Remembering Stonewall

One of American history's darker moments, the Stonewall Riots were also the event that galvanized the gay rights movement in the United States. Today there's a monument in NYC to memorialize this important time. Learn all about this often overlooked story in today's episode.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, everybody, it's us Josh and Chuck, and we want
you to know we are coming somewhere near you. We're
sure if you live in North America this year, that's right,
We're going on tour, and uh, why don't we just
rattle through these dates? Okay? Uh? Toronto August eight at
the Day and Fourth Music Hall, Chicago August nine, the
next day at Harris Theater. Then we are taking some

(00:22):
time off to recover after that two day grind. We're
eating Vancouver the Vogue Theater September twenty six, followed by Minneapolis.
We're gonna be at the Pantageous Theater again on September
that is correct, yep. And then Austin Chuck on October
tenth of the Paramount Theater, Yes, and very special show
and Lawrence Kansas at Liberty Hall on October eleventh, yep.

(00:45):
And then we're gonna do a three night stand October
two at the Bellhouse in Brooklyn, New York. And then Chuck,
take it home. Uh, well take it home literally, because
we are finishing up November four right here in Atlanta
at the Bucket Theater and this is a very special
benefit show. Uh, and all the proceeds will be going
to Lifeline Animal Project of Atlanta in the National Down

(01:09):
Syndrome Society YEP and for more information into buy tickets,
just go to s y s K live dot com.
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know. It's from House Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Josh Clark's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry and

(01:35):
this is Stuff you Should Know, Stuff you Should Know. Hi, Hi,
I was talking to everyone else. I was looking at you, though. Sure,
it just made it weird. I know, it's a little disarming.
Uh So this episode on the Stonewall Riots or did

(01:55):
you watch that documentary stone Wall Uprising? By chance? Yes?
I did? Yeah, I think know one of the the
people interviewed and there said they preferred, or at least
he preferred to be called an uprising and not a
riot or something like that. Yeah. I agree, because lends
it definitely a much more like credible tone. Yeah, for sure.
A riots just like we're going crazy, we're gonna steal stuff,

(02:16):
we're gonna brust stuff, um and uprising is like we're
we've had enough and we're going to throw off this oppression. Yeah,
so the uh this this is being released, I believe
if my math is correct, uh, forty eight years and
a day. It depends on when you count the beginnings
of the Stone Wall uprising, because we'll get to it,

(02:37):
but it start at one am. So technically, uh. You
know some people, you know, when you go from night
and today still count that as the previous night. You
know what I mean? Those are people who are on drugs,
you know what I mean. I was about to say
I used to do that, but then you said that,
So no. But anyway, forty eight year anniversary. I thought

(03:01):
about maybe holding off till the fiftieth because I wanted
to do this one for a long time. But and
I thought, you know what, who knows what's going to
happen exactly. We could get hit by a bus. Yeah,
and then we never would have done this podcast. Right,
there's no time like the President Charles Yes, especially since
we finally got a great article from the Grabster on this. Yeah. Man,

(03:22):
that guy is so good. I read this article that
he wrote, Um, how the Stonewall riots worked. He called
it the riots. Um it's I I sent him an
email just to say, like, dude, it is so nice
to have you back. I felt the same way. In fact,
I need to get his email so I can echo
that because, uh, you know you read it in this

(03:42):
just like the old days, good quality stuff. Yeah you
want to talk about Stonewall, Yeah, let's do it. Have
you ever been there? No, I haven't. I even stayed
at Washington Park in Washington Square in UM, which is
nice UM. And I had no idea Stonewall was right
around the corner. I didn't didn't know very much about it.
I mainly just um, I knew it as like I

(04:06):
had a rough idea. But I think I knew about
the same as I know about, say Attica, So I
know sometimes people chant Stonewall, sometimes people chanted Attica. So
there you go. That was about as much as I
knew you would. And had to drink at Attica though,
so right some some radiator hoot. Uh you know I

(04:28):
had time to go there and grab a drink at
the stone All and I highly recommend it. Oh yeah,
I definitely intend to, for sure, because I love that
part of New York, to the village. So I had
to go and look this up, right, because I was like, wait,
I'm starting to see people say West Village they're also
saying Greenwich Village. It's the west part of Greenwich Village.
It is okay, so um, it's both. It's Greenwich Village

(04:50):
and West Village, but technically it is in the West
Village of Greenwich Village, which is between Houston and and Broadway.
Houston and I've been in New York enough times. My
friend made a mistake. Just don't ever say Avenue of
the America's I have plenty of times. Oh yeah, and

