July 8, 2009 • 14 mins
On June 28, 1969, police raided the Stonewall Inn, one of the few bars that welcomed gay patrons. Learn how this raid triggered the first major gay rights protest in U.S. history in this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm editor Kandis Keener, joined by fellow editor Katie Lambert. Hey, Candice, Here, Katie.
Today we're going to talk about the Stonewall Riots, which
(00:23):
was the beginning of the gay rights movement. And this
was a listener request that has come up several times,
and unfortunately we just missed the anniversary of the riots.
So here we are a couple of weeks later, finally
touching on this topic that deserves some history class time.
And to give some background, we're going to talk a
little bit about homosexuality at the time the Stonewall Riots
(00:45):
occurred in nineteen sixty nine, and then homosexuality was still
considered a mental illness. It was in the Diagnostic and
Statistical Manual, which is what psychiatrists use to figure out
what's wrong with you as a sociopathic disorder, and you
could be arrested and put in prison for life for
(01:06):
an act of homosexual sex. The FBI was tracking homosexuals
and seeing where they went and who their friends were.
The Post Office was keeping track of any sort of
homosexual materials that were going through the mail, and it
wasn't a good time to be gay. And in New York,
whereas we'll learn later, this genemal riots actually occurred, there
(01:29):
was a criminal statute that said anyone who wasn't wearing
at least three articles of gender appropriate clothing could be
taken into police custitute too. So whether you were a homosexual,
or someone who was transgendered, or even someone who was
just a transvestite, you still fell into this this grouping
of illegal people's And because homosexuality was considered a mental illness,
(01:54):
therapy is like electroshock therapy and lobotomy, UM were used
to quote unquote cure you. And had a couple good
quotes from people at the time. UM Bishop Geen Robinson
said that life before Stonewall was scary. Indeed, when I
was growing up, homosexual wasn't even a word you said
out loud. Anyone who was that way either committed suicide
or wound up a drug addict or alcoholic. And Eric
(02:16):
Marcus said it was not uncommon in those days for
gay people to attempt suicide. I remember many young people
who I met telling me about their attempted suicides. It
was not uncommon to see somebody with stitch marks on
their wrists. So we're talking about a pretty bleak time
to be a part of this subculture. But in Greened's
village in New York City, there was a mafia bar
called the Stone Wall in where these people felt welcome.
(02:39):
It was sort of a haven for them, and not
only for them, but people from others states who heard
about it would make a pilgrimage of sorts to New
York to to visit there, and the Stone Wall was
the place to be. It was this nasty dive bar,
but you could dance there and they didn't have a
liquor license because gay bars weren't allowed to have liquor licenses,
which is why was a mafia. Gay bars weren't allowed
(03:01):
to exist to exist that much less goal license. Um.
But it was pretty gross place. They didn't really care
about cleanliness and it was just the kind of place
she went if you wanted to dance and go out
and hang out with a bunch of other gay people.
And during this era, police frequently made raids on bars,
but because a gangster had paid off police to leave
(03:23):
it alone, uh Stanwell largely went unbothered for quite some
time and then on I wouldn't really call it an
auspicious day because it's sort of strange that it coincided,
but not too strange. But on the day of Judy
Garland's funeral, interestingly enough, Stonewall was was raided and it
(03:45):
was the second time that week actually, and this is
June in nineteen sixty nine, and again raids weren't unusual,
so it wasn't a huge deal at first. The police
walked in and the special cool dancing lights were turned off,
and it was kind of a code. Once the real
lights came on, Hey, everybody stopped dancing, stopped touching. Police
(04:06):
are in the place. And it was in the early
morning hours on June twenty eight that the police shut
it down and took all of the employees into custody
because they were operating and serving without a liquor license,
and according to that New York statute I mentioned earlier,
they also took some transvestites into custody as well. And
as the people walked out of the bar, because the
(04:27):
two hundred people who were there were mostly able to leave,
they were walking by and posing and the crowd would
cheer as they came out and everything at first seemed
like just another Friday night raid, but the crowd didn't disperse,
and in fact, more and more people came and gathered
until they were nearly four hundred that night, and they
(04:48):
began talking back to the police, and the police actually
had to call for backup and barricaded themselves inside the bar.
And some eye witnesses account which I heard on an
NPR story back on anniversary fort anniversary of the General
Rights said that people were chanting things like police brutality,
(05:09):
killed the cops, We're not going to take this anymore.
