June 24, 2025 • 54 mins
There’s no moment in queer history more celebrated than the Stonewall riots, which set off the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement. There’s also no event that’s more hotly debated. To separate the truth from the myth, we first step onto the streets of Greenwich Village, a mecca of queer culture in the 60s. By all accounts The Stonewall Inn at the heart of the Village was a dump, but it was also the only place queer people could dance, making it an instant favorite among neighborhood hangouts. But how did one Saturday night at the bar change the course of history? And what was Marsha’s role in how it all jumped off? But wait, before you fast forward to Pride today and fade to the credits, we take a closer look at the organizing that followed the riots and the ways it excluded the very people who were on the front lines, people like Marsha.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Afterlives is a production of iHeart Podcasts and The Outspoken
podcast Network in partnership with School of Humans. Just a
heads up, The following episode mentions homophobic language and discusses
police violence, sexual assault, racism, misogyny, and transphobia. Take care
(00:26):
while listening, Like when people don't know what Stonewall is,
you know what I mean? Won't you tell everybody what
that is? That was fighting for gay rights and people
were killed.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
They were killed at Stonewall.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
Nobody knew was killed was killed the Stonewall. This broke
the queer Internet, y'all. It's the stuff memes are made of.
That was a conversation between drag superstars Dereck Berry and
Willem Belly. It's from Billboard's YouTube series Spilling the Tea
in twenty seventeen, and Willem is right, nobody was killed
(01:00):
at the Stonewall riots. But myths are one way we
make meaning, and stories about Stonewall are everywhere.
Speaker 3 (01:08):
The angry homosexuals protesting the police raid on the Stonewall
bar marched into the streets and onto the front page
with their newly militant slogans of gay power.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
Maybe you've heard that Stonewall is a riot when queer
people fought back against cops. Maybe you've heard is the
reason Pride is celebrated in June every year. But one
of the biggest things people are preoccupied with is who
set it off?
Speaker 4 (01:36):
Who threw the first brick?
Speaker 2 (01:38):
Now there is a urban myth saying who threw the
first brick at Stonewall?
Speaker 1 (01:43):
Many people attribute this shotglass heard around the world to
gay liberation activists. Marsha P.
Speaker 4 (01:49):
Johnson.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
Stonewall casts Marcia as a legend, and like many legends,
this one is full of embellishments. So let's do just
that's by Marcia and our history.
Speaker 5 (02:03):
They called me an.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
Edge because there's so many quaints.
Speaker 6 (02:06):
God that I'm one of.
Speaker 7 (02:07):
The few quaints.
Speaker 5 (02:08):
Still, that few quaints still.
Speaker 6 (02:10):
Net few points.
Speaker 7 (02:12):
Still, I didn't make expensive every day anywhere.
Speaker 1 (02:15):
I'm Mark hal Willis. And this is Afterlive episode three.
Who threw the first brick at stone Wall?
Speaker 7 (02:32):
Well, just growing up, there was no decade more homophobic
than the fifties.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
This is Martin Boyce, who, at the age of seventy seven,
is a lifelong New Yorker.
Speaker 7 (02:46):
I was born in one of the greatest neighborhoods in
New York. From my rooftop, I could see the guard
girls of the Christ Building, and everything would have been perfect,
except I was gay.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
Martin knew he was gay early on, and he knew
it was a problem. He heard the word faggot every
single day, he told me. In his neighborhood, a known
murderer was forgiven by the community, but the gay guy
who was outed was shunned.
Speaker 7 (03:20):
Shame was the name of the game. Shame overlaid everything.
Shame was the cloud on your life, the dust on
your coat, everything and derision that came in woe with shame.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
Martin was scared to be out, but he had something
most queer people at the time didn't support of parents,
He didn't have to run away to be himself.
Speaker 7 (03:47):
That's why I became a scared drag queen is because
if they're going to shame me, let me give them
something to be shamed about.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
Scare drag is an old school term, Martin says, instead
of queer or LGBTQ. Plus everyone was defined by homosexuality
and there were different types. In scare drag, Martin presented
in a way that definitely raised eyebrows. But wasn't seen
as the most extreme in terms of clear expression.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
That meant like boy George, gender bending.
Speaker 7 (04:25):
They may have thought you a girl for three seconds
and they figure out you were not.
Speaker 1 (04:30):
At the most fem end of the spectrum were the
drag queens. They were throwing balls and turning heads with
their outfits, makeup, wigs, and mannerisms. And at the mask
end of the spectrum were the agays.
Speaker 7 (04:46):
There were the a gage towards suits who had good
jobs that hated us because we brought the whole thing down.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
The agays weren't out at work. They assimilated into straight society. Meanwhile,
drag queens and scare queens weren't interested in conforming. Marshall
was seen as a street clean Martin says, this is
exactly what it sounds like. She was a queen who
was a fixture on the streets of the village, but
(05:16):
no label totally captured Marsha.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
She had her own thing.
Speaker 7 (05:20):
She'd wear dress with no makeup was more shocking than
wearing makeup, more extravagant.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
Than working three hours at your drig. It was just unexpected.
She was just real. I think that's everywhere would describe
her as very real.
Speaker 1 (05:36):
Martin didn't find fellow queens in the neighborhood where he
grew up. To find queer culture and community, he had
to go down to the village.
Speaker 7 (05:46):
Now, a turf is very important in New York City
at the time, and you've probably seen West Side Story.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
Everybody had a turf.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
The village was queer turf.
Speaker 7 (05:58):
Why was that important? You could not talk to your
friend if you were scared, drag or any country. On
city street, one had to look out for trouble and
one could talk.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
Really think about that for a second. You couldn't just
talk on a city street. That's how unsafe it was
to be visibly gay.
Speaker 7 (06:22):
On Christopher Street, you didn't have to worry about that.
There were safety in numbers. You could talk to each other.
Speaker 1 (06:29):
Christopher Street was the main hub in the.
Speaker 8 (06:32):
Village Gaysville, USA, I call it sometimes with all the bars,
and of course Christopher Street is lined with a variety
of shops and stores, many of which are gay owned.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
This is a nineteen seventy seven WBAI report, and it
was Gaysville. A couple of sociologists in the sixties recorded
how many businesses cater to gay people in the village,
they found more than twenty five bars, a dozen clubs
and restaurants, and a handful of hotels, all within a
(07:04):
few blocks. Michael Lynch is a black queer New Yorker
who grew up in the Bronx and still lives there today.
I asked him how it felt to visit the epicenter
of gay culture. When you first made it to the village,
did it feel like this utopia?
Speaker 9 (07:22):
That's the word utopia, because you know, you're coming from
this urban environment up here in the Bronx, where every
single thing and every action and every move that you
make is look and scrutinize and talked about.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
Michael goes by he and she pronouns, and it's also
known by her drag persona Michelle.
Speaker 9 (07:41):
So when I got to the village and I looked
around me and it was just freedom. It was a
freedom that I had never experienced in my life or
in my home, I immediately wanted to come back because
I had never known of a place such as this.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
Michael remembers that as an oasis for hippies and free love.
There were bell bottoms, loose fitting day shikis, and even
more openness.
Speaker 9 (08:08):
Everybody was so wonderful and dressed freely and holding hands.
That's the first one I saw men holding each other's hands,
and I was like, it's a place where you could go,
where you could hold a man's hand.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
The village is also where Michael met Marsha. Why do
you think Marshall was called the Saint of Christopher's Street?
Speaker 9 (08:31):
Because I think she was the greeter. That's the first
thing you saw. Hello Dolls, Hello Dolling's a wonderful day.
How are you?
Speaker 2 (08:41):
You're beautiful.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
Michael admits at first that he didn't give Marsha a
second thought. She was just another weirdo he passed by
on the streets, But it didn't take long to realize
that everyone knew her, that she was at home here.
Speaker 9 (08:59):
I think Marsha was searching for a people at a place,
and I think she founded in Greenwich Village, and the
people found her and everyone took care of her.
Speaker 1 (09:11):
Marcia got by the way a lot of people did
by depending on her community. People offered her spare change, food,
sometimes a place to stay. Many of the elders I
spoke to this season reminded me that we're talking about
a different world than the one we live in today.
People weren't walking around with their AirPods in and their
(09:33):
eyes down. Folks like Marcia stayed afloat hell. They stayed
alive because of their connections to the people around them.
And it wasn't a one way street. Marcia gave back
to the community, sharing change. She collected food, she came by,
even housing she found. She was one of many who
(09:57):
helped to create and sustain a web protection on the streets.
Martin Boyce says, one night Marcia even saved his life.
He was down at the docks.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
And those days he went there for cruising.
Speaker 7 (10:13):
The cruising was very good, unexpected and you know in
life with the unexpected us.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
This time, though nobody was around, nobody there.
Speaker 7 (10:24):
At the time meant a please sweep. I thought, my god,
they came and they swept, and then I heard from
under a car a voice saying, girl, save yourself, Save yourself, girl, please.
Speaker 2 (10:43):
So where was his voice coming from?
Speaker 7 (10:45):
And I looked under the car and there was Marshal
in address under the car.
Speaker 1 (10:52):
Martin has no idea how Marcia spotted him or how
she knew what was about to jump off.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
What the fuck are you talking about? And then I
saw it for the corner of my eyes.
Speaker 7 (11:06):
Four guys with bets wearing wife beat his shirts.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
And they were turning the corner.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
Because of Marcia, he had time to get away. But
Marcia didn't make a big deal out of.
Speaker 2 (11:22):
It, and I told her about it. I was sure.
Speaker 7 (11:25):
I wanted to thank her, as you owe that s
always said, oh, that.
Speaker 1 (11:32):
This was life in the village. Yes, it was on
the vanguard, offering freedom of sexual expression, street theater, a
place to watch the world go by, But you were
always at risk of a beating with a baseball bat
or worse.
Speaker 7 (11:48):
Because it was such an everyday confrontation, the trouble was familiar,
so familiar.
Speaker 1 (11:56):
Martin remembers one time some guys through Marsha's wig and
the river, and then Marcia she is my.
Speaker 7 (12:04):
Wig, and she said you wanted and threw her in
the river with eels.
Speaker 1 (12:09):
Martin says it was a miracle she climbed out, But
Marcia just did what she did best, pay it no mind,
literally her middle name.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
I said, how did you well that it was always?
Speaker 1 (12:22):
Oh that the village was the site of beatings and
police sweeps and bar raids. New York was the first
city to create a vice squad, a police unit dedicated
to cracking down on crimes like sex, work, gambling, and
alcohol cells and consumption. Queerness fell under their purview too.
(12:43):
Beingay was illegal, so cruising was a big target. Vice
squad cops would go undercover and try to trick people
in the village into having sex with them.
Speaker 7 (12:54):
That's a very good gay out, but you would never
known except the shoes and the police Ice squad tended
to not change their shoes, no matter what.
