May 15, 2024 • 36 mins
Martin Boyce was part of the historic Stonewall Riots in June 1969. He recounts the events of that night in detail and reflects on how his actions changed America for generations to come.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
What We Loved is a production of iHeart Podcasts and
the Outspoken podcast Network.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
A policeon was dragging this queen and she was struggling,
and he dragged her to the petty wagon and was
right there and threw her in. He looked away for
a second and you could see her foot and her
sequined high heel come out and kick him on the shoulder.
(00:28):
She just sent him flying six feet. He looked at us,
He dusted herself off, and he went back into that wagon,
and you heard flesh and bone against metal and dripping,
ugly dripping and moaning. And he came out of the
back of the car triumphant, and everybody went silent, and
(00:55):
he closed the door. He turned around and said, all right,
your faggots, you saw what you saw. Not get the
fuck out of you. Well we always listened to.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
But not this time.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
Her kicking him was the first sign that this night
would be like no other.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
As a gay kid, growing up religious and in the South,
I thought being gay was the worst thing I could
ever be. Now, as a journalist, I'm trying to un
learn that by seeking out our history, and what I've
found are people and stories full of courage, perseverance, and love.
(01:44):
In this episode, we'll meet Martin Boyce, a Stonewall regular
who one night found himself in the middle of the
historic riot that would change everything. From My Heart podcast,
I'm Jordan Gon Solve this and this is what we loved.
(02:27):
I can't speak for all gay millennials, but I had
no idea what Stonewall was until I was in my twenties.
I grew up going to public school in Texas, and
Stonewall just wasn't really something we learned about. It's funny, though,
I do remember my first time going to Stonewall. I
(02:48):
was eighteen years old and I had just moved to
New York for college, and I was deeply closeted, but
I just wanted to dance with other gay people. I
ended up getting into the bar using my Pennsylvania fake ID,
and I remember looking at the window and there was
this bright neon sign that said Stonewall. I didn't realize
(03:11):
where I was, and I had no idea that almost
fifty years before that night, I was at the site
of the most important uprising in Queer American history. Almost
half of Americans don't know what Stonewall is, so I
wanted to talk to someone who's actually there. Martin Boyce.
(03:35):
My next guest was he's seventy six now, but on
the first night of the Stonewall riots in June nineteen
sixty nine, he was twenty one, five seven and skinny,
with brunette hair that had blonde streaks in it.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
He lived with his.
Speaker 1 (03:51):
Father and grandmother in New York. At that time, bars
could be shut down if any of their gay patrons
were caught hugging or kissing, or even dancing with each other,
and those gay patrons could be arrested for disorderly conduct.
At that point in the sixties, queer people in New
York had found a home in the neighborhood of Greenwich Village.
(04:13):
The Stone Wall In was in the heart of the village,
and it was one of those few places that queer
people could dance at. Even though they could still get arrested.
That feeling of escaping their reality just to dance, even
for a night was worth it. This was the queer
culture that Martin was Immerston, Miss Martin. That's what they
(04:40):
used to call you, right, what would they call me?
Speaker 2 (04:43):
Well, I don't know. You have to reveal your personality
to get an it was you. It was up to them.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
Oh wow, Okay, hopefully I'll be lucky enough to get
a name. So why don't we start off by talking
about when you came out and what that was like.
You were born in nineteen forty eight and you grew
up basically in the fifteen and sixties. So tell me
what it was like when you came out.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
Hopeless. I mean, if you were a gay person, it
was hopeless being gay in the fifties. It was the
worst thing you could possibly be and there was no explanation,
no understanding, or just accept it.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
And how old were you when you came out?
Speaker 2 (05:28):
Well, I came out officially at seventeen, but I was
gay since I was seven. Everybody knew. Everyone's waiting for
me to say, you know, I was gay, And finally
I told my dad, you know I'm gay. If you
want to throw me at the house, drow me at
the house. And my father said, no, I love you.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
Really. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
He was a working class cab driver, a real matro man,
but he understood.
Speaker 1 (05:53):
You'd seen all kinds of walks of life because he
was just.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
Nineteen thirty three, so he watched this horror for thirty
forty years. Yeah, what horror, the torment of gay people.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
M So, what about your grandma? What did she say?
Speaker 2 (06:09):
My grandmother was like Italian Sicilian, and there she was,
you know, with her shawl and her ear rings and
her black hair. Cop parted in the middle. And my
father said, you know, you got to tell your grandmother
you're gay. I was like, I do and she said, yes,
you gotta tell her. And I told my grandmother. I
(06:30):
said to my grandmother, you know, Grandma, I'm gay. She said,
what what does it mean. I said, well, you see,
I'm homosexual. She goes, what is that? What does that mean?
I said, Grandma, she understood this. I'm a fairy and
she said, oh, she said yeah. She said I chose
(06:50):
your mother when you were born, the very day you
were born. And that was that. I was out wow,
because my grandmother was the one that said we're all
gay now and then wow.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
So you grew up in a pretty progressive very.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
But in a non progressive world society.
Speaker 1 (07:08):
Yeah, So tell me what it was like coming of
age in the nineteen sixties.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
The impression was incredible. And one day I went down
to the trucks because we all went to the trucks.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
When you said trucks, you mean the abandoned trucks that
gay men would go find people to have sex with
for cruising. Yeah, and how old were you?
Speaker 2 (07:30):
Oh about eighteen?
Speaker 1 (07:32):
Okay?
Speaker 2 (07:33):
And we went down there. We'd always go down there,
and it was always interesting because so forbidden, the trucks
were open and elicit. I went down to the trucks
and there was nobody there. I mean, nobody was there.
That was really scary.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
And that was not normal, not normal.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
And all of a sudden I heard a voice saying, girl,
save yourself, Please, girl, save yourself. And I was like,
what's going on with the coming of that? Boys, please
listen to me. You gotta listen to me, listen. And
then I looked under the car finally because that's where
(08:14):
the sound seemed to be coming. And there was miss.
Speaker 1 (08:16):
Marsha you mean Marcia P. Johnson.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
Oh wow, I knew her. And she was very nice.
I mean, you know who I was standing up and
that's where I know she was. She always wanted somebody,
anybody of danger. She was that kind of queen.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
And Grandma, really, what was she warning you about?
Speaker 2 (08:35):
There was a group of boys and their wife beat
her t shirts with bats. They saw me because they
were trying to.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
Beat you up.
Speaker 2 (08:45):
Oh they were going to come out there and beat me.
Oh they were Those bats were ready to move.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
You could tell because they knew you were gay.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
Oh of course I was obviously gay. You could see
that blood was the only thing that was satisfied them.
And then a truck drive across the way at the
highway towards the river called me into the car. He
thought what was happening? And I ran over him, got
into the car and he took me to Fourth Street
(09:12):
to get the bus to go home, and I saved myself.
Every day was a danger like that.