Someone through a Molotov cocktail someone else tore up a
parking meter and actually used it to try to beat
down the police barricade. So in the past there had
been rather passive reactions to these police rates. But something
about this night, and I'm not sure people have put
a finger on precisely what it was, but um As
(05:32):
Allen Ratner, uh and openly gay journalist, says it was
sort of like that moment in the civil rights movement
where Rosa Park said that she sat down because her
feet hurt. She said that this night people decided that
they didn't want to be pacifists. Anymore. They wanted to
take an active stand for who they were. People started
off just throwing things like pennies, and then it escalated
(05:54):
to bricks, bottles, garbage and like you said, a parking meter,
and they started setting fires and the tactical police force
came in and that's when things got even uglier because
they brought out the billy clubs and there are people
lying on the ground bruised and beaten and bloody, and
so eventually the crowd did disperse that night, but perhaps
(06:15):
to the police surprised, they came back the following night
and for several nights thereafter, and so we had a
series of riots that were protesting how coarsely the police
treated the patrons of stern Wall. And Saturday was more
people came to the bar and they put signs all
over it about gay power and gay pride and again
(06:37):
they weren't going to take this anymore. That was the end,
and one of the signs said Inspector Smith looted our money, jukebox,
cigarette machine, telephones, safe cash register and the boys tips.
And the tactical police force was called in on Saturday
as well, and there were crowds all over the streets
which they were breaking up, even though a lot of
them had nothing to do with the Stonewall riots whatsoever,
(07:00):
and in general acting a little bit aggressive toward the crowds.
And Sunday it was still going on, and Alan Ginsburg
was hanging around and said, gay power, isn't that great.
We're one of the largest minorities in the country ten percent.
You know, it's about time we did something to assert
ourselves and was walking down the streets saying, defend the fairies,
(07:20):
and they were also chanting, we are the Stonewall girls.
We wear our hair and curls, we wear no underwear,
we show our pubic hair, we wear our dungarees above
our nelly knees. And I apologize for the coarseness, but
I did not make it up. But what was so
significant about the Stonewall Riots was that it was what
most people point at as the the catalyst for the
(07:43):
gay rights movement. And like Katie had said, the word
homosexual wasn't even used in the language. But after Stonewall,
the Gay Liberation Front was formed, and it was actually
the first organization to include the word gay in its title,
which was a huge l too openly identify yourself as
being gay. And then a newspaper named Gay was also launched.
(08:06):
And a year after stone Wall, which would have been
June nineteen seventy, there were Gay Rise Parade in Los Angeles, Chicago,
San Francisco, and in New York and today, of course
every June and several cities around the world there are
other gay Pride marches. But what is perhaps the most
important lesson to be learned about the inception of the
(08:29):
gay rights movement, and halsdone Will kicked that off, is
that a lot of the people who participated in the
riots were homeless adolescents. And you can't underestimate the damaging
effect being a homosexual in that time had on people.
Like Katie was saying, it was classified as a mental illness,
and so a lot of people who were gay turned
(08:51):
to prostitution, They took drugs, They were unemployed because many
places wouldn't allow homosexuals to be employed. They weren't accepted anywhere.
Make it outright fire you if you admitted that you
were on a se exactly. And a man who's called
one of the founding fathers of the gay rights movement,
Dr Frank Cameney, actually was fired from his job. He
(09:11):
was employed by the government. He had his pH d
in astronomy from Harvard and he was a member of
the US Map Service, part of the U. S Civil
Service Commission. And you couldn't be a federal employee if
you were gay. And this was back in nineteen fifty
seven that he was fired, and he knew, and he
(09:33):
was one of the first people to openly speak out
against this kind of mistreatment. He knew that it was wrong,
and he actually went too far as to file a
petition with the Supreme Court. And this is a direct
quote from him. He says, to my knowledge, it was
the first gay rights legal brief filed, and that was
in January nineteen sixty one, and in March nineteen sixty one,
(09:53):
the Supreme Court denied that petition, but reflecting on the
opportunities denied him because of his homosexuality, he points out
that that Map Service actually became incorporated into NASA, and
he says that he can imagine himself having worked as
an astronomer at NASA. Again, to quote him, for the
remainder of my professional career, and then he sort of
(10:15):
joked a little bit and said that he might have
been an astronaut or one of the first men to
be on the moon. And even though he's joking, it's
it's a bitter sweet reflection because what opportunities were denied
to other people based on their their sexual preferences. And
so in the nineteen fifties, the Managing Society and the
(10:37):
Daughters of Belidas were part of what was called the
homophile movement to stamp out sodomy laws and promote tolerance
and understanding. But this was largely a literary movement. It
wasn't a political effort. It was about printing for people
to read. It was about putting ideas into literature, but
not necessarily into practice because people weren't afforded those rights.