Speaker 1 (13:05):
Outfit that what kind of shoes were they They were
very but shoes that no gay person would wear. Paying
attention to the shoes was one of the first lessons
of surviving on Christopher Street. Martin says he loved seeing
the confusion on the faces of these good looking officers
(13:26):
who couldn't get a single person to go with them.
Long before there was social media or group chats, words
spread fast through an informal network. Queen's on the street,
like Marshall, warned each other if something came up. Shouts
of Lily Law or Betty Badge or Patty Pig were
(13:47):
colled for cops. Coats that kept people safe in a
community that looked out for each other.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
We knew every day we had to know your freedom,
your hell. Y'all all dependent on knowing the street.
Speaker 1 (14:04):
By the end of the sixties, this solidarity was turning
into resistance. Persecution on the streets and in underground clubs
was ratcheting up, and people wanted change.
Speaker 10 (14:19):
And never thought gay men would be fighting back. Hey
you so, no fairy sissies laugh at them at sh especially,
never thought street queens, I mean the street queens of
the bravest.
Speaker 1 (14:31):
It's about to go down. Stick with us, We're back
with afterlives. In the fifties and sixties, gay restaurants and
bars operating under the radar didn't welcome the whole community.
(14:52):
Many spots shut trans people out, but there was one
place where all folks felt welcome. Early one morning, just
before summer, cops crashed a pretty popular spot in a
routine sweep. They arrested some hustlers and queens, but things escalated.
(15:12):
Disobedience turned into a riot. This wasn't at Stonewall in
New York. It was about a decade before, at Cooper
Donuts in Los Angeles in May of nineteen fifty eight,
(15:33):
and let's bust another myth. Stonewall wasn't the one and
only queer riot that ignited a revolution. There were uprisings, fights,
sit ins, and protests from la to San Francisco, Milwaukee
to Philly. Even in New York there was a famous
sip in at Julius's Bar in nineteen sixty six. Having
(15:57):
a place to come together and be yourself was something
worth fighting for. Our elders weren't just sitting at home
looking through the blinds. They wanted to go out have fun.
For Marcia and her friends in the village, one special
hangout was the Stone Wall Inn. It was the place
(16:19):
for dancing, and dancing is basically the opposite of hiding
away at home.
Speaker 10 (16:26):
Okay, all the speakers, We loved going to Stone because
the Stonewall allowed us to dance with each other.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
That's Tommy Lanigan Schmidt. You might remember him from our
last episode. He's from the same part of New Jersey
as Marcia, and like Marcia, he moved out around eighteen
and ended up in the village in the late sixties.
Speaker 10 (16:49):
When we were teenagers. So the spirituality of us dancing
with each other was a major part of our lives,
of holding us together because we could not do that
any other place.
Speaker 4 (17:00):
Then.
Speaker 1 (17:01):
Tommy says, there were a million places straight people could
dance in the city, but at the time the Stone
Wall was the only place for them. There were even
go go boys, all made possible by the mob.
Speaker 10 (17:17):
So the mafia is very important and gay like back then,
because there was a law of that you couldn't serve
gay people drinks.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
Here's a little history lesson for you. After Prohibition, the
New York State Liquor Authority took over the job of
keeping alcohol out of quote disorderly establishments, and you know,
gay people were inherently disorderly, so bars couldn't legally serve
(17:44):
queer people drinks. Gay bars were rated constantly with money
to be made. That's where the mafia comes in.
Speaker 10 (17:53):
Other gay people would say, oh, mafia, terrible, terrible. Nope,
just like during the Roaring twenties, there was and people
got to drink. When it was.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
Prohibition, when the police tried to shut down all the
gay bars in the city, the mafia took over, essentially
paying off the police and government officials to keep things running.
There were raids, but it was kind of a game
of cat and mouse. Everybody wanted to keep the money
and liquor flowing, so the queers played their part in
(18:25):
the masquerade.
Speaker 10 (18:27):
Hey, there was prohibition against gay people being able to
dance together, and they gave it to us. They might
have been greedy about it. They might have been the mafia,
but they gave it to us.
Speaker 1 (18:37):
The Stonewall Inn opened in nineteen sixty seven thanks to
a guy known as Fat Tony, the son of a
big shot mafioso from the Genovizi family. His dad wasn't
too happy he was getting into the gay bar business,
but this was going to be easy money. Fat Tony
did basically nothing to fix up a vacant restaurant space
(19:00):
that had been scorched in a fire. A little black
paint covered up the burnt wood. No need to pay
for working sinks. Glasses could just be dunked into dirty
water all night. A pro tip for regulars was to
stick with bottled beer or bring their own flask. At first,
the stone Wall only let gay men in, but once
(19:22):
they started allowing drag queens. Marshall was one of the first.
Speaker 11 (19:26):
And it's a stone Wall. I was just one of
the patrons that we used to visit the place.
Speaker 1 (19:32):
That's Marsha talking about stone Wall in a nineteen eighty
eight interview. To get in, a bouncer checked you out
through a peepole to make sure you weren't Betty Badge.
Speaker 11 (19:44):
These people to stand up at the front door and
screen you five D and everything like that. But if
they didn't, a undercover cop can come here anytime they
want and has closed the place down.
Speaker 1 (19:56):
The windows were blacked out and reinforced with plywood so
nobody could see or break in. When you finally entered.
There were two rooms.
Speaker 4 (20:06):
They had a front bar and a back bar.
Speaker 11 (20:09):
Now the front party had go go boys, and in
the back part you could dance.
Speaker 1 (20:13):
The front bar was called the White Room, in the
back the Black room. This was based on who was
hanging out in there, although they weren't totally segregated. What
really mattered was the music.
Speaker 4 (20:27):
And they played all these records down the drew Fox.
Speaker 1 (20:30):
In the white room, you might hear Puff the Magic Dragon.
But in the black room, oh, that music had rhythm.
Speaker 2 (20:39):
Stax records.
Speaker 7 (20:40):
Motown ain't nothing like the real thing, baby, respect It
takes two.
Speaker 1 (20:47):
That's Martin Boyce again. He's white, but he hung out
at the back bar.
Speaker 7 (20:53):
The Black Wings would come and do their dances in
front of us, and that was called voking. Later and
the voguing at Stonewolvers unbelievable.
Speaker 1 (21:05):
There's a lot of debate about who actually went to
the Stone Wall. Some claim it was mostly white sis
gay men. The thing is, it depends where you hung out.
Some people might not venture into the back room at all.
Martin says the bar was a refuge for every kind
of people.
Speaker 2 (21:25):
It was like a gay Noah's Ark. There was two
of everybody. Had the flood come. Gay culture rooms survive
for generation.
Speaker 1 (21:34):
But no matter how you identified or which room you
hung out in, you knew at some point you were
going to have a run in with the cops. If
you were queer, you needed street smarts from the jump.
Speaker 7 (21:47):
The moment you came out, the moment you learned how
to conduct yourself in a raid.
Speaker 1 (21:55):
Even though the mafia was paying off the police, the
Stone Wall was still rated about once a month. If
they were tipped off, a white light would go on
so people could be ready. The police might walk in
or simply smash the door open.
Speaker 2 (22:11):
And they came and you lined up, you had you
id ready.
Speaker 1 (22:16):
They would check id and decide if you were cross dressing.
Some people were even subject to invasive anatomical inspections. If
anyone was sent to the paddy wagon, it was usually
the drag queens, and like generations of drunk queer people
before and since, they made it into a scene.
Speaker 7 (22:37):
And then it's very serious raids. The drake queens would
come out to cheers. Because you were not in the raid,
you'd watch it.
Speaker 2 (22:45):
We became our own entertainment.
Speaker 1 (22:49):
At around one thirty am on Saturday, June twenty eighth,
Martin noticed that something was up. He was out with friends.
When he heard the cheers. He joined a semicircle of
people forming outside the bar.
Speaker 7 (23:03):
And this one cop was dragging the stray qui Spanish
strictly and I couldn't tell what you really looked like
because she was so angular, because she was fighting back.
Speaker 1 (23:16):
Usually these rates went off without a hitch. People just
followed the police out to the paddywagon. But on this
night something sparked resistance. One person was fighting back.
Speaker 2 (23:33):
And he got her and pushed her into the petty wagon.
Speaker 7 (23:39):
We will watch you, and he looked at us, and
she took the opportunity of his distraction to kick him
and send him fly.
Speaker 1 (23:54):
With all the hype and myth making about Stonewall, it's
kind of incredible that we still don't know who this
person was. Martin calls them a drag queen, but most
accounts describe the person fighting back as a butch lesbian.
Different names have been floated and disproven over the years.
We're talking about a gender and non conforming person of color,
(24:18):
so on some level it's no surprise that we don't
know their name. When they kicked that cop, everyone laughed,
but Martin says the laughter would be their doom. They
tried to get out, but the cop dragged them back
into the wagon, and you heard bone.
Speaker 7 (24:40):
And flesh against metal and trictly trickly, ugly trickly sound.
Speaker 2 (24:47):
We couldn't believe it.
Speaker 1 (24:50):
The cop told them all to get the fuck out
of there, and usually they would have, but something about
this night was different. Instead of dispersing, the crowd started
moving in. They were shouting police brutality, pigs. Some people
started throwing pennies and dimes. The cops told them again
(25:14):
to get back, but people kept throwing coins, then a
bottle and another bottle, and.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
He looked he gulped, he blinched, and ran into the bar.
Speaker 1 (25:31):
The paddy wagons drove off. The nine cops who remained
and a journalist tagging along with them retreated inside the
stone wall. It was nearly empty except for a few
people in handcuffs. They shut the door and reinforced it
with some tables. There were shouting outside. People in the
(25:53):
crowd shattered the bar's windows. Accounts say the cops were
barricaded inside for forty five minutes. Meanwhile, the crowd out
front grew. Passers by stopped and joined in. The community
network jumped into action. This was the group chat. Tommy
(26:14):
Lanagan Schmidt was outside with Martin.
Speaker 10 (26:17):
That neighborhood had a lot of street phones, so people
would call their friends, and their friends would come from
New Jersey Long Island wherever.
Speaker 1 (26:25):
Inside the bar, cops were trapped and waiting for backup.
They could tell this crowd was no joke. They were nervous.
Pounding at the door was getting louder and louder.
Speaker 10 (26:38):
Miss Boston and a few other peop days there was
a loose parking meter. There was always like half out
of the streets that you can move back and forth
and just grind to the hole that it was half
in any of them. So how they pulled that out
and started banging on the door of the stone wall
like one boom, boom boom.
Speaker 1 (26:59):
The dis parking meter flew through the door and the
crowd seared glass and bottles and molotov cocktails started flying in.