Speaker 1 (09:17):
So growing up in the nineteen sixties, being gay in
the nineteen sixties, you were always scared that people were
gonna beat you up.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
Of course, I remember my father tried to teach me
how to use a knife. He showed me how to
stick it in somebody, but then you had to turn
it wow to twist it inside, and I thought, I
can't do this.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
He had taught you that because you were gay, and
he knew you needed to defend yourself.
Speaker 2 (09:45):
Yes, you could not walk down the street. Two queens
walking down the street. One had to watch him. One
had to talk, and then you talked and she watched
because you turned that corner and it could be a catastrophe.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
Wow, how are you meeting people? Because there was no
grinder back then.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
No, no, your crew. You go to the streets. The
streets that night were alive. There were certain areas to
certain streets that were alive. New York and the sixties
the streets were everything. I mean in the sixties you
didn't make plans. You left your house and by five
in the morning you'd come home. But you would experience
(10:26):
these amazing things in between.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
And what was it like going to a gay bar
back then? Because it was illegal, right, it was.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
Illegal and it was stuffy. You were trained right away
to being a raid.
Speaker 1 (10:39):
What do you mean a raid?
Speaker 2 (10:41):
Well, if you went to a gay ball, you had
to know how to deal with the raid.
Speaker 1 (10:45):
The cops.
Speaker 2 (10:45):
The cops, depending on if they're paid off or if
they were not paid off, house via the raid would be.
They would tell you what to do in a raid.
I mean, like who would tell you other capele we
met right away on the streets always they would just
tell you in a matter of conversation, what to do.
In to May, it sounds very simple. The life would
(11:07):
go on, and of if they did. You stayed in
front of your drink, you grabbed your ID, you moved
away from anybody who were close to or cruising or
getting close to, and you wait for them to come in.
They break down the door. They were going to punish you.
They were gonna let you know that you were not legitimated.
They were going to let you know your place in
(11:28):
this world. My dad thought the way I looked when
I was going out, and he said, you know what,
He said, here's the cookie jar. There's money in it
for your bail. And he said, whenever you got one,
call called me and.
Speaker 1 (11:41):
I'll bail you out with the money and the cook
You do right. He just did even finish right. So
let me get this straight, Martin. It is the sixties,
and every time you go outside you're worried about getting
beaten up, and every time you go to a bar,
you're worried about the police coming to arrest you. Your
dad is teaching you from an early age how to
(12:02):
protect yourself, and you have just accepted this is what
life is for a gay person.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
There was nothing else you could do. This is the
way life was, and this is the way you had
to live. So why not enjoy what you had? A
little you had and gays that developed an amazing culture,
a culture that was really worthy of living.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
So let's talk about Stonewall. How did you hear about it?
Speaker 2 (12:29):
Oh? Everybody heard about stone was the moment it opened.
The whole thing was. You could dance there and it
was a dump.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
What do you mean a dump?
Speaker 2 (12:39):
It was a horrible physical place. It was just uncared for, unclean.
So we washed it black walls. I remember seeing the
place one afternoon and my friend had to go in
there and what a dump? What a non entity?
Speaker 1 (12:56):
In the daylight you saw it in this Oh it
was horrible.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
It was horrible place. But at night it was magic.
People made it magic.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
What was the difference.
Speaker 2 (13:08):
The difference was the attitude of the people and the jukebox.
The jukebox was the heart and the center of the
entire bar.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
So it was all about just losing yourself on the
dance floor.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
Yes, and also from Harlem and Brooklyn came the black queens.
So they'd come and they practiced their routines in front
of us. They were doing something in front of the jukebox.
It was incredible, this new kind of dancing, new kind
of performance. It was called Vogan later but we didn't
(13:39):
have a name. And the queens were tried out on
the Stonewall crowd during the weekdays. It was fantastic, really
something else to see. Nobody spoke, everybody watched. They were
the queens doing this new thing, this hip thing. We
were like the privilege to be part of.
Speaker 1 (13:58):
This is the music. Tell me what was your favorite
song that was playing?
Speaker 2 (14:04):
So it was really great. I knew good music, the
kind of music that queens wanted to hear. And they
controlled that jukebox and drawed it. And every time I
would go to the jukebox, I was allowed.
Speaker 1 (14:15):
You got the jukebox access because they liked you.
Speaker 2 (14:18):
Oh, I was no problem. I was on a little
pedestal and one day my friend left New York City
and I got very sad and I got up and
I played I'm Leaving on a Jet playing by Peter
Poul and Mary, a folk group.
Speaker 1 (14:33):
Folk music at Stonewall.
Speaker 2 (14:36):
They did not like it. I was ostracized. I was
not allowed to the jukebox again. I told my dad
he knew street culture and he said, queens are just
the same like everybody else. He said, I'll give w
your allowed. Just buy your berry drink to go let
your back. I did. I had no money left. It
(14:56):
was all spent on them. And the day came and
I was all right. They came me, they opened up.
I had the way to the jukebox, one quarter, the
only quarter I had. I played E nine Bretha Franklin,
respect and the queens started dancing. The crowd started cheering,
(15:17):
and I was back. I was back in the centrals.
Com I remember to this day that year, I remember
that feeling they gave me one more chance.
Speaker 1 (15:47):
When Martin was coming of age, life as a queer
person wasn't easy in New York. Police raids were common
for queer people just trying to dance with their friends.
Homosexual acts were illegal, and being gay was still officially
considered a mental illness. Stonewall was a respite from all
of this. From the outside, it didn't look like much,
(16:11):
but inside it was a safe haven where queer people
could let loose. The physical building was two stories tall,
had a red brick exterior, and was mostly surrounded by
narrow streets. On the hot summer night, of June twenty seventh,
nineteen sixty nine, Martin was excited to go to Stonewall
(16:31):
with his best friend Bertie. It was a full moon.
They were dressed up in what he calls scare drag.
Scare drag isn't dressing in drag. It's sort of like
tying up your T shirt to show a little belly
button and putting on some mascara. So that night Martin
slipped on a tight pink boatnecked T shirt that was
cropped at the bottom. He put on his eyeliner and
(16:54):
headed to the village. Stone Wall was already full though,
and they didn't end up getting in, so he and
Bertie sat at a stoop right by the bar to
figure out where to go next, and they started seeing
some commotion. It was eight cops who were raiding the bar.
As they kicked the patrons out onto the street. Martin
and Bertie saw some of their friends outside Stonewall and
(17:17):
ran into the action. So tell me a little bit
about that night and what actually happened.
Speaker 2 (17:25):
We were sitting on a stoop up from Stonewoo and
then I heard all this commotion and these lights down
Stonewol and it was police cause, and the crowd behind me,
rushing rushing behind. I could feel them talking about a raid,
and I looked down. I did, there's a raid. It
(17:47):
was happening. I could tell this just look a ray
really was ray. And the queen that created a semi
circuit around the bar. A police one was dragging this
queen in this open area in between the semicircle and
the doors of the bar, and she was struggling, and
he dragged her to the petty wagon and was right
(18:09):
there and threw her in. He looked away for a second,
and she could see her foot and her sequined high
heel come out and kick him on the shoulder and
send him flying. She just sent him flying six feet.