(10:58):
And so not until Stone Wall, that pivotal turning point,
did the movement become political and actually started to make
progress and become visible as well, which was one of
the things that Harvey Milk really tried to do as
the first openly gay man was elected to any office
of meaning. Really, he said that visibility was the key,
(11:18):
and there's a quote from him about never using the
elevator at city Hall, always take the staircase because it
is a better grander entrance. But when he was elected,
a woman wrote to him and said, I thank god
I have lived long enough to see my kind emerge
from the shadows and join the human race. And he
was very much involved with the Greenwich Village gay community
(11:40):
as well. So it was, you know, seeing one of
their own go to San Francisco and rise in the ranks.
And even though there was a gay community in Greenwich Village,
many historians would argue that there was never a cohesive
group of homosexuals until the Stonewall riots. People were so
downtrodden and so oppressed that they were, you know, they
(12:00):
were of themselves. You know, you had mentioned that there
were a lot of suicide attempts, people of very bleak existences.
But not until this turning point, and not really until
stone Wall, where there was a almost a salon of
like minds to come together and to find fellowship, did
this change really emerge and people became a community with
the voice and with a unified thought and deciding to
(12:23):
stop living double lives and maybe try for some more openness.
And so today, if you look at some of the
issues that the gay rights movement have yet to tackle,
we have things like marriage, retirement, financial security, and even
elder care. And there are many dissenting voices now speaking
out against the president of the United States, saying that
(12:45):
they've they've been hoping for and they thought that they
had been promised certain what we consider rights, but they
would consider rights they're hoping to retain, and perhaps in
their lifetime they would see marriage legalized. For the community
was very much behind Obama and his election process, and
I think some people are disappointed with maybe some of
(13:08):
his promises not being kept thus far. And of course,
the news changes on a daily basis, and so by
the time this podcast publishes, it will all be old news.
But for the sake of not politicizing our content and
presenting the facts, it is a definite perspective that people
out there should consider that the gay rights movement has
come so far, but many people feel that it's stalled
(13:28):
right now exactly and hasn't gone far enough exactly. But
we were very happy to share this important moment in
history for all of you, and for those of you
requested the topic, we thank you too, And for more background,
please visit the website at how stuff works dot com
for more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
how stuff works dot com and be sure to check
(13:50):
out the stuff you missed in History Class blog on
the how stuff works dot com home page. In
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm editor Kandis Keener, joined by fellow editor Katie Lambert. Hey, Candice, Here, Katie.
Today we're going to talk about the Stonewall Riots, which
(00:23):
was the beginning of the gay rights movement. And this
was a listener request that has come up several times,
and unfortunately we just missed the anniversary of the riots.
So here we are a couple of weeks later, finally
touching on this topic that deserves some history class time.
And to give some background, we're going to talk a
little bit about homosexuality at the time the Stonewall Riots
(00:45):
occurred in nineteen sixty nine, and then homosexuality was still
considered a mental illness. It was in the Diagnostic and
Statistical Manual, which is what psychiatrists use to figure out
what's wrong with you as a sociopathic disorder, and you
could be arrested and put in prison for life for
(01:06):
an act of homosexual sex. The FBI was tracking homosexuals
and seeing where they went and who their friends were.
The Post Office was keeping track of any sort of
homosexual materials that were going through the mail, and it
wasn't a good time to be gay. And in New York,
whereas we'll learn later, this genemal riots actually occurred, there
(01:29):
was a criminal statute that said anyone who wasn't wearing
at least three articles of gender appropriate clothing could be
taken into police custitute too. So whether you were a homosexual,
or someone who was transgendered, or even someone who was
just a transvestite, you still fell into this this grouping
of illegal people's And because homosexuality was considered a mental illness,
(01:54):
therapy is like electroshock therapy and lobotomy, UM were used
to quote unquote cure you. And had a couple good
quotes from people at the time. UM Bishop Geen Robinson
said that life before Stonewall was scary. Indeed, when I
was growing up, homosexual wasn't even a word you said
out loud. Anyone who was that way either committed suicide
or wound up a drug addict or alcoholic. And Eric
(02:16):
Marcus said it was not uncommon in those days for
gay people to attempt suicide. I remember many young people
who I met telling me about their attempted suicides. It
was not uncommon to see somebody with stitch marks on
their wrists. So we're talking about a pretty bleak time
to be a part of this subculture. But in Greened's
village in New York City, there was a mafia bar
called the Stone Wall in where these people felt welcome.