The police tried to secure the door. Agin when the
tactical police force pulled up in riot gear, officers inside
the bar were already aiming their guns.
Speaker 10 (27:20):
They were the people that had shields and were helmets
and really used their billy clubs lock they arrived on
a bus.
Speaker 1 (27:30):
The crowd swelled to five or six hundred people that
first night. There was blood on the street and trash
cans lit on fire.
Speaker 10 (27:40):
Very often, when I snowed lighter fluid, it brings back
on memory of it.
Speaker 1 (27:45):
The cops were beating people up, but they were resisting
and fighting back. The backup unit in all of their
riot gear, thought they'd shut the ruckers down in no time.
Speaker 7 (27:56):
They were very embarrassed and that they were called in
to put down a bunch of baggots. They didn't count
our ingenuity.
Speaker 1 (28:09):
The cops didn't know the village like the street kids did.
Greenwich Village isn't a grid, so the cops would chase
them down one street, only for the queens to show
up on the other side. The Stonewall kids seized the
element of surprise, so.
Speaker 7 (28:26):
We formed a kick right, it's a point of genius.
We started kicking like the rockets, and we sang this song,
We are the village girls. We wear our errant girl,
we wear our dungarees up of our nelly.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
And they had to attack.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
They were taunting them, and the cops were stunned. This
was truly a queer uprising like nothing they'd ever seen.
It went on like this till dawn, and people came
back the next night and for several nights after that.
Speaker 10 (29:01):
Well, they never thought gay men would be fighting back.
They just sat fairy sissies laugh at them, at you,
and especially they never thought street queens. I mean, the
street queens were the bravest. There's a Bob Dylan song
that says, we ain't got nothing, you got nothing to do,
and that's the way it was for us.
Speaker 1 (29:20):
Did you see Marsha there or did y'all ever talk
about the stone Wall?
Speaker 10 (29:25):
I saw Marsha there, like at different times. Marsha was
part of the flow and a big part of the flow,
so she would participate, but probably not the way people
want her to participate in a movie. This isn't a movie,
this is real life.
Speaker 1 (29:44):
Marcia's role remains highly contested. There are multiple eyewitnesses who
saw her there throwing rocks, yelling. On the second night,
one person says they saw her climb up a lamppost
and drop something heavy on a car windshield.
Speaker 11 (30:01):
Well, people just start throwing all the cars, and they
able throwing bottles, and they were throwing bricks.
Speaker 4 (30:07):
Our Ney was throwing all kinds of things.
Speaker 1 (30:10):
This is Marcia again from the nineteen eighty eight interview.
Speaker 11 (30:13):
A lot of people start demonstrating outside of the bar
and everything, and then the cobstas tried to chase them
off the street, and they refused to move, and so
the cobs started hitting them with sticks and they just
started hauling bottles and everything.
Speaker 1 (30:29):
As the mother of our movement, people want to picture
her as throwing the first brick. It's a nice image.
It's also the most debated part of Marcia's story.
Speaker 6 (30:42):
If somebody were to ask you, who is marsh By Johnson, how.
Speaker 8 (30:45):
Do you answer that she started the Stonewall riot.
Speaker 11 (30:50):
I know there's somebody like things about it that she
threw the first brick at stone Wall, but I just
know that she was present.
Speaker 6 (30:56):
Marshby Johnson was a black tis woman who perhaps to
the first brick at Stowell riots.
Speaker 1 (31:04):
It's another myth, but a myth that reveals something a
little more complex than whether she did or did it
set the whole thing off.
Speaker 6 (31:13):
They were like decades of time where she was really
like scrubbed out of that history.
Speaker 1 (31:20):
Tourmaline is the author of Marcia, The Joy and Defiance
of Marsha P. Johnson. They say that in the months
and years following the Stonewall Riots, Marsha's role was lost
to history, and this was intentional. People didn't want a
black trans mentally ill woman who lived on the streets
(31:41):
to be the face of this historic event, a.
Speaker 6 (31:44):
Fear based impulse to whitewasher out of it and sanitize
it so that people wouldn't think that it was something
that quote unquote like crazy people were doing when they
needed the powers happy to think that it was something
that respectable people were doing who.
Speaker 1 (32:00):
Had enough respectability. Politics are a hell of a drug y'all,
but it was clear when Tourmaline started digging into Marcia's
story that she played a part in the Stonewall uprising.
Other historians agree to. David Carter is the author of Stonewall,
The Riots that Sparked the Gay Revolution. It was published
(32:24):
in two thousand and four and is considered the definitive
text on Stonewall.
Speaker 6 (32:29):
David Carter says, Marcia certainly played a huge role in Stonewall,
but it is reserved to like the footnotes right.
Speaker 1 (32:42):
Carter documents first hand accounts of people who saw Marcia
at the first night of the riots, but he's hesitant
to center her experience. Marcia struggled with mental illness, and
by the time historians started documenting Stonewall in depth, Marcia
had been through several minutes until breakdowns. Asked for specific
(33:03):
details of her life, she'd say things like, my computer
is getting all tangled up in.
Speaker 6 (33:09):
Stonewall itself, in riots and upwears. Things aren't necessarily like
a neurotypical linear event right on sec sitting and now
we shall throw mugs and glasses at the police, and
now we shall throw bricks. You know, it doesn't happen
like that it's messy. It's powerful because of its messiness.
Speaker 1 (33:33):
Tourmaline feels strongly that Marcia's mental illness shouldn't count her
out of the queer history books. But in all of
the messiness, there's one main thing historians don't agree on
what time Marsha arrived at the Stone Wall. Was Marsha
in the bar from the very start, or did she,
(33:53):
like so many others, show up later that night in
one set, this distinction isn't the most critical, but history
is a story we tell, and it's our history. Individual
acts as well as communal ones, do matter. Tourmaline says
(34:14):
her research has led her to believe Marcia was already
inside the Stone Wall when the cops arrived for the raid.
Speaker 6 (34:23):
She actually was in the back par She knew exactly
what song was going on when the music was cut out.
Marvin Gaye heard it through the grapevine. She said it
over and over again throughout her life on camera, on
tape to friends, and she could recall with deep point
in how the night unfolded.
Speaker 1 (34:42):
Other accounts have Marcia arriving later in the night after
the initial raid. What makes this tricky is that Marcia
is documented saying both things. Most people familiar with the
debate refer to this clip from nineteen eighty nine.
Speaker 4 (35:02):
I winded up being a down wall that night.
Speaker 11 (35:05):
I was having a party uptown, and I didn't get
downtown till about two o'clock.
Speaker 4 (35:09):
Because when I got downtown a place was already on buying.
It was raid already. The riots had already started.
Speaker 1 (35:16):
That's from an interview Marcia did with Eric Marcus that
was aired on his podcast Making Gay History. Marcia shared
this series of events and other interviews too, but sometimes
in her retelling she mixed up the month the Mayor
of New York details like that, Marcia's version of events changed.
(35:37):
That's the truth from where I stand. I can't know
exactly what happened on this chaotic first night of the
riots over fifty years ago, but we know a lot.
Marcia was there. She fought alongside other powerful trans and
gender nonconforming people. She was with black folks, latine people,
(36:02):
white people, street queens, scare queens, sis, gay men. The
riots went on for six nights. More and more people
came back, and all the while it was the street
people at the front of that line. The stonewall became
a national monument. In twenty sixteen, a plaque went up
(36:24):
along with a web page to commemorate quote a monumental
change for LGBTQ Americans. In February of this year, following
Trump administration directives, the National Park Service erased the word
transgender from the website. It now reads just lgb A
(36:48):
rewriting of history and a single stroke. But we're not
going to forget Marsha. When a photographer showed up on
the second night of the riots to snap a now
famous picture, the aggays scattered and the.
Speaker 7 (37:06):
Egg gates in suits who hated us, somehow looked longlely
at us that they couldn't do anything because of their jobs.
Speaker 2 (37:17):
But we could, and the street queens did, and that
was the stone right.
Speaker 1 (37:26):
In black and white. Ten people squeezed into pose. You
can check out the photo on our Instagram at Afterlives
dot pod. Their femme, their butch. They're in sandals, lashes, hats,
and necklaces. A purse dingles from one queen's hand in
(37:46):
the front row. It's small and cute but not harmless.
Inside it is a brick that queen came ready to fight.
They all did.
Speaker 2 (37:58):
We all threw the first break. We need admit, we
need a legend. We need this for the next century.
Things to go on to make people understand what is
this all about. But we all had a brick in
our hand.
Speaker 1 (38:14):
Now that's a legend I can get behind. We'll be
right back.
Speaker 5 (38:27):
It was one of the most liberating things that I
have ever done to a fucking cop.
Speaker 2 (38:32):
You know.
Speaker 5 (38:32):
It's like cursing them out, throwing stuff at them instead
of them beating me up.
Speaker 1 (38:37):
You know, I was doing it to them. Meet a
self identified super but an elder and an advocate for
unhealthed queer people.
Speaker 4 (38:46):
Hi.
Speaker 5 (38:47):
My name is Jay Toole. My pronouns are just about
everything except big Mama. Do not call me big Mama.
Speaker 1 (38:56):
At the time of the Stonewall uprising, Jay was a teenager.
They'd been kicked out of their home at thirteen and
were living in Washington Square Park. When words spread about
what was happening at the Stonewall, Hell, yeah, they were
going to go.
Speaker 5 (39:12):
I felt a sense of big. I felt big. I
felt proud. It was like, yeah, we're doing something.
Speaker 1 (39:20):
Stonewall did do something. People were energized to keep momentum
going for gay rights before the uprising. There were a
handful of organizations that already existed to represent what they
called the homophile movement, like the Mattachine Society, which started
in the fifties and was all about normalizing homosexuality and
(39:41):
assimilating into stray culture.
Speaker 12 (39:44):
But there are tens of thousands of homosexuals who deplore
the tawdry image.
Speaker 4 (39:48):
Of the so called gay life.
Speaker 12 (39:50):
Architects and lawyers, doctors, teachers, businessmen men like these who
lead quiet, unexceptionable lives in towns and cities all across
the country.
Speaker 1 (40:01):
This nineteen sixty seven clip from CBS Reports hosted by
Mike Wallace says it all. It captures the whole Matachine
Society vibe, which is respectability politics one o one. The
day after the riots, Matachine members posted a sign about
maintaining peaceful and quiet conduct on the door of the Stonewall.
(40:25):
But after blood was spilled on the street, this approach
wasn't going to cut it for most people. They started
new groups instead, like the Gay Activist Alliance known as
the GAA and the Gay Liberation Front the GLF. Stonewall
was critical enough that these groups were organizing a march
(40:47):
to honor the first anniversary of the riots. It was
called the Christopher Street Liberation March, and it planted the
seed of the Pride parades we still celebrate today.