(05:13):
I've gotten yelled at. Yeah, and then I think the
Hudson is the other side of the village. It's just
my favorite part of town, is it. Yeah, the the
village in the West Village is just it's the best.
You know, that's where it just feels a little bit
more like old New York. It's quaint, it's still kind
of quiet. All those tiny little tree line streets that

(05:33):
aren't just on a perfect grid. Uh, you can get
lost down there. You can find yourself down there. You
can you can pay a million dollars a square feet
for real estate. Yeah, it's nice, it's great. I like
the Lower East Side a lot too, though, I have
to say, yeah, and you know what, last time I
was in New York, Emily and I spent and I

(05:54):
used to hang out some in the East Village. In fact,
that's kind of where I used to go, mostly because
that's where my friends were back in the nineties. And um,
I went there and it is still nice and grimy.
Uh what the village, the East Village. Yeah, it's uh, yeah,
I mean it's not you know, it's it's been I
don't want to say modernized, but it's been what's the word,

(06:16):
not gentrified maybe gentrified updated. Yeah, it's been updated a
little bit. But they're still kind of a scummy, which
is great. You know, it definitely has a feel to
it still for sure, and a smell. Okay, So so Chuck,
I think we You said you've been to the stone
Wall before. Did you know much of the history? Yeah,
I mean that's why I went. Um and oddly enough

(06:39):
I went. I just happened to be there in the
days following the nightclub shooting in Florida. So there were
like armed guards at the stone Wall end and the
you know, because it's a national monument now, well, I
know a lot of people flocked to stone Wall, the
stone Wall in after the Pulse nightclub shootings just to

(06:59):
show solidarity and comfort one another. So the Stone Wall
has become this hub, the center of gay life in
the United States, not just in New York and then
the United States I would even say probably globally had
that much of a significance. But what's interesting about the
Stone Wall, the Stone Wall in is that it also

(07:20):
had that same significance just for a much much smaller
community of gays um prior to June nineteen sixty nine.
But it has for decades and decades been a center
of gay life. Is just there was pre Stone Wall
and post Stone Wall, and what that club meant to

(07:42):
people really just changed by how many people um knew
about it but were pulled to it. Good way to
say it, thanks man, uh so um, I think we
should start as Ed suggests, as the grabs are suggested
by talking about war Stone Wall. Yeah, and a little

(08:02):
bit about the sad state of uh life as a
as a gay person, as a trans person. Uh, the
whole LGBTQ community, which of course they didn't call it
that back then, but to be in that community and
the nineteen fifties and the nineteen sixties was uh. I mean,
it's interesting to talk about this stuff because there's still

(08:23):
a long way to go. But you can't help but
look at the progress when you look at the way
things were in the fifties and sixties. Well, what's crazy
is that the fifties and sixties were a low point.
Yeah for for um, I don't know if gay rights
is the right where, but gay acceptance of gay the
gay community by society at large, the fifties and sixties

(08:47):
were a real low in that because prior to that, um,
it was a little it was a little people were
a little cooler with it, Like straights were a little
cooler with the idea of people being gay than they
were in like the fifties and sixties. And it's thanks
to our friend McCarthy. Yeah, Like I got the feeling
that there was a little bit of just a like

(09:09):
don't ask, don't tell philosophy going on and not like
the hammer coming down, which is what happened in the
fifties and sixties. It was a big pushback, and you're right,
McCarthy had a lot to do with it. He was like, well,
not only am I gonna tackle McCarthy, is um, but
while we're at it, let's let's castigate the gay community
as well, right it uh we I don't know if

(09:32):
you remember not, but we we talked about Joe McCarthy
being gay himself most likely or definitely I can't remember. Um.
But but in the midst of that, he he spent
time like persecuting gays even though he was gay himself,
which is pretty I mean, if the guy wasn't despicable before,
that really does it, you know, puts him over the fence. Yeah,

(09:53):
and it's you know, it's something that happens still, you know,
but he almost I don't I don't want to say
single handedly, but his his drive that whatever he embodied
in the McCarthy is m trials or hearings or whatever. Um.
He he helped take the He helped turn the tide
back against gay people. Yeah, it was going like okay

(10:15):
for a little while, and then this guy comes along
and just screws everything up. And then the next thing,
you know, the fifties and sixties, it's really really bad
to be gay. As a matter of fact, in the
United States outside of Illinois, every other state in the Union,
if you were gay, you were illegal just by being you. Yeah,
you're basically breaking the law. Through a web of laws,

(10:38):
um that essentially criminalized it, whether it was anti sodomy
laws or saying you can't dance in public with the
same sex partner or you can't where I mean, they
actually had laws on what was called gender appropriate clothing,
where you had to wear a minimum of three pieces
of clothing deemed appropriate for your gender. And uh, because