(02:39):
It was sort of a haven for them, and not
only for them, but people from others states who heard
about it would make a pilgrimage of sorts to New
York to to visit there, and the Stone Wall was
the place to be. It was this nasty dive bar,
but you could dance there and they didn't have a
liquor license because gay bars weren't allowed to have liquor licenses,
which is why was a mafia. Gay bars weren't allowed
(03:01):
to exist to exist that much less goal license. Um.
But it was pretty gross place. They didn't really care
about cleanliness and it was just the kind of place
she went if you wanted to dance and go out
and hang out with a bunch of other gay people.
And during this era, police frequently made raids on bars,
but because a gangster had paid off police to leave
(03:23):
it alone, uh Stanwell largely went unbothered for quite some
time and then on I wouldn't really call it an
auspicious day because it's sort of strange that it coincided,
but not too strange. But on the day of Judy
Garland's funeral, interestingly enough, Stonewall was was raided and it
(03:45):
was the second time that week actually, and this is
June in nineteen sixty nine, and again raids weren't unusual,
so it wasn't a huge deal at first. The police
walked in and the special cool dancing lights were turned off,
and it was kind of a code. Once the real
lights came on, Hey, everybody stopped dancing, stopped touching. Police
(04:06):
are in the place. And it was in the early
morning hours on June twenty eight that the police shut
it down and took all of the employees into custody
because they were operating and serving without a liquor license,
and according to that New York statute I mentioned earlier,
they also took some transvestites into custody as well. And
as the people walked out of the bar, because the
(04:27):
two hundred people who were there were mostly able to leave,
they were walking by and posing and the crowd would
cheer as they came out and everything at first seemed
like just another Friday night raid, but the crowd didn't disperse,
and in fact, more and more people came and gathered
until they were nearly four hundred that night, and they
(04:48):
began talking back to the police, and the police actually
had to call for backup and barricaded themselves inside the bar.
And some eye witnesses account which I heard on an
NPR story back on anniversary fort anniversary of the General
Rights said that people were chanting things like police brutality,
(05:09):
killed the cops, We're not going to take this anymore.
Someone through a Molotov cocktail someone else tore up a
parking meter and actually used it to try to beat
down the police barricade. So in the past there had
been rather passive reactions to these police rates. But something
about this night, and I'm not sure people have put
a finger on precisely what it was, but um As
(05:32):
Allen Ratner, uh and openly gay journalist, says it was
sort of like that moment in the civil rights movement
where Rosa Park said that she sat down because her
feet hurt. She said that this night people decided that
they didn't want to be pacifists. Anymore. They wanted to
take an active stand for who they were. People started
off just throwing things like pennies, and then it escalated
(05:54):
to bricks, bottles, garbage and like you said, a parking meter,
and they started setting fires and the tactical police force
came in and that's when things got even uglier because
they brought out the billy clubs and there are people
lying on the ground bruised and beaten and bloody, and
so eventually the crowd did disperse that night, but perhaps
(06:15):
to the police surprised, they came back the following night
and for several nights thereafter, and so we had a
series of riots that were protesting how coarsely the police
treated the patrons of stern Wall. And Saturday was more
people came to the bar and they put signs all
over it about gay power and gay pride and again
(06:37):
they weren't going to take this anymore. That was the end,
and one of the signs said Inspector Smith looted our money, jukebox,
cigarette machine, telephones, safe cash register and the boys tips.
And the tactical police force was called in on Saturday
as well, and there were crowds all over the streets
which they were breaking up, even though a lot of
them had nothing to do with the Stonewall riots whatsoever,
(07:00):
and in general acting a little bit aggressive toward the crowds.
And Sunday it was still going on, and Alan Ginsburg
was hanging around and said, gay power, isn't that great.
We're one of the largest minorities in the country ten percent.
You know, it's about time we did something to assert
ourselves and was walking down the streets saying, defend the fairies,
(07:20):
and they were also chanting, we are the Stonewall girls.
We wear our hair and curls, we wear no underwear,
we show our pubic hair, we wear our dungarees above
our nelly knees. And I apologize for the coarseness, but
I did not make it up. But what was so
significant about the Stonewall Riots was that it was what
most people point at as the the catalyst for the
(07:43):
gay rights movement. And like Katie had said, the word
homosexual wasn't even used in the language. But after Stonewall,
the Gay Liberation Front was formed, and it was actually
the first organization to include the word gay in its title,
which was a huge l too openly identify yourself as
being gay. And then a newspaper named Gay was also launched.