Speaker 3 (41:00):
This year, the Christopher Street Liberation Day Committee is planning
to blitz the city with Gay Pride Week to commemorate
the Christopher Street uprisings and to celebrate the growing strength
of the whole gay movement.
Speaker 1 (41:13):
Many documentaries, books, articles, and podcast episodes fade to the credits.
Here Stonewall happened. People started to organize, they marched, Pride
was born. It was great, but it's not that simple.
Speaker 5 (41:28):
Whole communities I think were left behind. Trans girls, people
of color, homelessness, people with addictions, disabilities.
Speaker 1 (41:37):
From Jay's vantage point or Marshall's, the post Stonewall organizing
is not the moment to fade to black and cue
the pop music.
Speaker 5 (41:46):
They could have done a little bitter outreach. Go to
the peers, go to the park, talk to people, Hey,
this is going on. Put up flyers. You know, maybe
more of us would have gotten involved.
Speaker 1 (41:57):
Assimilation wasn't an option for people like Jay or Marsha.
Their stories highlight the cracks in the movement as the
sixties became the seventies, these cracks widened.
Speaker 10 (42:11):
If someone has a clipboard and a piece of paper,
it might be wise to pass around get everybody room
to sign their name and address and phone number.
Speaker 1 (42:18):
You're listening to the start of a community organizing meeting
in nineteen seventy two. It's supposed to be about cleaning
up Christopher Street. For the most part, it's typical neighborhood stuff.
Too many trucks flyers being torn down. But some people
are there because they want to get people off the street.
They bring up a street queen named Bamby lamour.
Speaker 2 (42:41):
We have several gay organizations.
Speaker 3 (42:43):
When her station has the gay organization to keep people
like Bamby off the street.
Speaker 1 (42:48):
A leader in the group says the gay organization should
be the ones to handle Bambi. The reaction feels like
a litmus test of the time.
Speaker 13 (43:00):
All of a sudden, Samby, who happened to be gay.
Speaker 3 (43:04):
As well, and perhaps a vagrant and dearly becomes strictly
our problem.
Speaker 13 (43:08):
I mean, we'd like to get rid of the.
Speaker 1 (43:17):
Cheering. Hurts to hear a whole room of people delighted
at the thought of making queer unhoused folks disappear when
we consider how Stonewall history overlooked street queens and trans folks.
These cheers are how it happened. Bamby was friends with Marcia.
(43:42):
At one point she helped Marcia create a home for
trans people. But three years after Stonewall, the movement was
pretty clear on what it thought about people like her.
Elders we spoke to thought that many people were just embarrassed.
They were shame that it was street youth who started
(44:02):
this fight. When gay rights finally picked up some traction,
the folks who had the most proximity to power, sis
straight passing white gay men, didn't want anybody holding them back.
Speaker 8 (44:16):
I did say, I don't want to be associated with
that bull dyke. I don't want to be associated with
that drag queen.
Speaker 1 (44:22):
You may remember Randy Wicker in the eighties, he was
Marsha's roommate, but in the early seventies he clung to
respectability politics at all costs.
Speaker 8 (44:34):
As long as they think we're all like high voices
and running around in dresses, we normal looking people, we're safe.
Speaker 11 (44:43):
I mean, like everybody was against the transvestikes just about
in the movement.
Speaker 4 (44:49):
They just couldn't get along with a male that looked
like a woman.
Speaker 1 (44:57):
That's Marcia again from that nineteen eighty eight interview. Despite
the challenges, Marcia wanted to fight for progress. She was
excited by the possibilities of GAA and GLF. She went
to meetings and spoke her mind. She told her friends
to go too, like Sylvia Rivera, another trans revolutionary.
Speaker 4 (45:19):
And Sylvia was that type of person.
Speaker 11 (45:21):
She would always come out and dresses and stuff to
meetings and everything.
Speaker 1 (45:25):
Activism came naturally to Sylvia and Marsha. They joined the
effort to pass a non discrimination bill to protect homosexuals
from being fired or evicted. They went to demonstrations organized
by GAA and stood on the sidewalk to get signatures.
Sylvia even got arrested. She and another transactivist named Bbe
(45:47):
Scarpy testified in front of the city council about including
transsexuals in the bill.
Speaker 13 (45:54):
Johnnie, I want my gay right now.
Speaker 1 (45:57):
Marcia was making her voice heard too. Here she is
outside of city Hall rallying for the bill to pass.
In nineteen seventy three, an interview asked her how the
bill will affect her job.
Speaker 13 (46:09):
Darling, I don't have a job.
Speaker 2 (46:11):
I'm on welfare.
Speaker 6 (46:13):
I had no chance to get in a job as
long as this country discriminates against tomas sextual.
Speaker 1 (46:19):
For folks like Marcia, Sylviumbbie, this bill could protect them
from discrimination. But by the end of the year, when
the bill failed to pass for the fourth time, politicians
and GAA members blamed trans people. By nineteen seventy four,
they decided to remove gender expression from the bill altogether.
(46:40):
And guess what, it still didn't pass for twelve more years.
I guess trans people weren't the problem after all. Sylvia
and Marshall were pushed out of their already fragile place
in the movement. After a while, Marcia saw no point
in going to the dance fundraiser that GA would throw.
(47:02):
She says, nobody would dance with them anyway. Sylvia said
people wouldn't even use her name at GA meetings.
Speaker 14 (47:10):
So do you accept dragons? Short, come on down. So
we walked in and like, what's your name? At the
table you had to write your name. So my name
is Sylvia. He says, what is your name? I said,
I'm Sylvia. He says, well, we can't accept that name.
Speaker 1 (47:26):
That's Sylvia. Recorded by Eric Marcus and aired on his
podcast Making Gay History, and.
Speaker 11 (47:32):
They would always think she was disruptive and everything, but
the men and the women could do all the talk
and they.
Speaker 4 (47:37):
Wanted to do.
Speaker 1 (47:38):
Some lesbians criticized Marcia and Sylvia, telling them that the
way they dressed and behaved was an insult to women
and a barrier to progress. Randy admits he didn't like
when Sylvia came to ga meetings either, and yet he
says they would wonder why their membership wasn't more diverse.
Speaker 8 (47:58):
Everybody there, ninety nine point five percent were white. I
don't remember any people of color being there at that time.
They were all like in their early twenties. It was
very much a young middle class white movement at that time.
We used just shit around even at GAA and say
where are the minorities?
Speaker 1 (48:19):
This is how the meetings went, planting the seeds for
dynamics that still feel familiar to me today. Mainstream queer
organizations say they cherish diversity, but really only wanted on
their limited terms. I found myself in rooms very recently
where people are having discussions about dropping the tea from
(48:40):
the larger LGBTQ fight for equality that doesn't capture my
vision of liberation. And it didn't satisfy Marsha either. Now
does she consider herself an activist?
Speaker 8 (48:55):
Oh yes, she did, Oh yes, And you know what's
so sad. That's sad, really, but some people do all
the work and getting none of the credit.
Speaker 1 (49:09):
There came a point when Sylvia just couldn't take it anymore.
At a nineteen seventy three Gay Pride rally, Sylvia stood
up in a sparkly unitard and demanded a place on
stage under the arches of Washington Square Park. The organizers
didn't want to give her the mic, and the crowd
bowed her.
Speaker 13 (49:30):
Job. They quite down.
Speaker 8 (49:37):
When Sylvia took that microphone. She picks it up and
there's a weight on the end of that. And let
me tell you the way she had that is that
she was ready to hit you in the head. You
weren't getting that microphone from her.
Speaker 1 (49:50):
This rally followed the Christopher Street Liberation March that year.
There was a contingent that wanted to ban trans people
all together. Marsha and Sylvia were there anyway, raising their
voices and fifths. Marsha wore a flower crown and a
sign that said free all gays. It also said free
our half sister, Bamby Lamore with the drawing of a
(50:13):
person behind bars. The community wanted Bambi the street Queen gone,
but Marsha and Sylvia weren't going to let her be forgotten.
Speaker 2 (50:24):
Sylvia, what a screamer. I'm taking time to be treated
this way.
Speaker 8 (50:29):
I'm not gonna put a lot about her brothers and
sisters in prison.
Speaker 1 (50:33):
Sylvia went on talking about how her gay brothers and
sisters would right her from jail. Randy was in the
sea of confused people and he didn't get it either.
Speaker 8 (50:43):
And when she said that I was sitting there, puysaid
brothers and sisters in prison. I said, I don't never
known anybody in prison. Only criminals are imprisoned.
Speaker 1 (50:55):
She blamed the people in the crowd for doing nothing
to protect them. The audio fans kept booing there was
a total disconnect, but Sylvia would not be silenced.
Speaker 13 (51:07):
I have been beaten, had my mouse broken, I've been
blown in jail. I've lond my job, I've lond my
apartment for gay liberation, and D'll keeping it right.
Speaker 1 (51:25):
Sylvia and Marshall would make their own change. They would
make their own home. They would make the community they
needed to survive, and they'd make it easier for others
like them too. That's coming next time on Afterlives.
Speaker 5 (51:42):
Sweetness, loveliness, maternal is a warmth in these women.
Speaker 10 (51:49):
If you see thirteen year old kids at three in
the morning and it's not so nice outside, of course,
she's going to take them home.
Speaker 6 (51:57):
They were modeling themselves off of some of the most
revolute utionary movements that were going on.
Speaker 11 (52:02):
I became vice predators, three transvestic action revolutionaries.
Speaker 4 (52:06):
I'd like to help more transvests than I ben helping.
Speaker 1 (52:12):
Thanks for listening to Afterlives. You can find this episode
in future ones on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you get your podcasts. Please leave us a rating
and review to let us know what you think. Afterlives
is a production of the Outspoken Network from iHeart Podcasts
in partnership with School of Humans. I'm your host and
(52:34):
creator Raquel Willis. Dylan Hoyer is our senior producer and scriptwriter.
Our associate producer is Joey pat Sound design and engineering
by Jess Krinchich, Story editing by Julia Furlan, fact checking
by Carolyn Talmich. Score composed by Wisei Murray. Our production
(52:56):
manager is Daisy Church. Executive producers include Me, Raquel Willis
and Jess Crinchich from The Outspoken Podcast Network, Amelia Brock,
Virginia Prescott, Brandon Barr, and Els Crowley from School of
Humans and The Cats Company. The image of Marcia in
our show art is provided by the Leslie Lowman Museum
(53:18):
of Art Founder's gift, p. Twenty fifteen dot six nine
nine dot one oh six. A special thank you to
everyone who provided archival tape, including the grill O Papers
Box eleven, audio Tape seventy, the LGBT Community Center National
History Archives, Charles Pitts Tapes, Tape sixteen and Tape twenty
(53:43):
the LGBT Community Center National History Archive. Marcia nineteen ninety
two by Michael Casino, courtesy of Michael Casino. Interview with
Marsha P. Johnson nineteen eighty eight from one National Gay
and Lesbian Archives at the USC Libraries. Lewis Laney at
Mister Lewis Laney and his book three sixty five Gays
(54:07):
of the Year at It Takes Courage and At Powered
by Rainbows,
Afterlives is a production of iHeart Podcasts and The Outspoken
podcast Network in partnership with School of Humans. Just a
heads up, The following episode mentions homophobic language and discusses
police violence, sexual assault, racism, misogyny, and transphobia. Take care
(00:26):
while listening, Like when people don't know what Stonewall is,
you know what I mean? Won't you tell everybody what
that is? That was fighting for gay rights and people
were killed.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
They were killed at Stonewall.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
Nobody knew was killed was killed the Stonewall. This broke
the queer Internet, y'all. It's the stuff memes are made of.