(11:01):
you know, they saw a big threat with you know,
they called people back then, they call it people dressing
and drag um. But we're talking about well we're talking
about different kinds of people, but a lot of times
they were transgender people, uh dressing like they dressed, you know,
like dressing according to the gender they identified with, and
they would bring in they would find someone, they would

(11:21):
bring in a female officer and they would take them
into a bathroom and either uh feel for parts or
make them undress and check out their clothing and arrest them. Yeah.
And it wasn't always it didn't always even necessarily end
and arrest. Like these laws were used as tools of
intimidation and just general oppression, and the cops were acting

(11:45):
in large part is as like this extension, the the
action extension of like that part of America that just
found gay people odious, just the whole the whole concept.
So everybody was just totally cool with the gay community
being harassed and arrested and um brutalized. Uh. There was
a lot of um violent crime and murders against gay

(12:07):
people at the time. The newspapers didn't report virtually anything
that had anything to do with the gay community. Um.
They were just complete open targets for exploitation and abuse. Um.
And it was just a terrible way to live. And
as a result, a lot of a lot of gay
people at the time just opted to act straight. They

(12:29):
got married, they had kids. Um, they just pretended in
order to survive in the society they were born into. Yeah,
it was. It was classified until three and the d
s M as a mental illness aversion therapy was going on. Um.
I had never heard of this place and saw I
saw that documentary at Tasaca Darrow State Hospital in California. Yeah,

(12:52):
I hadn't heard of it any oh man. They called
it the Dachau for queers, where they would engage in
shock treatment. They would show uh gay men pictures of
naked men and then shock them and uh they would
give them. There was one drug that they gave that supposedly, Yeah,
had you heard of this, No, a drug that simulated
the experience of drowning, they would give lobotomies. It's just

(13:18):
unbelievable that this was happening in our country like fifty
something years ago, right, And and and so it's bad enough
if your family is sending you off for treatment or
whatever to to to basically be treated for being gay,
because again there's like the field of psychology and psychiatry said,
this is a mental illness, and we cure mental illnesses,

(13:42):
so you can cure gayness. Let's just figure out how
to do it, and the most brutal means possible. So
it's bad enough if your family sends you off commits
you for being gay. But I think what strikes me
is even worse for some gay people at the time,
buying into the idea that they were mentally ill, that
there was something profoundly wrong with them that made them

(14:07):
m It's just so different that they would submit to
this kind of treatment as well. You know, yeah, that
that clip in the stone wall uprising up with the
I don't know who that guy was that came to
the school to talk to the kids. Um, just man, man,
it's hard to hard to watch, to be honest, it

(14:28):
really is. So the lavender scare is what it was
kind of called under McCarthy in the nineteen fifties. And
you know, uh, this is all pre Stonewall and uh,
as Ed points out in the article, it was it
was a dark time. But um, it was also a
time where uh kind of underground the gay community was

(14:51):
was setting. And when I say gay community and we
say it, we're talking about l g B t Q
as a whole, it doesn't roll off the tongue, so
we're gonna say different things along the way. Um, But
really what they were doing kind of quietly was setting
the stage and laying a foundation for progress later on

(15:12):
with these kind of uh underground societies. It was called
the homophile movement, and you know, gay rights groups basically
being founded, right, And the homophile movement was basically if
Bob Newhart had been a gay activist, it was like
button down penny loafers getting along with everybody, being very

(15:33):
quiet and pleasant, um, being an upstanding neighbor, like really
really taking care of your lawn like that kind of stuff.
Like basically, the point of the homophile movement was to
point out to straight society that gay people were totally normal.
And the approach that they took was, we're just gonna

(15:55):
we're gonna kill them with kindness. We're gonna win them
over by by being nice and by being quiet and
by not causing a fuss. Citizens Yeah, for sure. And
one of the things that came out of this UM,
the Homophile Movement UM was a society called the Madachine
Society UM, which is basically an an underground gay I

(16:22):
guess gay liberation movement, but like a very slow, preppy
gay liberation movement, you know. But I founded a network
for the first time, like gay people could communicate with
one another through like newsletters that were set up by
the Madachine Society and other UM small groups like them.

(16:43):
That was a big deal. Like they showed footage of
them in the Stone Wall Uprising documentary and they're they're
all wearing suits and their hair is very nice, and
it's all like very well thought out. This is an
accidental UM. But they're acting not gay at all, but
they're holding signs saying that proclaimed that they're gay and

(17:04):
that they deserve rights. And I mean that was that
was an extraordinarily brave thing to do back then because
if you were out at as gay, and Ed I
think very wisely points out on this article, back then
you could be fired for being gay, and ED points
out today you could still be fired for being gay.
There's no federal protection against that. It has gotten better.