But he got up, he looked at us, He dusted
(18:31):
himself off, and he went back into that wagon, and
you heard flesh and bone against metal and dripping, ugly
dripping and moaning, and he came out of the back
of the car triumphant, and everybody went silent, and he
(18:53):
closed the door. He turned around and said, all right,
your faggots, your soldier saw get the fuck out of here.
Well we always listened, but not this time. And then
we started moving towards him. Step by step, I saw
the hairs on his neckro up. He gulped, and he
(19:17):
ran into the Stonemall barn. They all ran into the barn.
The cops well, all of a sudden, everybody started throwing
things in their pockets, pennies at first, because there was copper,
and we started throwing that and throwing it against the door.
It's one queen, she went. She got all these orange
peels from orange shop, and we threw those, and they
(19:41):
brought bottles. We started throwing those a garbage can a beer,
and we kept doing.
Speaker 1 (19:45):
That because the cops are inside, right.
Speaker 2 (19:48):
And because the adrenaline it had to be released, It
could no longer be contained. Something I look a made
us all warriors, and they knew it, and they knew
they were in danger. Their guns there were times, meant nothing.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
Right now they were outnumbered.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
They had not expected such fierce resistance.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
And this was different from other raids that.
Speaker 2 (20:15):
You had been to, completely different. We always listen to them.
We dis first when it tell us dispersed. We shook
our heads, we locked our wounds. We took our losses
again and again and again, but not that night. Her
kicking him was the first sign that this night would
(20:35):
be like no other.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
It sounds so different from the Martin that was compliant
with the cops and running away from the guys with
the bats. What had changed for you?
Speaker 2 (20:51):
All of us were angry. No one we're oppressed, No
one had been mistreated. And why we contributed to society.
We did their hair, we did their nails, we made
their art.
Speaker 1 (21:05):
Martin, What was going through your minds at that point?
Speaker 2 (21:10):
You didn't think of anything. I can't even think now
what I thought. It didn't matter anymore, and we could
think anymore. You didn't think, You just thought. And then
this queen she went and she got light of fluid
from the optimo on seventh AVENU, my god, and then
she just threw a matchine and lit the whole place up.
The riot started. And a riot is not what you think.
(21:34):
It's not like you stand there and you think you're
in a twirl in a swirl in a kaleidoscope, and
you're smelling burning garbage and sweat, and nothing's clear. It's
all swirled. And then it stopped. And there I was
looking at the window of stormwall, and there was Miss
(21:57):
New Orleans just on the window. Sill. She's a very
unfortunate queen. She was ugly, she had very bad skin,
Miss New Orleans, Miss Doorians. But I have never seen
such fire in anybody's eyes. This queen meant to avenge
(22:18):
all the indignities that she suffered. And she jumped down
and she grabbed the parking meter and almost single handedly
broke it out of the contrecrete. They helped her when
they realized what she was trying to do, and they
started ramming the door.
Speaker 1 (22:33):
The parking meter that's in the concrete ground. She took
that out of the ground.
Speaker 2 (22:40):
She broke the ground.
Speaker 1 (22:41):
That's the level of rage.
Speaker 2 (22:43):
Oh, she was determined. They used as a battering ram.
They started smashing down the door, and we're going to
break in, and all of a sudden, the crowd parted
and there they came. They called in the Tactico Police Force.
Speaker 1 (23:02):
Oh shit, the swat team.
Speaker 2 (23:06):
Headshields, body shiels, gas masks, every kind of equipment. And
they were really, you could tell, curious that they were
called in to fight a bunch of fagots. They couldn't
believe it. They were trained for something else al together,
(23:29):
and here was a bunch of fagots that they thought
they could see in their eyes they were going to
put this out in two minutes. He's going to take
them two minister and the entire thing. So like this
is an incredible thing. They did this kick line. All
the queens got together, held each other's arms and did
(23:49):
a rock cat kick and say, we are the village. Girls,
we wear our hair, and girls, we wear our dungarees
above our nelly knees.
Speaker 1 (24:00):
Oh it sounds like you guys weren't even afraid.
Speaker 2 (24:04):
No, there was nothing to lose, and they charged and
we ran.
Speaker 1 (24:10):
It's estimated that perhaps as many as two thousand protesters
were there with Martin that night. They were throwing empty
beer bottles at the cops and battling the tactical patrol force.
But Martin and his friends had an advantage. They knew
the neighborhood of Greenwich Village better than anyone else. The
(24:31):
village isn't like the rest of New York. It doesn't
follow the grid system. It's old and has unusual diagonal
street patterns that curve and twist at random points. The
cops couldn't keep up.
Speaker 2 (24:46):
We knew the village, and that's a military advantage that
we had all these men who did not know these things.
Speaker 1 (24:55):
You knew. You and the rest of the queens. You
guys knew exactly every nook and cranny and turned of
the West village.
Speaker 2 (25:03):
We singled doorway, every place to go pee. We knew
everything about the village, everything, And they chased us. They
thought they were going to end it. It didn't worry.
We controlled the street. They didn't wipe the street out.
They didn't get us in patty wagons. We were still
holding the ground. Oh my god. And then do one
(25:29):
was coming, Oh my god. And I was on a stoop.
I was really exhausted, and of course he was this queen.
She was blotting her head bleeding.
Speaker 1 (25:40):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (25:41):
And then six feet away from her was this cop
who was so tired, leaning against the fence. Didn't arrest
her because over it was just over.
Speaker 1 (25:50):
Oh shit. So this this image is the sun is
coming up, and you have a queen who was running
away from the cop, and the cop and the queen
and are standing next to each other. Both over.
Speaker 2 (26:04):
The street was smoking, garbage, kins were smoking. There was
a trail of glass, beautiful when some picked it up,
like of diamonds.
Speaker 1 (26:16):
There's tears coming down your face? How come?
Speaker 2 (26:22):
Well, I haven't talked about this in a while, just
remembering it. It was a great event. Sometimes I think
it's just an event, and I don't realize what a
great event it was. And it was.
Speaker 1 (27:04):
Martin Boyce had just taken part in the Stonewall Riots,
a rebellion that would change the way gay people were
treated in America. But that wasn't yet clear to Martin.
In fact, as he was going home from stone Wall
that morning, he was anxious that there was going to
be backlash and a lot of it. What do you do?
(27:26):
Did you go home? Oh?
Speaker 2 (27:27):
I went home.
Speaker 1 (27:28):
What time is it?
Speaker 2 (27:29):
Oh? Must be five thirty. Now, wow, my father got
phone calls. I got into the house and he goes.
He put his paper down. He said to me, it's
about time you guys did something.
Speaker 1 (27:41):
It was about time.
Speaker 2 (27:43):
I was so stunned that he said. I just went
to bed. I had it. I was just like too
much of me. And then about three or four days later,
I knew the backlace was coming. And I was walking
up eighty seventh Street. Everybody was walking dogs and things like.