That was a conversation between drag superstars Dereck Berry and
Willem Belly. It's from Billboard's YouTube series Spilling the Tea
in twenty seventeen, and Willem is right, nobody was killed
(01:00):
at the Stonewall riots. But myths are one way we
make meaning, and stories about Stonewall are everywhere.
Speaker 3 (01:08):
The angry homosexuals protesting the police raid on the Stonewall
bar marched into the streets and onto the front page
with their newly militant slogans of gay power.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
Maybe you've heard that Stonewall is a riot when queer
people fought back against cops. Maybe you've heard is the
reason Pride is celebrated in June every year. But one
of the biggest things people are preoccupied with is who
set it off?
Speaker 4 (01:36):
Who threw the first brick?
Speaker 2 (01:38):
Now there is a urban myth saying who threw the
first brick at Stonewall?
Speaker 1 (01:43):
Many people attribute this shotglass heard around the world to
gay liberation activists. Marsha P.
Speaker 4 (01:49):
Johnson.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
Stonewall casts Marcia as a legend, and like many legends,
this one is full of embellishments. So let's do just
that's by Marcia and our history.
Speaker 5 (02:03):
They called me an.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
Edge because there's so many quaints.
Speaker 6 (02:06):
God that I'm one of.
Speaker 7 (02:07):
The few quaints.
Speaker 5 (02:08):
Still, that few quaints still.
Speaker 6 (02:10):
Net few points.
Speaker 7 (02:12):
Still, I didn't make expensive every day anywhere.
Speaker 1 (02:15):
I'm Mark hal Willis. And this is Afterlive episode three.
Who threw the first brick at stone Wall?
Speaker 7 (02:32):
Well, just growing up, there was no decade more homophobic
than the fifties.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
This is Martin Boyce, who, at the age of seventy seven,
is a lifelong New Yorker.
Speaker 7 (02:46):
I was born in one of the greatest neighborhoods in
New York. From my rooftop, I could see the guard
girls of the Christ Building, and everything would have been perfect,
except I was gay.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
Martin knew he was gay early on, and he knew
it was a problem. He heard the word faggot every
single day, he told me. In his neighborhood, a known
murderer was forgiven by the community, but the gay guy
who was outed was shunned.
Speaker 7 (03:20):
Shame was the name of the game. Shame overlaid everything.
Shame was the cloud on your life, the dust on
your coat, everything and derision that came in woe with shame.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
Martin was scared to be out, but he had something
most queer people at the time didn't support of parents,
He didn't have to run away to be himself.
Speaker 7 (03:47):
That's why I became a scared drag queen is because
if they're going to shame me, let me give them
something to be shamed about.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
Scare drag is an old school term, Martin says, instead
of queer or LGBTQ. Plus everyone was defined by homosexuality
and there were different types. In scare drag, Martin presented
in a way that definitely raised eyebrows. But wasn't seen
as the most extreme in terms of clear expression.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
That meant like boy George, gender bending.
Speaker 7 (04:25):
They may have thought you a girl for three seconds
and they figure out you were not.
Speaker 1 (04:30):
At the most fem end of the spectrum were the
drag queens. They were throwing balls and turning heads with
their outfits, makeup, wigs, and mannerisms. And at the mask
end of the spectrum were the agays.
Speaker 7 (04:46):
There were the a gage towards suits who had good
jobs that hated us because we brought the whole thing down.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
The agays weren't out at work. They assimilated into straight society. Meanwhile,
drag queens and scare queens weren't interested in conforming. Marshall
was seen as a street clean Martin says, this is
exactly what it sounds like. She was a queen who
was a fixture on the streets of the village, but
(05:16):
no label totally captured Marsha.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
She had her own thing.
Speaker 7 (05:20):
She'd wear dress with no makeup was more shocking than
wearing makeup, more extravagant.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
Than working three hours at your drig. It was just unexpected.
She was just real. I think that's everywhere would describe
her as very real.
Speaker 1 (05:36):
Martin didn't find fellow queens in the neighborhood where he
grew up. To find queer culture and community, he had
to go down to the village.
Speaker 7 (05:46):
Now, a turf is very important in New York City
at the time, and you've probably seen West Side Story.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
Everybody had a turf.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
The village was queer turf.
Speaker 7 (05:58):
Why was that important? You could not talk to your
friend if you were scared, drag or any country. On
city street, one had to look out for trouble and
one could talk.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
Really think about that for a second. You couldn't just
talk on a city street. That's how unsafe it was
to be visibly gay.
Speaker 7 (06:22):
On Christopher Street, you didn't have to worry about that.
There were safety in numbers. You could talk to each other.
Speaker 1 (06:29):
Christopher Street was the main hub in the.
Speaker 8 (06:32):
Village Gaysville, USA, I call it sometimes with all the bars,
and of course Christopher Street is lined with a variety
of shops and stores, many of which are gay owned.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
This is a nineteen seventy seven WBAI report, and it
was Gaysville. A couple of sociologists in the sixties recorded
how many businesses cater to gay people in the village,
they found more than twenty five bars, a dozen clubs
and restaurants, and a handful of hotels, all within a
(07:04):
few blocks. Michael Lynch is a black queer New Yorker
who grew up in the Bronx and still lives there today.
I asked him how it felt to visit the epicenter
of gay culture. When you first made it to the village,
did it feel like this utopia?
Speaker 9 (07:22):
That's the word utopia, because you know, you're coming from
this urban environment up here in the Bronx, where every
single thing and every action and every move that you
make is look and scrutinize and talked about.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
Michael goes by he and she pronouns, and it's also
known by her drag persona Michelle.
Speaker 9 (07:41):
So when I got to the village and I looked
around me and it was just freedom. It was a
freedom that I had never experienced in my life or
in my home, I immediately wanted to come back because
I had never known of a place such as this.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
Michael remembers that as an oasis for hippies and free love.
There were bell bottoms, loose fitting day shikis, and even
more openness.
Speaker 9 (08:08):
Everybody was so wonderful and dressed freely and holding hands.
That's the first one I saw men holding each other's hands,
and I was like, it's a place where you could go,
where you could hold a man's hand.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
The village is also where Michael met Marsha. Why do
you think Marshall was called the Saint of Christopher's Street?
Speaker 9 (08:31):
Because I think she was the greeter. That's the first
thing you saw. Hello Dolls, Hello Dolling's a wonderful day.
How are you?
Speaker 2 (08:41):
You're beautiful.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
Michael admits at first that he didn't give Marsha a
second thought. She was just another weirdo he passed by
on the streets, But it didn't take long to realize
that everyone knew her, that she was at home here.
Speaker 9 (08:59):
I think Marsha was searching for a people at a place,
and I think she founded in Greenwich Village, and the
people found her and everyone took care of her.
Speaker 1 (09:11):
Marcia got by the way a lot of people did
by depending on her community. People offered her spare change, food,
sometimes a place to stay. Many of the elders I
spoke to this season reminded me that we're talking about
a different world than the one we live in today.
People weren't walking around with their AirPods in and their
(09:33):
eyes down. Folks like Marcia stayed afloat hell. They stayed
alive because of their connections to the people around them.
And it wasn't a one way street. Marcia gave back
to the community, sharing change. She collected food, she came by,
even housing she found. She was one of many who
(09:57):
helped to create and sustain a web protection on the streets.
Martin Boyce says, one night Marcia even saved his life.
He was down at the docks.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
And those days he went there for cruising.
Speaker 7 (10:13):
The cruising was very good, unexpected and you know in
life with the unexpected us.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
This time, though nobody was around, nobody there.
Speaker 7 (10:24):
At the time meant a please sweep. I thought, my god,
they came and they swept, and then I heard from
under a car a voice saying, girl, save yourself, Save yourself, girl, please.
Speaker 2 (10:43):
So where was his voice coming from?
Speaker 7 (10:45):
And I looked under the car and there was Marshal
in address under the car.
Speaker 1 (10:52):
Martin has no idea how Marcia spotted him or how
she knew what was about to jump off.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
What the fuck are you talking about? And then I
saw it for the corner of my eyes.
Speaker 7 (11:06):
Four guys with bets wearing wife beat his shirts.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
And they were turning the corner.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
Because of Marcia, he had time to get away. But
Marcia didn't make a big deal out of.
Speaker 2 (11:22):
It, and I told her about it. I was sure.
Speaker 7 (11:25):
I wanted to thank her, as you owe that s
always said, oh, that.
Speaker 1 (11:32):
This was life in the village. Yes, it was on
the vanguard, offering freedom of sexual expression, street theater, a
place to watch the world go by, But you were
always at risk of a beating with a baseball bat
or worse.
Speaker 7 (11:48):
Because it was such an everyday confrontation, the trouble was familiar,
so familiar.
Speaker 1 (11:56):
Martin remembers one time some guys through Marsha's wig and
the river, and then Marcia she is my.
Speaker 7 (12:04):
Wig, and she said you wanted and threw her in
the river with eels.
Speaker 1 (12:09):
Martin says it was a miracle she climbed out, But
Marcia just did what she did best, pay it no mind,
literally her middle name.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
I said, how did you well that it was always?
Speaker 1 (12:22):
Oh that the village was the site of beatings and
police sweeps and bar raids. New York was the first
city to create a vice squad, a police unit dedicated
to cracking down on crimes like sex, work, gambling, and
alcohol cells and consumption. Queerness fell under their purview too.
(12:43):
Beingay was illegal, so cruising was a big target. Vice
squad cops would go undercover and try to trick people
in the village into having sex with them.
Speaker 7 (12:54):
That's a very good gay out, but you would never
known except the shoes and the police Ice squad tended
to not change their shoes, no matter what.
Speaker 1 (13:05):
Outfit that what kind of shoes were they They were
very but shoes that no gay person would wear. Paying
attention to the shoes was one of the first lessons
of surviving on Christopher Street. Martin says he loved seeing
the confusion on the faces of these good looking officers
(13:26):
who couldn't get a single person to go with them.
