the bar patrons, leading to the beating and cuffing of 14 people. Two men were arrested for kissing and required to later become registered sex offenders. And the bartenders suffered a ruptured spleen. The events at the Black Cat inspired writers to create a newsletter by the activist group Personal Rights in Defense and Education, which is the acronym PRIDE that we now know today as The Advocate magazine, which is a prominent LGBTQ+ publication that has won many awards and accolades. So, it's really cool that this event kind of inspired them to take over that newsletter and to turn it into what we know as The Advocate today.
The last is the raid at the Dover Hotel in 1969. So, this hotel was nicknamed the Dover, and it was popular with LA's LGBTQ+ community because it served as an affordable place to just meet up with other members of the community and thus was subjected to raids frequently as well. On March 9th, 1969, Howard Flynn checked into the hotel under the pseudonym J. McCann. He later was arrested by two undercover cops who dragged him down the stairs and beat him so badly that multiple witnesses thought he died on the scene. To explain his injuries, the police claimed that Flynn kicked open the door and fell out onto the Hollywood Freeway. He died shortly after arriving at the hospital, and there were marches and rallies in response to his violent death. But in the end, no one was ever held accountable for his murder.
I read an article that was published in March of 2021 that claims that the LAPD has opened an internal affairs event investigation due to the inconsistencies and questions raised after a full transcript of the inquest has been made available online. So, we'll have to see what happens with this event, but at the end of the day, no one was really held accountable. And this event, in particular, happened almost four months before the Stonewall Inn Uprising, and so I think that this event and the violence that was experienced really set things up to kind of come to a head at Stonewall, because at this point, the LGBTQ+ community was tired of being mistreated, tired of no one being held accountable for the harm that's being done to the community.
And so, that brings us to that faithful night at The Stonewall Inn. So, The Stonewall Inn is a bar in New York City's Greenwich Village and served as a gathering place for the LGBTQ+ community. It was a safe place for many gay men and unhoused youth at the time. However, the bar itself was described as dirty, run-down, and even called a hellhole. While it did serve as a safe place for the LGBTQ+ community members, it wasn't the only gay bar in town, nor was it this idyllic place that it has sometimes been described as.
So, unfortunately, at this time in New York, the State Liquor Authority of New York refused to issue liquor licenses to gay bars. And so, as a result, the mob took advantage of this opportunity. They owned most of the gay bars in Greenwich Village, and so they would bribe the police to kind of turn a blind eye and continue their operations. And unfortunately, the mob provided really poor conditions for both workers and patrons, with safety and health violations. It's also noted that the mob owners would sometimes extort and blackmail their patrons, so they would threaten to publicly out their patrons if they didn't pay large sums of money to protect the privacy of their sexuality.
The night of the uprising, Stormé DeLarverie has been quoted as saying, "It was a rebellion, it was an uprising, it was a civil rights disobedience—it wasn't no damn riot." So, the Stonewall Inn Uprising was important because it showed that the LGBTQ+ community was willing to fight for their rights. The rebellion also helped to bring more visibility to the LGBTQ+ community and their struggles at this time.
So, you can picture it—it was in the hot early morning hours of Saturday, June 28, 1969, and eight police officers entered the Stonewall Inn. They arrested the employees for selling alcohol without a license. They roughed up many of its patrons, cleared out the bar, and in accordance with a New York criminal statute that authorized the arrest of anyone not wearing at least three articles of gender-appropriate clothing, they took several people into custody. And so, I was, like, when I read this, I was, like, "No way." And so, I looked up the New York criminal statute that was used to take people into custody, and it was commonly referred to as the "three-piece law." And so, I'd be really interested to look more into how laws like this influenced the way that the LGBTQ+ community was prosecuted and mistreated through anti-LGBTQ+ laws like this one. It would be really interesting to tie that into what we see now with laws too. So, again, if you're into this idea, let me know over on Instagram, because I definitely want to hear from you.
But, so, the accounts vary over exactly what kicked off the riots that night or the uprising that night. But according to witness reports, the crowd erupted after police roughed up Stormé DeLarverie. I hope I'm saying that correctly. But so, which I looked up the pronouns for Stormé, and several places listed she/her. But I saw on a couple of sites that Stormé actually preferred he/him the most, so those are going to be the pronouns that I use for him moving forward. But so, that night, when the crowd is erupting, it happened because he complained that his handcuffs were too tight, and an officer, in response, hit him on the head with a baton. And according to an eyewitness account, Stormé yelled at the crowd, "Why don't you guys do something?"