It was just the afternoon.
Speaker 1 (28:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:01):
So this very very butched black man a sensation worker
throwing cobbage bags into the back of the truck. And
he saw me, and he glared at me, and he
moved towards me and lived his hand in the black salute.
Speaker 1 (28:20):
Wow, it was his.
Speaker 2 (28:21):
Fist up and power in that power bout his head.
He blinked. Nobody was walking dogs anymore, Nobody was calling
for cabs to do that. In front of a fag.
The entire block was like, what is going on?
Speaker 1 (28:39):
There's like solidarity there.
Speaker 2 (28:41):
It was a real moment, and I realized, there's hope.
Speaker 1 (28:48):
So what was the first thing that you thought really changed?
Speaker 2 (28:54):
The psychiatric people? The medical association, there's the chitaes voting
us not.
Speaker 1 (29:00):
Sick, mentally ill?
Speaker 2 (29:02):
Right.
Speaker 1 (29:03):
In nineteen fifty two, the American Psychiatric Association had classified
homosexuality as a mental illness. During this time, queer people
could be subjected to brain surgeries called lobotomies. These surgeries
severed entire parts of the brain with the goal of
decreasing same sex attraction. Performed on young, healthy people, it
(29:27):
could lead to epilepsy, dementia, and sometimes death. But after stonewall,
gay activists were empowered to organize and push back, and
after intense protesting. The American Psychiatric Association voted in nineteen
seventy three to remove that classification. Gays were no longer
(29:47):
considered mentally ill. A lot of people attribute that change
to Stonewall.
Speaker 2 (29:53):
That was the first change. You couldn't have anymore. They
couldn't force you have abod anymore because you weren't sick anymore.
Speaker 1 (30:00):
That's a big deal.
Speaker 2 (30:01):
It's a very big deal. It's a very big deal.
I knew people that were sent away, like everybody remembered
somebody gone, the great queens that were gone, homeless, mental institutions, lobotomies.
Speaker 1 (30:18):
You know, Martin. People always associate Stonewall with liberation. When
did you actually feel liberated the first gay march, Yeah,
tell me about that.
Speaker 2 (30:31):
Well, there was going to be a march a year later,
and there was trouble in the city and everybody knew
something was going to happen and watch. So it was
not the best idea to have a gay march.
Speaker 1 (30:44):
You thought you might get beat up or something.
Speaker 2 (30:46):
We were sure were gonna get beat up.
Speaker 1 (30:49):
One year to the day of Stonewall, in nineteen seventy
the very first Pride marches were held all over the
country to commemorate the first anniversary of the riots. That's
why Pride Isn't. The march in New York was called
the Christopher Street Liberation Day. Christopher Street is in the
heart of Greenwich Village. For Martin, it felt like the
(31:10):
first time that queer people from all walks of life
had come together. Usually folks just stayed in their clicks.
Martin and his best friend Bertie decided they were going
to go, but they were really anxious. Queer people at
the time didn't really gather together in broad daylight. It
was dangerous and they thought they might be some of
(31:31):
the only ones to show up. So before heading to
the demonstration, Martin and Bertie took a valuum to calm
their nerves. They marched fifty blocks till they got to
Central Park, where they realized that there were thousands of
people with them.
Speaker 2 (31:49):
We heard that the gay group had gotten a license,
couldn't bleat it to march up sixth Avenue, and you know,
there was a call to us to join, all right.
Me and Bertie said, you know, well we're gonna do it.
We get down there and we started. I remember him
(32:09):
grabbing my arm. I grabbed his arm and was mashing it.
But on the way up it was this black woman.
She was cutting windows up in this building and she
waved her claw to us. And then there were people
that were shouting encouragement, tourists and people that were just
like my dad, like go ahead, keep going.
Speaker 1 (32:31):
Man.
Speaker 2 (32:32):
They knew you were gay, but oh my god, they
knew that you have to be blind. I see that,
and all of a sudden Bertie turned around to me
and said, we're in the middle. It was unbelievable. Unbelievable,
and we begetting to fifty seventh Street. They stopped us.
Then the track stopped and a couple was near me.
(32:56):
I said, I knew you did this. I knew you
stop us. I knew it. Said I didn't stop you.
There's too many of you. You can't get into the
park right away. I said, really, He said, yeah, you
gotta wait. And true enough, in the south part of
the park we're all getting in. The hells were covered
with gay people, covered with gay people. Now, we never
(33:20):
saw each other before in the daytime.
Speaker 1 (33:23):
Really where when wow? Because you guys only met each
other at night in the dark, in the dark, we knew.
Speaker 2 (33:31):
About each other. We imagined each other. We knew all that,
but we never really looked at each other. And multitudes
are gay people covering the hills was incredible and nothing
was happening because all these gay people were feeling a
sense of wonder seeing other gay people. And Bertie looked
(33:54):
at me and said, you know what I think?
Speaker 1 (33:57):
Where people? What do you mean when you say when
Bertie said we are people, what does that mean?
Speaker 2 (34:05):
We weren't before. We're just a bunch of gay groups.
And all of a sudden, Bertie noticed that all these
gays were like together.
Speaker 1 (34:13):
So for the first time you felt like you were
a part of something.
Speaker 2 (34:17):
Right, that this really was gay depression.
Speaker 1 (34:21):
Wow, it's crazy for me to be sitting across from
you because we're two different generations. And I can't help
but think about the fact that I'm able to go
to gay bars and it's because of you, know what
you did all those years ago, And I just wonder,
(34:43):
from your perspective, what do you think the impact of
stonewall has been on the generations after you?
Speaker 2 (34:51):
Every older gay person wants to pass the torch to
a younger gay person. It's true, I'm amazed at young
people all all the the gay world. I've never seen
so many eager hands ready to grab that. George. I'm
married today because of what your generation did. So the
depth is inter there's an exchange, yes, because SOA is
(35:17):
not a story of liberation.
Speaker 1 (35:19):
For us.
Speaker 2 (35:19):
It was a story of frustration and desperation. The next
generation made a story of liberation.
Speaker 1 (35:25):
So, in other words, what you're saying is that each
generation adds something to the conversation about liberation, absol And
for as much as we are grateful to you, you're
grateful to absolutely. Wow.
Speaker 2 (35:41):
Yeah, Absolutely, But.
Speaker 1 (35:48):
We Loved is hosted by me Jordan Gonsolvis. New episodes
drop every Wednesday. If you want to write in to
tell your story, email us at but We Loved at
gmail dot com, or send us a message on Instagram
or TikTok at butt we Loved. We are a production
of The Outspoken Podcast Network and iHeart Podcasts. But We
(36:11):
Loved was originally developed with Pushkin Industries. Our producers Areshino Zaki,
Michael June, Emily Meronoff, and Joey patt Our executive producers
are Me, Maya Howard and Katrina Norble. Fact checking by
Marisa Brown, Original music by Steve Bone special thanks to
Jay Bronson and rockel Willis. If you loved this episode,
(36:35):
leave us a rating and follow us on Apple Podcasts
and Spotify, and thank you for listening. I'll see you
next week.