Long before there was social media or group chats, words
spread fast through an informal network. Queen's on the street,
like Marshall, warned each other if something came up. Shouts
of Lily Law or Betty Badge or Patty Pig were
(13:47):
colled for cops. Coats that kept people safe in a
community that looked out for each other.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
We knew every day we had to know your freedom,
your hell. Y'all all dependent on knowing the street.
Speaker 1 (14:04):
By the end of the sixties, this solidarity was turning
into resistance. Persecution on the streets and in underground clubs
was ratcheting up, and people wanted change.
Speaker 10 (14:19):
And never thought gay men would be fighting back. Hey
you so, no fairy sissies laugh at them at sh especially,
never thought street queens, I mean the street queens of
the bravest.
Speaker 1 (14:31):
It's about to go down. Stick with us, We're back
with afterlives. In the fifties and sixties, gay restaurants and
bars operating under the radar didn't welcome the whole community.
(14:52):
Many spots shut trans people out, but there was one
place where all folks felt welcome. Early one morning, just
before summer, cops crashed a pretty popular spot in a
routine sweep. They arrested some hustlers and queens, but things escalated.
(15:12):
Disobedience turned into a riot. This wasn't at Stonewall in
New York. It was about a decade before, at Cooper
Donuts in Los Angeles in May of nineteen fifty eight,
(15:33):
and let's bust another myth. Stonewall wasn't the one and
only queer riot that ignited a revolution. There were uprisings, fights,
sit ins, and protests from la to San Francisco, Milwaukee
to Philly. Even in New York there was a famous
sip in at Julius's Bar in nineteen sixty six. Having
(15:57):
a place to come together and be yourself was something
worth fighting for. Our elders weren't just sitting at home
looking through the blinds. They wanted to go out have fun.
For Marcia and her friends in the village, one special
hangout was the Stone Wall Inn. It was the place
(16:19):
for dancing, and dancing is basically the opposite of hiding
away at home.
Speaker 10 (16:26):
Okay, all the speakers, We loved going to Stone because
the Stonewall allowed us to dance with each other.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
That's Tommy Lanigan Schmidt. You might remember him from our
last episode. He's from the same part of New Jersey
as Marcia, and like Marcia, he moved out around eighteen
and ended up in the village in the late sixties.
Speaker 10 (16:49):
When we were teenagers. So the spirituality of us dancing
with each other was a major part of our lives,
of holding us together because we could not do that
any other place.
Speaker 4 (17:00):
Then.
Speaker 1 (17:01):
Tommy says, there were a million places straight people could
dance in the city, but at the time the Stone
Wall was the only place for them. There were even
go go boys, all made possible by the mob.
Speaker 10 (17:17):
So the mafia is very important and gay like back then,
because there was a law of that you couldn't serve
gay people drinks.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
Here's a little history lesson for you. After Prohibition, the
New York State Liquor Authority took over the job of
keeping alcohol out of quote disorderly establishments, and you know,
gay people were inherently disorderly, so bars couldn't legally serve
(17:44):
queer people drinks. Gay bars were rated constantly with money
to be made. That's where the mafia comes in.
Speaker 10 (17:53):
Other gay people would say, oh, mafia, terrible, terrible. Nope,
just like during the Roaring twenties, there was and people
got to drink. When it was.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
Prohibition, when the police tried to shut down all the
gay bars in the city, the mafia took over, essentially
paying off the police and government officials to keep things running.
There were raids, but it was kind of a game
of cat and mouse. Everybody wanted to keep the money
and liquor flowing, so the queers played their part in
(18:25):
the masquerade.
Speaker 10 (18:27):
Hey, there was prohibition against gay people being able to
dance together, and they gave it to us. They might
have been greedy about it. They might have been the mafia,
but they gave it to us.
Speaker 1 (18:37):
The Stonewall Inn opened in nineteen sixty seven thanks to
a guy known as Fat Tony, the son of a
big shot mafioso from the Genovizi family. His dad wasn't
too happy he was getting into the gay bar business,
but this was going to be easy money. Fat Tony
did basically nothing to fix up a vacant restaurant space
(19:00):
that had been scorched in a fire. A little black
paint covered up the burnt wood. No need to pay
for working sinks. Glasses could just be dunked into dirty
water all night. A pro tip for regulars was to
stick with bottled beer or bring their own flask. At first,
the stone Wall only let gay men in, but once
(19:22):
they started allowing drag queens. Marshall was one of the first.
Speaker 11 (19:26):
And it's a stone Wall. I was just one of
the patrons that we used to visit the place.
Speaker 1 (19:32):
That's Marsha talking about stone Wall in a nineteen eighty
eight interview. To get in, a bouncer checked you out
through a peepole to make sure you weren't Betty Badge.
Speaker 11 (19:44):
These people to stand up at the front door and
screen you five D and everything like that. But if
they didn't, a undercover cop can come here anytime they
want and has closed the place down.
Speaker 1 (19:56):
The windows were blacked out and reinforced with plywood so
nobody could see or break in. When you finally entered.
There were two rooms.
Speaker 4 (20:06):
They had a front bar and a back bar.
Speaker 11 (20:09):
Now the front party had go go boys, and in
the back part you could dance.
Speaker 1 (20:13):
The front bar was called the White Room, in the
back the Black room. This was based on who was
hanging out in there, although they weren't totally segregated. What
really mattered was the music.
Speaker 4 (20:27):
And they played all these records down the drew Fox.
Speaker 1 (20:30):
In the white room, you might hear Puff the Magic Dragon.
But in the black room, oh, that music had rhythm.
Speaker 2 (20:39):
Stax records.
Speaker 7 (20:40):
Motown ain't nothing like the real thing, baby, respect It
takes two.
Speaker 1 (20:47):
That's Martin Boyce again. He's white, but he hung out
at the back bar.
Speaker 7 (20:53):
The Black Wings would come and do their dances in
front of us, and that was called voking. Later and
the voguing at Stonewolvers unbelievable.
Speaker 1 (21:05):
There's a lot of debate about who actually went to
the Stone Wall. Some claim it was mostly white sis
gay men. The thing is, it depends where you hung out.
Some people might not venture into the back room at all.
Martin says the bar was a refuge for every kind
of people.
Speaker 2 (21:25):
It was like a gay Noah's Ark. There was two
of everybody. Had the flood come. Gay culture rooms survive
for generation.
Speaker 1 (21:34):
But no matter how you identified or which room you
hung out in, you knew at some point you were
going to have a run in with the cops. If
you were queer, you needed street smarts from the jump.
Speaker 7 (21:47):
The moment you came out, the moment you learned how
to conduct yourself in a raid.
Speaker 1 (21:55):
Even though the mafia was paying off the police, the
Stone Wall was still rated about once a month. If
they were tipped off, a white light would go on
so people could be ready. The police might walk in
or simply smash the door open.
Speaker 2 (22:11):
And they came and you lined up, you had you
id ready.
Speaker 1 (22:16):
They would check id and decide if you were cross dressing.
Some people were even subject to invasive anatomical inspections. If
anyone was sent to the paddy wagon, it was usually
the drag queens, and like generations of drunk queer people
before and since, they made it into a scene.
Speaker 7 (22:37):
And then it's very serious raids. The drake queens would
come out to cheers. Because you were not in the raid,
you'd watch it.
Speaker 2 (22:45):
We became our own entertainment.
Speaker 1 (22:49):
At around one thirty am on Saturday, June twenty eighth,
Martin noticed that something was up. He was out with friends.
When he heard the cheers. He joined a semicircle of
people forming outside the bar.
Speaker 7 (23:03):
And this one cop was dragging the stray qui Spanish
strictly and I couldn't tell what you really looked like
because she was so angular, because she was fighting back.
Speaker 1 (23:16):
Usually these rates went off without a hitch. People just
followed the police out to the paddywagon. But on this
night something sparked resistance. One person was fighting back.
Speaker 2 (23:33):
And he got her and pushed her into the petty wagon.
Speaker 7 (23:39):
We will watch you, and he looked at us, and
she took the opportunity of his distraction to kick him
and send him fly.
Speaker 1 (23:54):
With all the hype and myth making about Stonewall, it's
kind of incredible that we still don't know who this
person was. Martin calls them a drag queen, but most
accounts describe the person fighting back as a butch lesbian.
Different names have been floated and disproven over the years.
We're talking about a gender and non conforming person of color,
(24:18):
so on some level it's no surprise that we don't
know their name. When they kicked that cop, everyone laughed,
but Martin says the laughter would be their doom. They
tried to get out, but the cop dragged them back
into the wagon, and you heard bone.
Speaker 7 (24:40):
And flesh against metal and trictly trickly, ugly trickly sound.
Speaker 2 (24:47):
We couldn't believe it.
Speaker 1 (24:50):
The cop told them all to get the fuck out
of there, and usually they would have, but something about
this night was different. Instead of dispersing, the crowd started
moving in. They were shouting police brutality, pigs. Some people
started throwing pennies and dimes. The cops told them again
(25:14):
to get back, but people kept throwing coins, then a
bottle and another bottle, and.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
He looked he gulped, he blinched, and ran into the bar.
Speaker 1 (25:31):
The paddy wagons drove off. The nine cops who remained
and a journalist tagging along with them retreated inside the
stone wall. It was nearly empty except for a few
people in handcuffs. They shut the door and reinforced it
with some tables. There were shouting outside. People in the
(25:53):
crowd shattered the bar's windows. Accounts say the cops were
barricaded inside for forty five minutes. Meanwhile, the crowd out
front grew. Passers by stopped and joined in. The community
network jumped into action. This was the group chat. Tommy
(26:14):
Lanagan Schmidt was outside with Martin.
Speaker 10 (26:17):
That neighborhood had a lot of street phones, so people
would call their friends, and their friends would come from
New Jersey Long Island wherever.
Speaker 1 (26:25):
Inside the bar, cops were trapped and waiting for backup.
They could tell this crowd was no joke. They were nervous.
Pounding at the door was getting louder and louder.
Speaker 10 (26:38):
Miss Boston and a few other peop days there was
a loose parking meter. There was always like half out
of the streets that you can move back and forth
and just grind to the hole that it was half
in any of them. So how they pulled that out
and started banging on the door of the stone wall
like one boom, boom boom.
Speaker 1 (26:59):
The dis parking meter flew through the door and the
crowd seared glass and bottles and molotov cocktails started flying in.
The police tried to secure the door. Agin when the
tactical police force pulled up in riot gear, officers inside
the bar were already aiming their guns.
Speaker 10 (27:20):
They were the people that had shields and were helmets
and really used their billy clubs lock they arrived on
a bus.
Speaker 1 (27:30):
The crowd swelled to five or six hundred people that
first night. There was blood on the street and trash
cans lit on fire.