There are so many key figures like Stormé DeLarverie, Sylvia Rivera, Marsha P. Johnson, Miss Major Griffin-Gracy, and it's impossible to name them all because it really was like a collective group effort to change the way that LGBTQ+ people were being treated in the U.S. Many credit Johnson for the first throw that sparked the riots. However, Johnson said that she didn't arrive at the bar until the riot was already happening, and she admitted this in a 1987 podcast with historian Eric Marcus. Despite many accounts of the uprising that early morning, many have noted that she did climb a lamppost and she threw a heavy object that was in a bag and ended up shattering a police car window. So still a pretty important role in that night. And Marsha's close friend and fellow activist, Sylvia Rivera, she's also been credited for throwing the first bottle at the police, but in a 2001 interview, she denies this and says that she threw the second one. So, despite neither Marsha or Sylvia claiming to be the first to resist the police that night, they were both dedicated to the trans and queer Liberation movement. They founded STAR in 1970, which was an activist organization that worked to provide housing and support for LGBTQ+ youth and sex workers. And this organization was groundbreaking in the Liberation movement, and it really served as a model for other and future organizations.
So, that night, it has been debated whether it was really bricks or bottles or something else that was thrown that early morning, but the bar was set on fire, and the riots lasted a total of six days.
So, let's take a look at those days. The first night of the rioting settled down around 4 a.m. after police officers were barricaded inside of Stonewall itself, and the protesters outsmarted the police by running away and circling back behind the officers as they were marching on Christopher Street. On June 28th and 29th, the following days, The Stonewall Inn was reopened despite the damage it suffered the first night, and more supporters showed up to show their support through protest. So more police were called, and the crowd was beaten and tear-gassed at this time. This continued through the early hours of the morning when the crowd dispersed.
From June 29th to July 1st, 1969, we have some LGBTQ+ activists who are continuing to gather at Stonewall, and they're spreading information and building community. And while the police also return, it was much less confrontational as it was initially on the first night. And then, finally, on July 2nd, the last day of the uprising, LGBTQ+ activists protested the media's response and newspaper coverage of the events. So, there were several homophobic slurs, some inaccurate reporting, and pieces of media that really caused some anger amongst the community because of the way that the events were being reported on. And so, this served as the very last day of the Stonewall Inn uprising.
So, let's talk about the error and kind of what Stonewall's Legacy is. So, Stonewall is important to study and understand because it helped create the Gay Liberation Front. And so, they planned a march on the first anniversary of the Stonewall Inn riots. And I won't say too much else because this is going to be the focus of the next episode, which will be released on June 15th. Stonewall has been made into a National Monument by former President Barack Obama. Today, the site of the uprisings is recognized as a National Historic Landmark, which includes the bar, Christopher Park, and the streets where the events took place. It received its National Monument designation on June 24th, 2016, making it the U.S.'s first National Monument designated for an LGBTQ+ Historic Site.
All right, so let's wrap up this episode. So, the leaders and icons of the uprising at Stonewall remind us why intersectionality is so important. Donald Bell of Chicago, a former dean of students at several colleges, says, "Stonewall called attention to a group of people who lacked basic civil rights. That's why Marsha's visibility and advocacy remain important," he says. "She and a number of others who lived at the intersection between racism and homophobia were political agitators that helped advance the mindset of society." The icons' advocacy, in this quote, shows us the importance of understanding how our identities are multi-layered and that we must advocate for all marginalized groups in order to become more equitable and inclusive in our future.
So, in conclusion, the Stonewall Inn Uprising was a turning point in the fight for LGBTQ+ rights. It's important to understand how we got to where we are and how far we've come, and that this event really paved the way for the LGBTQ+ rights movements and future generations.
Thanks for making it all the way to the end of the episode with me. You can find the transcript and all the links listed in the show notes. I'd love to hear what you thought of this episode. You can send me a message on the podcast Instagram at @closetedhistory or reach out to me via my website, discoveredwithdestiny.com/contact.
If you'd like to support the podcast, the best way to do so is to share an episode with a friend and leave a review. I hope you continue to learn more LGBTQ+ history with me in the next episode and as we embark on our learning journey together. As always, thank you for listening. You are important, and your story matters. Until the next time, friend.
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