What We Loved is a production of iHeart Podcasts and
the Outspoken podcast Network.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
A policeon was dragging this queen and she was struggling,
and he dragged her to the petty wagon and was
right there and threw her in. He looked away for
a second and you could see her foot and her
sequined high heel come out and kick him on the shoulder.
(00:28):
She just sent him flying six feet. He looked at us,
He dusted herself off, and he went back into that wagon,
and you heard flesh and bone against metal and dripping,
ugly dripping and moaning. And he came out of the
back of the car triumphant, and everybody went silent, and
(00:55):
he closed the door. He turned around and said, all right,
your faggots, you saw what you saw. Not get the
fuck out of you. Well we always listened to.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
But not this time.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
Her kicking him was the first sign that this night
would be like no other.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
As a gay kid, growing up religious and in the South,
I thought being gay was the worst thing I could
ever be. Now, as a journalist, I'm trying to un
learn that by seeking out our history, and what I've
found are people and stories full of courage, perseverance, and love.
(01:44):
In this episode, we'll meet Martin Boyce, a Stonewall regular
who one night found himself in the middle of the
historic riot that would change everything. From My Heart podcast,
I'm Jordan Gon Solve this and this is what we loved.
(02:27):
I can't speak for all gay millennials, but I had
no idea what Stonewall was until I was in my twenties.
I grew up going to public school in Texas, and
Stonewall just wasn't really something we learned about. It's funny, though,
I do remember my first time going to Stonewall. I
(02:48):
was eighteen years old and I had just moved to
New York for college, and I was deeply closeted, but
I just wanted to dance with other gay people. I
ended up getting into the bar using my Pennsylvania fake ID,
and I remember looking at the window and there was
this bright neon sign that said Stonewall. I didn't realize
(03:11):
where I was, and I had no idea that almost
fifty years before that night, I was at the site
of the most important uprising in Queer American history. Almost
half of Americans don't know what Stonewall is, so I
wanted to talk to someone who's actually there. Martin Boyce.
(03:35):
My next guest was he's seventy six now, but on
the first night of the Stonewall riots in June nineteen
sixty nine, he was twenty one, five seven and skinny,
with brunette hair that had blonde streaks in it.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
He lived with his.
Speaker 1 (03:51):
Father and grandmother in New York. At that time, bars
could be shut down if any of their gay patrons
were caught hugging or kissing, or even dancing with each other,
and those gay patrons could be arrested for disorderly conduct.
At that point in the sixties, queer people in New
York had found a home in the neighborhood of Greenwich Village.
(04:13):
The Stone Wall In was in the heart of the village,
and it was one of those few places that queer
people could dance at. Even though they could still get arrested.
That feeling of escaping their reality just to dance, even
for a night was worth it. This was the queer
culture that Martin was Immerston, Miss Martin. That's what they
(04:40):
used to call you, right, what would they call me?
Speaker 2 (04:43):
Well, I don't know. You have to reveal your personality
to get an it was you. It was up to them.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
Oh wow, Okay, hopefully I'll be lucky enough to get
a name. So why don't we start off by talking
about when you came out and what that was like.
You were born in nineteen forty eight and you grew
up basically in the fifteen and sixties. So tell me
what it was like when you came out.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
Hopeless. I mean, if you were a gay person, it
was hopeless being gay in the fifties. It was the
worst thing you could possibly be and there was no explanation,
no understanding, or just accept it.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
And how old were you when you came out?
Speaker 2 (05:28):
Well, I came out officially at seventeen, but I was
gay since I was seven. Everybody knew. Everyone's waiting for
me to say, you know, I was gay, And finally
I told my dad, you know I'm gay. If you
want to throw me at the house, drow me at
the house. And my father said, no, I love you.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
Really. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
He was a working class cab driver, a real matro man,
but he understood.
Speaker 1 (05:53):
You'd seen all kinds of walks of life because he
was just.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
Nineteen thirty three, so he watched this horror for thirty
forty years. Yeah, what horror, the torment of gay people.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
M So, what about your grandma? What did she say?
Speaker 2 (06:09):
My grandmother was like Italian Sicilian, and there she was,
you know, with her shawl and her ear rings and
her black hair. Cop parted in the middle. And my
father said, you know, you got to tell your grandmother
you're gay. I was like, I do and she said, yes,
you gotta tell her. And I told my grandmother. I
(06:30):
said to my grandmother, you know, Grandma, I'm gay. She said,
what what does it mean. I said, well, you see,
I'm homosexual. She goes, what is that? What does that mean?
I said, Grandma, she understood this. I'm a fairy and
she said, oh, she said yeah. She said I chose
(06:50):
your mother when you were born, the very day you
were born. And that was that. I was out wow,
because my grandmother was the one that said we're all
gay now and then wow.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
So you grew up in a pretty progressive very.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
But in a non progressive world society.
Speaker 1 (07:08):
Yeah, So tell me what it was like coming of
age in the nineteen sixties.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
The impression was incredible. And one day I went down
to the trucks because we all went to the trucks.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
When you said trucks, you mean the abandoned trucks that
gay men would go find people to have sex with
for cruising. Yeah, and how old were you?
Speaker 2 (07:30):
Oh about eighteen?
Speaker 1 (07:32):
Okay?
Speaker 2 (07:33):
And we went down there. We'd always go down there,
and it was always interesting because so forbidden, the trucks
were open and elicit. I went down to the trucks
and there was nobody there. I mean, nobody was there.
That was really scary.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
And that was not normal, not normal.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
And all of a sudden I heard a voice saying, girl,
save yourself, Please, girl, save yourself. And I was like,
what's going on with the coming of that? Boys, please
listen to me. You gotta listen to me, listen. And
then I looked under the car finally because that's where
(08:14):
the sound seemed to be coming. And there was miss.
Speaker 1 (08:16):
Marsha you mean Marcia P. Johnson.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
Oh wow, I knew her. And she was very nice.
I mean, you know who I was standing up and
that's where I know she was. She always wanted somebody,
anybody of danger. She was that kind of queen.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
And Grandma, really, what was she warning you about?
Speaker 2 (08:35):
There was a group of boys and their wife beat
her t shirts with bats. They saw me because they
were trying to.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
Beat you up.
Speaker 2 (08:45):
Oh they were going to come out there and beat me.
Oh they were Those bats were ready to move.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
You could tell because they knew you were gay.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
Oh of course I was obviously gay. You could see
that blood was the only thing that was satisfied them.
And then a truck drive across the way at the
highway towards the river called me into the car. He
thought what was happening? And I ran over him, got
into the car and he took me to Fourth Street
(09:12):
to get the bus to go home, and I saved myself.
Every day was a danger like that.
Speaker 1 (09:17):
So growing up in the nineteen sixties, being gay in
the nineteen sixties, you were always scared that people were
gonna beat you up.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
Of course, I remember my father tried to teach me
how to use a knife. He showed me how to
stick it in somebody, but then you had to turn
it wow to twist it inside, and I thought, I
can't do this.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
He had taught you that because you were gay, and
he knew you needed to defend yourself.