(08:06):
And a year after stone Wall, which would have been
June nineteen seventy, there were Gay Rise Parade in Los Angeles, Chicago,
San Francisco, and in New York and today, of course
every June and several cities around the world there are
other gay Pride marches. But what is perhaps the most
important lesson to be learned about the inception of the
(08:29):
gay rights movement, and halsdone Will kicked that off, is
that a lot of the people who participated in the
riots were homeless adolescents. And you can't underestimate the damaging
effect being a homosexual in that time had on people.
Like Katie was saying, it was classified as a mental illness,
and so a lot of people who were gay turned
(08:51):
to prostitution, They took drugs, They were unemployed because many
places wouldn't allow homosexuals to be employed. They weren't accepted anywhere.
Make it outright fire you if you admitted that you
were on a se exactly. And a man who's called
one of the founding fathers of the gay rights movement,
Dr Frank Cameney, actually was fired from his job. He
(09:11):
was employed by the government. He had his pH d
in astronomy from Harvard and he was a member of
the US Map Service, part of the U. S Civil
Service Commission. And you couldn't be a federal employee if
you were gay. And this was back in nineteen fifty
seven that he was fired, and he knew, and he
(09:33):
was one of the first people to openly speak out
against this kind of mistreatment. He knew that it was wrong,
and he actually went too far as to file a
petition with the Supreme Court. And this is a direct
quote from him. He says, to my knowledge, it was
the first gay rights legal brief filed, and that was
in January nineteen sixty one, and in March nineteen sixty one,
(09:53):
the Supreme Court denied that petition, but reflecting on the
opportunities denied him because of his homosexuality, he points out
that that Map Service actually became incorporated into NASA, and
he says that he can imagine himself having worked as
an astronomer at NASA. Again, to quote him, for the
remainder of my professional career, and then he sort of
(10:15):
joked a little bit and said that he might have
been an astronaut or one of the first men to
be on the moon. And even though he's joking, it's
it's a bitter sweet reflection because what opportunities were denied
to other people based on their their sexual preferences. And
so in the nineteen fifties, the Managing Society and the
(10:37):
Daughters of Belidas were part of what was called the
homophile movement to stamp out sodomy laws and promote tolerance
and understanding. But this was largely a literary movement. It
wasn't a political effort. It was about printing for people
to read. It was about putting ideas into literature, but
not necessarily into practice because people weren't afforded those rights.
(10:58):
And so not until Stone Wall, that pivotal turning point,
did the movement become political and actually started to make
progress and become visible as well, which was one of
the things that Harvey Milk really tried to do as
the first openly gay man was elected to any office
of meaning. Really, he said that visibility was the key,
(11:18):
and there's a quote from him about never using the
elevator at city Hall, always take the staircase because it
is a better grander entrance. But when he was elected,
a woman wrote to him and said, I thank god
I have lived long enough to see my kind emerge
from the shadows and join the human race. And he
was very much involved with the Greenwich Village gay community
(11:40):
as well. So it was, you know, seeing one of
their own go to San Francisco and rise in the ranks.
And even though there was a gay community in Greenwich Village,
many historians would argue that there was never a cohesive
group of homosexuals until the Stonewall riots. People were so
downtrodden and so oppressed that they were, you know, they
(12:00):
were of themselves. You know, you had mentioned that there
were a lot of suicide attempts, people of very bleak existences.
But not until this turning point, and not really until
stone Wall, where there was a almost a salon of
like minds to come together and to find fellowship, did
this change really emerge and people became a community with
the voice and with a unified thought and deciding to
(12:23):
stop living double lives and maybe try for some more openness.
And so today, if you look at some of the
issues that the gay rights movement have yet to tackle,
we have things like marriage, retirement, financial security, and even
elder care. And there are many dissenting voices now speaking
out against the president of the United States, saying that
(12:45):
they've they've been hoping for and they thought that they
had been promised certain what we consider rights, but they
would consider rights they're hoping to retain, and perhaps in
their lifetime they would see marriage legalized. For the community
was very much behind Obama and his election process, and
I think some people are disappointed with maybe some of
(13:08):
his promises not being kept thus far. And of course,
the news changes on a daily basis, and so by
the time this podcast publishes, it will all be old news.
But for the sake of not politicizing our content and
presenting the facts, it is a definite perspective that people
out there should consider that the gay rights movement has
come so far, but many people feel that it's stalled
(13:28):
right now exactly and hasn't gone far enough exactly. But
we were very happy to share this important moment in
history for all of you, and for those of you
requested the topic, we thank you too, And for more background,
please visit the website at how stuff works dot com
for more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
how stuff works dot com and be sure to check
(13:50):
out the stuff you missed in History Class blog on
the how stuff works dot com home page. In
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