Speaker 10 (27:40):
Very often, when I snowed lighter fluid, it brings back
on memory of it.
Speaker 1 (27:45):
The cops were beating people up, but they were resisting
and fighting back. The backup unit in all of their
riot gear, thought they'd shut the ruckers down in no time.
Speaker 7 (27:56):
They were very embarrassed and that they were called in
to put down a bunch of baggots. They didn't count
our ingenuity.
Speaker 1 (28:09):
The cops didn't know the village like the street kids did.
Greenwich Village isn't a grid, so the cops would chase
them down one street, only for the queens to show
up on the other side. The Stonewall kids seized the
element of surprise, so.
Speaker 7 (28:26):
We formed a kick right, it's a point of genius.
We started kicking like the rockets, and we sang this song,
We are the village girls. We wear our errant girl,
we wear our dungarees up of our nelly.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
And they had to attack.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
They were taunting them, and the cops were stunned. This
was truly a queer uprising like nothing they'd ever seen.
It went on like this till dawn, and people came
back the next night and for several nights after that.
Speaker 10 (29:01):
Well, they never thought gay men would be fighting back.
They just sat fairy sissies laugh at them, at you,
and especially they never thought street queens. I mean, the
street queens were the bravest. There's a Bob Dylan song
that says, we ain't got nothing, you got nothing to do,
and that's the way it was for us.
Speaker 1 (29:20):
Did you see Marsha there or did y'all ever talk
about the stone Wall?
Speaker 10 (29:25):
I saw Marsha there, like at different times. Marsha was
part of the flow and a big part of the flow,
so she would participate, but probably not the way people
want her to participate in a movie. This isn't a movie,
this is real life.
Speaker 1 (29:44):
Marcia's role remains highly contested. There are multiple eyewitnesses who
saw her there throwing rocks, yelling. On the second night,
one person says they saw her climb up a lamppost
and drop something heavy on a car windshield.
Speaker 11 (30:01):
Well, people just start throwing all the cars, and they
able throwing bottles, and they were throwing bricks.
Speaker 4 (30:07):
Our Ney was throwing all kinds of things.
Speaker 1 (30:10):
This is Marcia again from the nineteen eighty eight interview.
Speaker 11 (30:13):
A lot of people start demonstrating outside of the bar
and everything, and then the cobstas tried to chase them
off the street, and they refused to move, and so
the cobs started hitting them with sticks and they just
started hauling bottles and everything.
Speaker 1 (30:29):
As the mother of our movement, people want to picture
her as throwing the first brick. It's a nice image.
It's also the most debated part of Marcia's story.
Speaker 6 (30:42):
If somebody were to ask you, who is marsh By Johnson, how.
Speaker 8 (30:45):
Do you answer that she started the Stonewall riot.
Speaker 11 (30:50):
I know there's somebody like things about it that she
threw the first brick at stone Wall, but I just
know that she was present.
Speaker 6 (30:56):
Marshby Johnson was a black tis woman who perhaps to
the first brick at Stowell riots.
Speaker 1 (31:04):
It's another myth, but a myth that reveals something a
little more complex than whether she did or did it
set the whole thing off.
Speaker 6 (31:13):
They were like decades of time where she was really
like scrubbed out of that history.
Speaker 1 (31:20):
Tourmaline is the author of Marcia, The Joy and Defiance
of Marsha P. Johnson. They say that in the months
and years following the Stonewall Riots, Marsha's role was lost
to history, and this was intentional. People didn't want a
black trans mentally ill woman who lived on the streets
(31:41):
to be the face of this historic event, a.
Speaker 6 (31:44):
Fear based impulse to whitewasher out of it and sanitize
it so that people wouldn't think that it was something
that quote unquote like crazy people were doing when they
needed the powers happy to think that it was something
that respectable people were doing who.
Speaker 1 (32:00):
Had enough respectability. Politics are a hell of a drug y'all,
but it was clear when Tourmaline started digging into Marcia's
story that she played a part in the Stonewall uprising.
Other historians agree to. David Carter is the author of Stonewall,
The Riots that Sparked the Gay Revolution. It was published
(32:24):
in two thousand and four and is considered the definitive
text on Stonewall.
Speaker 6 (32:29):
David Carter says, Marcia certainly played a huge role in Stonewall,
but it is reserved to like the footnotes right.
Speaker 1 (32:42):
Carter documents first hand accounts of people who saw Marcia
at the first night of the riots, but he's hesitant
to center her experience. Marcia struggled with mental illness, and
by the time historians started documenting Stonewall in depth, Marcia
had been through several minutes until breakdowns. Asked for specific
(33:03):
details of her life, she'd say things like, my computer
is getting all tangled up in.
Speaker 6 (33:09):
Stonewall itself, in riots and upwears. Things aren't necessarily like
a neurotypical linear event right on sec sitting and now
we shall throw mugs and glasses at the police, and
now we shall throw bricks. You know, it doesn't happen
like that it's messy. It's powerful because of its messiness.
Speaker 1 (33:33):
Tourmaline feels strongly that Marcia's mental illness shouldn't count her
out of the queer history books. But in all of
the messiness, there's one main thing historians don't agree on
what time Marsha arrived at the Stone Wall. Was Marsha
in the bar from the very start, or did she,
(33:53):
like so many others, show up later that night in
one set, this distinction isn't the most critical, but history
is a story we tell, and it's our history. Individual
acts as well as communal ones, do matter. Tourmaline says
(34:14):
her research has led her to believe Marcia was already
inside the Stone Wall when the cops arrived for the raid.
Speaker 6 (34:23):
She actually was in the back par She knew exactly
what song was going on when the music was cut out.
Marvin Gaye heard it through the grapevine. She said it
over and over again throughout her life on camera, on
tape to friends, and she could recall with deep point
in how the night unfolded.
Speaker 1 (34:42):
Other accounts have Marcia arriving later in the night after
the initial raid. What makes this tricky is that Marcia
is documented saying both things. Most people familiar with the
debate refer to this clip from nineteen eighty nine.
Speaker 4 (35:02):
I winded up being a down wall that night.
Speaker 11 (35:05):
I was having a party uptown, and I didn't get
downtown till about two o'clock.
Speaker 4 (35:09):
Because when I got downtown a place was already on buying.
It was raid already. The riots had already started.
Speaker 1 (35:16):
That's from an interview Marcia did with Eric Marcus that
was aired on his podcast Making Gay History. Marcia shared
this series of events and other interviews too, but sometimes
in her retelling she mixed up the month the Mayor
of New York details like that, Marcia's version of events changed.
(35:37):
That's the truth from where I stand. I can't know
exactly what happened on this chaotic first night of the
riots over fifty years ago, but we know a lot.
Marcia was there. She fought alongside other powerful trans and
gender nonconforming people. She was with black folks, latine people,
(36:02):
white people, street queens, scare queens, sis, gay men. The
riots went on for six nights. More and more people
came back, and all the while it was the street
people at the front of that line. The stonewall became
a national monument. In twenty sixteen, a plaque went up
(36:24):
along with a web page to commemorate quote a monumental
change for LGBTQ Americans. In February of this year, following
Trump administration directives, the National Park Service erased the word
transgender from the website. It now reads just lgb A
(36:48):
rewriting of history and a single stroke. But we're not
going to forget Marsha. When a photographer showed up on
the second night of the riots to snap a now
famous picture, the aggays scattered and the.
Speaker 7 (37:06):
Egg gates in suits who hated us, somehow looked longlely
at us that they couldn't do anything because of their jobs.
Speaker 2 (37:17):
But we could, and the street queens did, and that
was the stone right.
Speaker 1 (37:26):
In black and white. Ten people squeezed into pose. You
can check out the photo on our Instagram at Afterlives
dot pod. Their femme, their butch. They're in sandals, lashes, hats,
and necklaces. A purse dingles from one queen's hand in
(37:46):
the front row. It's small and cute but not harmless.
Inside it is a brick that queen came ready to fight.
They all did.
Speaker 2 (37:58):
We all threw the first break. We need admit, we
need a legend. We need this for the next century.
Things to go on to make people understand what is
this all about. But we all had a brick in
our hand.
Speaker 1 (38:14):
Now that's a legend I can get behind. We'll be
right back.
Speaker 5 (38:27):
It was one of the most liberating things that I
have ever done to a fucking cop.
Speaker 2 (38:32):
You know.
Speaker 5 (38:32):
It's like cursing them out, throwing stuff at them instead
of them beating me up.
Speaker 1 (38:37):
You know, I was doing it to them. Meet a
self identified super but an elder and an advocate for
unhealthed queer people.
Speaker 4 (38:46):
Hi.
Speaker 5 (38:47):
My name is Jay Toole. My pronouns are just about
everything except big Mama. Do not call me big Mama.
Speaker 1 (38:56):
At the time of the Stonewall uprising, Jay was a teenager.
They'd been kicked out of their home at thirteen and
were living in Washington Square Park. When words spread about
what was happening at the Stonewall, Hell, yeah, they were
going to go.
Speaker 5 (39:12):
I felt a sense of big. I felt big. I
felt proud. It was like, yeah, we're doing something.
Speaker 1 (39:20):
Stonewall did do something. People were energized to keep momentum
going for gay rights before the uprising. There were a
handful of organizations that already existed to represent what they
called the homophile movement, like the Mattachine Society, which started
in the fifties and was all about normalizing homosexuality and
(39:41):
assimilating into stray culture.
Speaker 12 (39:44):
But there are tens of thousands of homosexuals who deplore
the tawdry image.
Speaker 4 (39:48):
Of the so called gay life.
Speaker 12 (39:50):
Architects and lawyers, doctors, teachers, businessmen men like these who
lead quiet, unexceptionable lives in towns and cities all across
the country.
Speaker 1 (40:01):
This nineteen sixty seven clip from CBS Reports hosted by
Mike Wallace says it all. It captures the whole Matachine
Society vibe, which is respectability politics one o one. The
day after the riots, Matachine members posted a sign about
maintaining peaceful and quiet conduct on the door of the Stonewall.
(40:25):
But after blood was spilled on the street, this approach
wasn't going to cut it for most people. They started
new groups instead, like the Gay Activist Alliance known as
the GAA and the Gay Liberation Front the GLF. Stonewall
was critical enough that these groups were organizing a march
(40:47):
to honor the first anniversary of the riots. It was
called the Christopher Street Liberation March, and it planted the
seed of the Pride parades we still celebrate today.
Speaker 3 (41:00):
This year, the Christopher Street Liberation Day Committee is planning
to blitz the city with Gay Pride Week to commemorate
the Christopher Street uprisings and to celebrate the growing strength
of the whole gay movement.
Speaker 1 (41:13):
Many documentaries, books, articles, and podcast episodes fade to the credits.
Here Stonewall happened. People started to organize, they marched, Pride
was born. It was great, but it's not that simple.