Speaker 2 (09:45):
Yes, you could not walk down the street. Two queens
walking down the street. One had to watch him. One
had to talk, and then you talked and she watched
because you turned that corner and it could be a catastrophe.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
Wow, how are you meeting people? Because there was no
grinder back then.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
No, no, your crew. You go to the streets. The
streets that night were alive. There were certain areas to
certain streets that were alive. New York and the sixties
the streets were everything. I mean in the sixties you
didn't make plans. You left your house and by five
in the morning you'd come home. But you would experience
(10:26):
these amazing things in between.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
And what was it like going to a gay bar
back then? Because it was illegal, right, it was.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
Illegal and it was stuffy. You were trained right away
to being a raid.
Speaker 1 (10:39):
What do you mean a raid?
Speaker 2 (10:41):
Well, if you went to a gay ball, you had
to know how to deal with the raid.
Speaker 1 (10:45):
The cops.
Speaker 2 (10:45):
The cops, depending on if they're paid off or if
they were not paid off, house via the raid would be.
They would tell you what to do in a raid.
I mean, like who would tell you other capele we
met right away on the streets always they would just
tell you in a matter of conversation, what to do.
In to May, it sounds very simple. The life would
(11:07):
go on, and of if they did. You stayed in
front of your drink, you grabbed your ID, you moved
away from anybody who were close to or cruising or
getting close to, and you wait for them to come in.
They break down the door. They were going to punish you.
They were gonna let you know that you were not legitimated.
They were going to let you know your place in
(11:28):
this world. My dad thought the way I looked when
I was going out, and he said, you know what,
He said, here's the cookie jar. There's money in it
for your bail. And he said, whenever you got one,
call called me and.
Speaker 1 (11:41):
I'll bail you out with the money and the cook
You do right. He just did even finish right. So
let me get this straight, Martin. It is the sixties,
and every time you go outside you're worried about getting
beaten up, and every time you go to a bar,
you're worried about the police coming to arrest you. Your
dad is teaching you from an early age how to
(12:02):
protect yourself, and you have just accepted this is what
life is for a gay person.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
There was nothing else you could do. This is the
way life was, and this is the way you had
to live. So why not enjoy what you had? A
little you had and gays that developed an amazing culture,
a culture that was really worthy of living.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
So let's talk about Stonewall. How did you hear about it?
Speaker 2 (12:29):
Oh? Everybody heard about stone was the moment it opened.
The whole thing was. You could dance there and it
was a dump.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
What do you mean a dump?
Speaker 2 (12:39):
It was a horrible physical place. It was just uncared for, unclean.
So we washed it black walls. I remember seeing the
place one afternoon and my friend had to go in
there and what a dump? What a non entity?
Speaker 1 (12:56):
In the daylight you saw it in this Oh it
was horrible.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
It was horrible place. But at night it was magic.
People made it magic.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
What was the difference.
Speaker 2 (13:08):
The difference was the attitude of the people and the jukebox.
The jukebox was the heart and the center of the
entire bar.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
So it was all about just losing yourself on the
dance floor.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
Yes, and also from Harlem and Brooklyn came the black queens.
So they'd come and they practiced their routines in front
of us. They were doing something in front of the jukebox.
It was incredible, this new kind of dancing, new kind
of performance. It was called Vogan later but we didn't
(13:39):
have a name. And the queens were tried out on
the Stonewall crowd during the weekdays. It was fantastic, really
something else to see. Nobody spoke, everybody watched. They were
the queens doing this new thing, this hip thing. We
were like the privilege to be part of.
Speaker 1 (13:58):
This is the music. Tell me what was your favorite
song that was playing?
Speaker 2 (14:04):
So it was really great. I knew good music, the
kind of music that queens wanted to hear. And they
controlled that jukebox and drawed it. And every time I
would go to the jukebox, I was allowed.
Speaker 1 (14:15):
You got the jukebox access because they liked you.
Speaker 2 (14:18):
Oh, I was no problem. I was on a little
pedestal and one day my friend left New York City
and I got very sad and I got up and
I played I'm Leaving on a Jet playing by Peter
Poul and Mary, a folk group.
Speaker 1 (14:33):
Folk music at Stonewall.
Speaker 2 (14:36):
They did not like it. I was ostracized. I was
not allowed to the jukebox again. I told my dad
he knew street culture and he said, queens are just
the same like everybody else. He said, I'll give w
your allowed. Just buy your berry drink to go let
your back. I did. I had no money left. It
(14:56):
was all spent on them. And the day came and
I was all right. They came me, they opened up.
I had the way to the jukebox, one quarter, the
only quarter I had. I played E nine Bretha Franklin,
respect and the queens started dancing. The crowd started cheering,
(15:17):
and I was back. I was back in the centrals.
Com I remember to this day that year, I remember
that feeling they gave me one more chance.
Speaker 1 (15:47):
When Martin was coming of age, life as a queer
person wasn't easy in New York. Police raids were common
for queer people just trying to dance with their friends.
Homosexual acts were illegal, and being gay was still officially
considered a mental illness. Stonewall was a respite from all
of this. From the outside, it didn't look like much,
(16:11):
but inside it was a safe haven where queer people
could let loose. The physical building was two stories tall,
had a red brick exterior, and was mostly surrounded by
narrow streets. On the hot summer night, of June twenty seventh,
nineteen sixty nine, Martin was excited to go to Stonewall
(16:31):
with his best friend Bertie. It was a full moon.
They were dressed up in what he calls scare drag.
Scare drag isn't dressing in drag. It's sort of like
tying up your T shirt to show a little belly
button and putting on some mascara. So that night Martin
slipped on a tight pink boatnecked T shirt that was
cropped at the bottom. He put on his eyeliner and
(16:54):
headed to the village. Stone Wall was already full though,
and they didn't end up getting in, so he and
Bertie sat at a stoop right by the bar to
figure out where to go next, and they started seeing
some commotion. It was eight cops who were raiding the bar.
As they kicked the patrons out onto the street. Martin
and Bertie saw some of their friends outside Stonewall and
(17:17):
ran into the action. So tell me a little bit
about that night and what actually happened.
Speaker 2 (17:25):
We were sitting on a stoop up from Stonewoo and
then I heard all this commotion and these lights down
Stonewol and it was police cause, and the crowd behind me,
rushing rushing behind. I could feel them talking about a raid,
and I looked down. I did, there's a raid. It
(17:47):
was happening. I could tell this just look a ray
really was ray. And the queen that created a semi
circuit around the bar. A police one was dragging this
queen in this open area in between the semicircle and
the doors of the bar, and she was struggling, and
he dragged her to the petty wagon and was right
(18:09):
there and threw her in. He looked away for a second,
and she could see her foot and her sequined high
heel come out and kick him on the shoulder and
send him flying. She just sent him flying six feet.
But he got up, he looked at us, He dusted
(18:31):
himself off, and he went back into that wagon, and
you heard flesh and bone against metal and dripping, ugly
dripping and moaning, and he came out of the back
of the car triumphant, and everybody went silent, and he
(18:53):
closed the door. He turned around and said, all right,
your faggots, your soldier saw get the fuck out of here.
Well we always listened, but not this time. And then
we started moving towards him. Step by step, I saw
the hairs on his neckro up. He gulped, and he
(19:17):
ran into the Stonemall barn. They all ran into the barn.
The cops well, all of a sudden, everybody started throwing
things in their pockets, pennies at first, because there was copper,
and we started throwing that and throwing it against the door.
It's one queen, she went. She got all these orange
peels from orange shop, and we threw those, and they
(19:41):
brought bottles. We started throwing those a garbage can a beer,
and we kept doing.
Speaker 1 (19:45):
That because the cops are inside, right.
Speaker 2 (19:48):
And because the adrenaline it had to be released, It
could no longer be contained. Something I look a made
us all warriors, and they knew it, and they knew
they were in danger. Their guns there were times, meant nothing.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
Right now they were outnumbered.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
They had not expected such fierce resistance.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
And this was different from other raids that.
Speaker 2 (20:15):
You had been to, completely different. We always listen to them.
We dis first when it tell us dispersed. We shook
our heads, we locked our wounds. We took our losses
again and again and again, but not that night. Her
kicking him was the first sign that this night would
(20:35):
be like no other.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
It sounds so different from the Martin that was compliant
with the cops and running away from the guys with
the bats. What had changed for you?
Speaker 2 (20:51):
All of us were angry. No one we're oppressed, No
one had been mistreated. And why we contributed to society.
We did their hair, we did their nails, we made
their art.
Speaker 1 (21:05):
Martin, What was going through your minds at that point?
Speaker 2 (21:10):
You didn't think of anything. I can't even think now
what I thought. It didn't matter anymore, and we could
think anymore. You didn't think, You just thought. And then
this queen she went and she got light of fluid
from the optimo on seventh AVENU, my god, and then
she just threw a matchine and lit the whole place up.
The riot started. And a riot is not what you think.
(21:34):
It's not like you stand there and you think you're
in a twirl in a swirl in a kaleidoscope, and
you're smelling burning garbage and sweat, and nothing's clear. It's
all swirled. And then it stopped. And there I was
looking at the window of stormwall, and there was Miss
(21:57):
New Orleans just on the window. Sill. She's a very
unfortunate queen. She was ugly, she had very bad skin,
Miss New Orleans, Miss Doorians. But I have never seen
such fire in anybody's eyes. This queen meant to avenge
(22:18):
all the indignities that she suffered. And she jumped down
and she grabbed the parking meter and almost single handedly
broke it out of the contrecrete. They helped her when
they realized what she was trying to do, and they
started ramming the door.
Speaker 1 (22:33):
The parking meter that's in the concrete ground. She took
that out of the ground.
Speaker 2 (22:40):
She broke the ground.
Speaker 1 (22:41):
That's the level of rage.
Speaker 2 (22:43):
Oh, she was determined. They used as a battering ram.
They started smashing down the door, and we're going to
break in, and all of a sudden, the crowd parted
and there they came. They called in the Tactico Police Force.
Speaker 1 (23:02):
Oh shit, the swat team.
Speaker 2 (23:06):
Headshields, body shiels, gas masks, every kind of equipment. And
they were really, you could tell, curious that they were
called in to fight a bunch of fagots. They couldn't
believe it. They were trained for something else al together,
(23:29):
and here was a bunch of fagots that they thought
they could see in their eyes they were going to
put this out in two minutes. He's going to take
them two minister and the entire thing. So like this
is an incredible thing. They did this kick line. All
the queens got together, held each other's arms and did
(23:49):
a rock cat kick and say, we are the village. Girls,
we wear our hair, and girls, we wear our dungarees
above our nelly knees.
Speaker 1 (24:00):
Oh it sounds like you guys weren't even afraid.
Speaker 2 (24:04):
No, there was nothing to lose, and they charged and
we ran.
Speaker 1 (24:10):
It's estimated that perhaps as many as two thousand protesters
were there with Martin that night. They were throwing empty
beer bottles at the cops and battling the tactical patrol force.
But Martin and his friends had an advantage. They knew
the neighborhood of Greenwich Village better than anyone else. The
(24:31):
village isn't like the rest of New York. It doesn't
follow the grid system. It's old and has unusual diagonal
street patterns that curve and twist at random points. The
cops couldn't keep up.
Speaker 2 (24:46):
We knew the village, and that's a military advantage that
we had all these men who did not know these things.
Speaker 1 (24:55):
You knew. You and the rest of the queens. You
guys knew exactly every nook and cranny and turned of
the West village.
Speaker 2 (25:03):
We singled doorway, every place to go pee. We knew
everything about the village, everything, And they chased us. They
thought they were going to end it. It didn't worry.
We controlled the street. They didn't wipe the street out.
They didn't get us in patty wagons. We were still
holding the ground. Oh my god. And then do one
(25:29):
was coming, Oh my god. And I was on a stoop.
I was really exhausted, and of course he was this queen.
She was blotting her head bleeding.
Speaker 1 (25:40):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (25:41):
And then six feet away from her was this cop
who was so tired, leaning against the fence. Didn't arrest
her because over it was just over.
Speaker 1 (25:50):
Oh shit. So this this image is the sun is
coming up, and you have a queen who was running
away from the cop, and the cop and the queen
and are standing next to each other. Both over.
Speaker 2 (26:04):
The street was smoking, garbage, kins were smoking. There was
a trail of glass, beautiful when some picked it up,
like of diamonds.
Speaker 1 (26:16):
There's tears coming down your face? How come?
Speaker 2 (26:22):
Well, I haven't talked about this in a while, just
remembering it. It was a great event. Sometimes I think
it's just an event, and I don't realize what a
great event it was. And it was.
Speaker 1 (27:04):
Martin Boyce had just taken part in the Stonewall Riots,
a rebellion that would change the way gay people were
treated in America. But that wasn't yet clear to Martin.
In fact, as he was going home from stone Wall
that morning, he was anxious that there was going to
be backlash and a lot of it. What do you do?
(27:26):
Did you go home? Oh?
Speaker 2 (27:27):
I went home.
Speaker 1 (27:28):
What time is it?
Speaker 2 (27:29):
Oh? Must be five thirty. Now, wow, my father got
phone calls. I got into the house and he goes.
He put his paper down. He said to me, it's
about time you guys did something.
Speaker 1 (27:41):
It was about time.
Speaker 2 (27:43):
I was so stunned that he said. I just went
to bed. I had it. I was just like too
much of me. And then about three or four days later,
I knew the backlace was coming. And I was walking
up eighty seventh Street. Everybody was walking dogs and things like.
It was just the afternoon.