Speaker 5 (41:28):
Whole communities I think were left behind. Trans girls, people
of color, homelessness, people with addictions, disabilities.
Speaker 1 (41:37):
From Jay's vantage point or Marshall's, the post Stonewall organizing
is not the moment to fade to black and cue
the pop music.
Speaker 5 (41:46):
They could have done a little bitter outreach. Go to
the peers, go to the park, talk to people, Hey,
this is going on. Put up flyers. You know, maybe
more of us would have gotten involved.
Speaker 1 (41:57):
Assimilation wasn't an option for people like Jay or Marsha.
Their stories highlight the cracks in the movement as the
sixties became the seventies, these cracks widened.
Speaker 10 (42:11):
If someone has a clipboard and a piece of paper,
it might be wise to pass around get everybody room
to sign their name and address and phone number.
Speaker 1 (42:18):
You're listening to the start of a community organizing meeting
in nineteen seventy two. It's supposed to be about cleaning
up Christopher Street. For the most part, it's typical neighborhood stuff.
Too many trucks flyers being torn down. But some people
are there because they want to get people off the street.
They bring up a street queen named Bamby lamour.
Speaker 2 (42:41):
We have several gay organizations.
Speaker 3 (42:43):
When her station has the gay organization to keep people
like Bamby off the street.
Speaker 1 (42:48):
A leader in the group says the gay organization should
be the ones to handle Bambi. The reaction feels like
a litmus test of the time.
Speaker 13 (43:00):
All of a sudden, Samby, who happened to be gay.
Speaker 3 (43:04):
As well, and perhaps a vagrant and dearly becomes strictly
our problem.
Speaker 13 (43:08):
I mean, we'd like to get rid of the.
Speaker 1 (43:17):
Cheering. Hurts to hear a whole room of people delighted
at the thought of making queer unhoused folks disappear when
we consider how Stonewall history overlooked street queens and trans folks.
These cheers are how it happened. Bamby was friends with Marcia.
(43:42):
At one point she helped Marcia create a home for
trans people. But three years after Stonewall, the movement was
pretty clear on what it thought about people like her.
Elders we spoke to thought that many people were just embarrassed.
They were shame that it was street youth who started
(44:02):
this fight. When gay rights finally picked up some traction,
the folks who had the most proximity to power, sis
straight passing white gay men, didn't want anybody holding them back.
Speaker 8 (44:16):
I did say, I don't want to be associated with
that bull dyke. I don't want to be associated with
that drag queen.
Speaker 1 (44:22):
You may remember Randy Wicker in the eighties, he was
Marsha's roommate, but in the early seventies he clung to
respectability politics at all costs.
Speaker 8 (44:34):
As long as they think we're all like high voices
and running around in dresses, we normal looking people, we're safe.
Speaker 11 (44:43):
I mean, like everybody was against the transvestikes just about
in the movement.
Speaker 4 (44:49):
They just couldn't get along with a male that looked
like a woman.
Speaker 1 (44:57):
That's Marcia again from that nineteen eighty eight interview. Despite
the challenges, Marcia wanted to fight for progress. She was
excited by the possibilities of GAA and GLF. She went
to meetings and spoke her mind. She told her friends
to go too, like Sylvia Rivera, another trans revolutionary.
Speaker 4 (45:19):
And Sylvia was that type of person.
Speaker 11 (45:21):
She would always come out and dresses and stuff to
meetings and everything.
Speaker 1 (45:25):
Activism came naturally to Sylvia and Marsha. They joined the
effort to pass a non discrimination bill to protect homosexuals
from being fired or evicted. They went to demonstrations organized
by GAA and stood on the sidewalk to get signatures.
Sylvia even got arrested. She and another transactivist named Bbe
(45:47):
Scarpy testified in front of the city council about including
transsexuals in the bill.
Speaker 13 (45:54):
Johnnie, I want my gay right now.
Speaker 1 (45:57):
Marcia was making her voice heard too. Here she is
outside of city Hall rallying for the bill to pass.
In nineteen seventy three, an interview asked her how the
bill will affect her job.
Speaker 13 (46:09):
Darling, I don't have a job.
Speaker 2 (46:11):
I'm on welfare.
Speaker 6 (46:13):
I had no chance to get in a job as
long as this country discriminates against tomas sextual.
Speaker 1 (46:19):
For folks like Marcia, Sylviumbbie, this bill could protect them
from discrimination. But by the end of the year, when
the bill failed to pass for the fourth time, politicians
and GAA members blamed trans people. By nineteen seventy four,
they decided to remove gender expression from the bill altogether.
(46:40):
And guess what, it still didn't pass for twelve more years.
I guess trans people weren't the problem after all. Sylvia
and Marshall were pushed out of their already fragile place
in the movement. After a while, Marcia saw no point
in going to the dance fundraiser that GA would throw.
(47:02):
She says, nobody would dance with them anyway. Sylvia said
people wouldn't even use her name at GA meetings.
Speaker 14 (47:10):
So do you accept dragons? Short, come on down. So
we walked in and like, what's your name? At the
table you had to write your name. So my name
is Sylvia. He says, what is your name? I said,
I'm Sylvia. He says, well, we can't accept that name.
Speaker 1 (47:26):
That's Sylvia. Recorded by Eric Marcus and aired on his
podcast Making Gay History, and.
Speaker 11 (47:32):
They would always think she was disruptive and everything, but
the men and the women could do all the talk
and they.
Speaker 4 (47:37):
Wanted to do.
Speaker 1 (47:38):
Some lesbians criticized Marcia and Sylvia, telling them that the
way they dressed and behaved was an insult to women
and a barrier to progress. Randy admits he didn't like
when Sylvia came to ga meetings either, and yet he
says they would wonder why their membership wasn't more diverse.
Speaker 8 (47:58):
Everybody there, ninety nine point five percent were white. I
don't remember any people of color being there at that time.
They were all like in their early twenties. It was
very much a young middle class white movement at that time.
We used just shit around even at GAA and say
where are the minorities?
Speaker 1 (48:19):
This is how the meetings went, planting the seeds for
dynamics that still feel familiar to me today. Mainstream queer
organizations say they cherish diversity, but really only wanted on
their limited terms. I found myself in rooms very recently
where people are having discussions about dropping the tea from
(48:40):
the larger LGBTQ fight for equality that doesn't capture my
vision of liberation. And it didn't satisfy Marsha either. Now
does she consider herself an activist?
Speaker 8 (48:55):
Oh yes, she did, Oh yes, And you know what's
so sad. That's sad, really, but some people do all
the work and getting none of the credit.
Speaker 1 (49:09):
There came a point when Sylvia just couldn't take it anymore.
At a nineteen seventy three Gay Pride rally, Sylvia stood
up in a sparkly unitard and demanded a place on
stage under the arches of Washington Square Park. The organizers
didn't want to give her the mic, and the crowd
bowed her.
Speaker 13 (49:30):
Job. They quite down.
Speaker 8 (49:37):
When Sylvia took that microphone. She picks it up and
there's a weight on the end of that. And let
me tell you the way she had that is that
she was ready to hit you in the head. You
weren't getting that microphone from her.
Speaker 1 (49:50):
This rally followed the Christopher Street Liberation March that year.
There was a contingent that wanted to ban trans people
all together. Marsha and Sylvia were there anyway, raising their
voices and fifths. Marsha wore a flower crown and a
sign that said free all gays. It also said free
our half sister, Bamby Lamore with the drawing of a
(50:13):
person behind bars. The community wanted Bambi the street Queen gone,
but Marsha and Sylvia weren't going to let her be forgotten.
Speaker 2 (50:24):
Sylvia, what a screamer. I'm taking time to be treated
this way.
Speaker 8 (50:29):
I'm not gonna put a lot about her brothers and
sisters in prison.
Speaker 1 (50:33):
Sylvia went on talking about how her gay brothers and
sisters would right her from jail. Randy was in the
sea of confused people and he didn't get it either.
Speaker 8 (50:43):
And when she said that I was sitting there, puysaid
brothers and sisters in prison. I said, I don't never
known anybody in prison. Only criminals are imprisoned.
Speaker 1 (50:55):
She blamed the people in the crowd for doing nothing
to protect them. The audio fans kept booing there was
a total disconnect, but Sylvia would not be silenced.
Speaker 13 (51:07):
I have been beaten, had my mouse broken, I've been
blown in jail. I've lond my job, I've lond my
apartment for gay liberation, and D'll keeping it right.
Speaker 1 (51:25):
Sylvia and Marshall would make their own change. They would
make their own home. They would make the community they
needed to survive, and they'd make it easier for others
like them too. That's coming next time on Afterlives.
Speaker 5 (51:42):
Sweetness, loveliness, maternal is a warmth in these women.
Speaker 10 (51:49):
If you see thirteen year old kids at three in
the morning and it's not so nice outside, of course,
she's going to take them home.
Speaker 6 (51:57):
They were modeling themselves off of some of the most
revolute utionary movements that were going on.
Speaker 11 (52:02):
I became vice predators, three transvestic action revolutionaries.
Speaker 4 (52:06):
I'd like to help more transvests than I ben helping.
Speaker 1 (52:12):
Thanks for listening to Afterlives. You can find this episode
in future ones on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you get your podcasts. Please leave us a rating
and review to let us know what you think. Afterlives
is a production of the Outspoken Network from iHeart Podcasts
in partnership with School of Humans. I'm your host and
(52:34):
creator Raquel Willis. Dylan Hoyer is our senior producer and scriptwriter.
Our associate producer is Joey pat Sound design and engineering
by Jess Krinchich, Story editing by Julia Furlan, fact checking
by Carolyn Talmich. Score composed by Wisei Murray. Our production
(52:56):
manager is Daisy Church. Executive producers include Me, Raquel Willis
and Jess Crinchich from The Outspoken Podcast Network, Amelia Brock,
Virginia Prescott, Brandon Barr, and Els Crowley from School of
Humans and The Cats Company. The image of Marcia in
our show art is provided by the Leslie Lowman Museum
(53:18):
of Art Founder's gift, p. Twenty fifteen dot six nine
nine dot one oh six. A special thank you to
everyone who provided archival tape, including the grill O Papers
Box eleven, audio Tape seventy, the LGBT Community Center National
History Archives, Charles Pitts Tapes, Tape sixteen and Tape twenty
(53:43):
the LGBT Community Center National History Archive. Marcia nineteen ninety
two by Michael Casino, courtesy of Michael Casino. Interview with
Marsha P. Johnson nineteen eighty eight from one National Gay
and Lesbian Archives at the USC Libraries. Lewis Laney at
Mister Lewis Laney and his book three sixty five Gays
(54:07):
of the Year at It Takes Courage and At Powered
by Rainbows,
Host
Raquel Willis
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