Speaker 1 (28:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:01):
So this very very butched black man a sensation worker
throwing cobbage bags into the back of the truck. And
he saw me, and he glared at me, and he
moved towards me and lived his hand in the black salute.
Speaker 1 (28:20):
Wow, it was his.
Speaker 2 (28:21):
Fist up and power in that power bout his head.
He blinked. Nobody was walking dogs anymore, Nobody was calling
for cabs to do that. In front of a fag.
The entire block was like, what is going on?
Speaker 1 (28:39):
There's like solidarity there.
Speaker 2 (28:41):
It was a real moment, and I realized, there's hope.
Speaker 1 (28:48):
So what was the first thing that you thought really changed?
Speaker 2 (28:54):
The psychiatric people? The medical association, there's the chitaes voting
us not.
Speaker 1 (29:00):
Sick, mentally ill?
Speaker 2 (29:02):
Right.
Speaker 1 (29:03):
In nineteen fifty two, the American Psychiatric Association had classified
homosexuality as a mental illness. During this time, queer people
could be subjected to brain surgeries called lobotomies. These surgeries
severed entire parts of the brain with the goal of
decreasing same sex attraction. Performed on young, healthy people, it
(29:27):
could lead to epilepsy, dementia, and sometimes death. But after stonewall,
gay activists were empowered to organize and push back, and
after intense protesting. The American Psychiatric Association voted in nineteen
seventy three to remove that classification. Gays were no longer
(29:47):
considered mentally ill. A lot of people attribute that change
to Stonewall.
Speaker 2 (29:53):
That was the first change. You couldn't have anymore. They
couldn't force you have abod anymore because you weren't sick anymore.
Speaker 1 (30:00):
That's a big deal.
Speaker 2 (30:01):
It's a very big deal. It's a very big deal.
I knew people that were sent away, like everybody remembered
somebody gone, the great queens that were gone, homeless, mental institutions, lobotomies.
Speaker 1 (30:18):
You know, Martin. People always associate Stonewall with liberation. When
did you actually feel liberated the first gay march, Yeah,
tell me about that.
Speaker 2 (30:31):
Well, there was going to be a march a year later,
and there was trouble in the city and everybody knew
something was going to happen and watch. So it was
not the best idea to have a gay march.
Speaker 1 (30:44):
You thought you might get beat up or something.
Speaker 2 (30:46):
We were sure were gonna get beat up.
Speaker 1 (30:49):
One year to the day of Stonewall, in nineteen seventy
the very first Pride marches were held all over the
country to commemorate the first anniversary of the riots. That's
why Pride Isn't. The march in New York was called
the Christopher Street Liberation Day. Christopher Street is in the
heart of Greenwich Village. For Martin, it felt like the
(31:10):
first time that queer people from all walks of life
had come together. Usually folks just stayed in their clicks.
Martin and his best friend Bertie decided they were going
to go, but they were really anxious. Queer people at
the time didn't really gather together in broad daylight. It
was dangerous and they thought they might be some of
(31:31):
the only ones to show up. So before heading to
the demonstration, Martin and Bertie took a valuum to calm
their nerves. They marched fifty blocks till they got to
Central Park, where they realized that there were thousands of
people with them.
Speaker 2 (31:49):
We heard that the gay group had gotten a license,
couldn't bleat it to march up sixth Avenue, and you know,
there was a call to us to join, all right.
Me and Bertie said, you know, well we're gonna do it.
We get down there and we started. I remember him
(32:09):
grabbing my arm. I grabbed his arm and was mashing it.
But on the way up it was this black woman.
She was cutting windows up in this building and she
waved her claw to us. And then there were people
that were shouting encouragement, tourists and people that were just
like my dad, like go ahead, keep going.
Speaker 1 (32:31):
Man.
Speaker 2 (32:32):
They knew you were gay, but oh my god, they
knew that you have to be blind. I see that,
and all of a sudden Bertie turned around to me
and said, we're in the middle. It was unbelievable. Unbelievable,
and we begetting to fifty seventh Street. They stopped us.
Then the track stopped and a couple was near me.
(32:56):
I said, I knew you did this. I knew you
stop us. I knew it. Said I didn't stop you.
There's too many of you. You can't get into the
park right away. I said, really, He said, yeah, you
gotta wait. And true enough, in the south part of
the park we're all getting in. The hells were covered
with gay people, covered with gay people. Now, we never
(33:20):
saw each other before in the daytime.
Speaker 1 (33:23):
Really where when wow? Because you guys only met each
other at night in the dark, in the dark, we knew.
Speaker 2 (33:31):
About each other. We imagined each other. We knew all that,
but we never really looked at each other. And multitudes
are gay people covering the hills was incredible and nothing
was happening because all these gay people were feeling a
sense of wonder seeing other gay people. And Bertie looked
(33:54):
at me and said, you know what I think?
Speaker 1 (33:57):
Where people? What do you mean when you say when
Bertie said we are people, what does that mean?
Speaker 2 (34:05):
We weren't before. We're just a bunch of gay groups.
And all of a sudden, Bertie noticed that all these
gays were like together.
Speaker 1 (34:13):
So for the first time you felt like you were
a part of something.
Speaker 2 (34:17):
Right, that this really was gay depression.
Speaker 1 (34:21):
Wow, it's crazy for me to be sitting across from
you because we're two different generations. And I can't help
but think about the fact that I'm able to go
to gay bars and it's because of you, know what
you did all those years ago, And I just wonder,
(34:43):
from your perspective, what do you think the impact of
stonewall has been on the generations after you?
Speaker 2 (34:51):
Every older gay person wants to pass the torch to
a younger gay person. It's true, I'm amazed at young
people all all the the gay world. I've never seen
so many eager hands ready to grab that. George. I'm
married today because of what your generation did. So the
depth is inter there's an exchange, yes, because SOA is
(35:17):
not a story of liberation.
Speaker 1 (35:19):
For us.
Speaker 2 (35:19):
It was a story of frustration and desperation. The next
generation made a story of liberation.
Speaker 1 (35:25):
So, in other words, what you're saying is that each
generation adds something to the conversation about liberation, absol And
for as much as we are grateful to you, you're
grateful to absolutely. Wow.
Speaker 2 (35:41):
Yeah, Absolutely, But.
Speaker 1 (35:48):
We Loved is hosted by me Jordan Gonsolvis. New episodes
drop every Wednesday. If you want to write in to
tell your story, email us at but We Loved at
gmail dot com, or send us a message on Instagram
or TikTok at butt we Loved. We are a production
of The Outspoken Podcast Network and iHeart Podcasts. But We
(36:11):
Loved was originally developed with Pushkin Industries. Our producers Areshino Zaki,
Michael June, Emily Meronoff, and Joey patt Our executive producers
are Me, Maya Howard and Katrina Norble. Fact checking by
Marisa Brown, Original music by Steve Bone special thanks to
Jay Bronson and rockel Willis. If you loved this episode,
(36:35):
leave us a rating and follow us on Apple Podcasts
and Spotify, and thank you for listening. I'll see you
next week.
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