(17:27):
It's horrible that that's still not protected. Right. But back
in the day, if if, if you, if you had
the wrong kind of boss and they call it win
that you were gay, they could not only fire, they
could make it so you would never work again, like
your life would be ruined. So to stand there in
a suit and tie in the middle of New York

(17:47):
where with a sign that proclaimed you were gay and
being like years old or something like that, and having
your whole life ahead of you, that was a very
brave act to do. Even though the machine society. Um
it's I get the impression that they're they're fairly criticized
in the gay community for being really slow and kind

(18:09):
of plotting and not doing enough and not being radical
at all. Um at the time, not really pushing gay
rights forward as as much as as what would come after. Yeah,
but like we said, what very importantly they were they
were laying a foundation, uh for what would follow the
Stonewall riots. Um, should we take a break, all right,

(18:31):
let's take a break, and we'll talk a little bit
about the refuge that was the stone wall in. All right,

(18:58):
so we set the stage for or what life was
like uh back then in the l g B t
Q community, and um, kind of more than anything, there
was no uh, there was no and the irony to
me is just inescapable. There there was no meeting place,
There was no way to normalize. Um, So what happens is,

(19:20):
you know, you couldn't just go be gay and have
a coffee with your gay friend out in public and
be affectionate and just be a normal human being. So
what happens is they ended up being driven underground and
meeting in public bathrooms and in porn theaters and as
uh in New York City, they were meeting in the

(19:40):
backs of meat trucks uh for hookups. And so this
further stigmatize them as like taking part in like perverted
quote unquote perverted behavior because they had nowhere else to go.
So it was sort of like this feedback loop, you know,
like had they had a place to go to begin with,

(20:00):
they might not have been meeting in bath houses and
might not have had this stigma attached to them so well.
I don't know if they wouldn't have still been meeting
in bath houses, but I think they would have enjoyed
having more places to to not just hook up. I
think that's all that was available to them, was just
hooking up, and that was it, well exactly. And there
was one gentleman in that documentary that was just like

(20:22):
we I just wanted to go place like two where
I could fall in love with somebody and talk to somebody. Yeah,
that guy, I can't remember his name, but he struck
me as well. He was describing the Stone Wall. He's saying,
like that was that place. It was one of those
few places where you could just feel relatively safe being gay.
It was like one of the few places you could

(20:42):
slow dance. Um. And the way that he said it, Chuck,
was it was a place where you could find love.
It wasn't just about sex, although I'm sure there's plenty
of hookups and apparently there was prostitution ring ring running
out of the stone Wall, but it was a place
where you could find like was there was just a
vibe of love there supposedly is what the guy was saying,

(21:05):
I think, And there weren't very many places like that
in the world at the time. Yeah. So the Stonewall
in itself was um. It was a pair of brick
buildings originally that were horse stables way back in the day,
and then later on it was a bakery and then
eventually opened as the Stonewall In Restaurant in nineteen thirty
four and uh in the nineteen sixties. Uh. And this

(21:26):
was a pretty fascinating part of this whole story to
me because I had no idea, but the mafia had
a uh had a business idea where they would they
saw an opportunity for gay people to meet and by
booze and buy cigarettes and load money into the jukebox.
And so the mafia kind of under had these underground

(21:50):
uh gay bars all over New York City that they ran. Right,
they'd be like, hey, we just hijacked the truck that
was full of cigarettes and booze. We should just sell
it to the gay people. It goal saloons. Yeah, since
nobody else will. And the reason no one else would
was because since it was illegal to be gay if
you were a known gay person and you were at

(22:13):
a bar, that bar could be shut down. So bars
were like, you, you can't come in here. We're not
gay bar. There's no gays allowed, basically, and not only
was this, you know, legal, it was it was encouraged
by the law. So the mafia was like, well, there's
there's a huge market that's just needing to be satisfied

(22:34):
here and we'll step up, no problem. Yeah. And you know,
before you go thinking the mafia was was some benevolent
group getting an outlet to the LGBTQ community. They they
did do that, but they were a trying to make
money and be uh they were also uh, you know,
there were there were instances of blackmailing that would go

(22:56):
on that they would get like maybe a straight acting,
well yield gay man and as a target and say
all right, well this guy's definitely got a good job
in a family, so let's get his information and then
hit him up for money or will out him. Um.
So they weren't you know, they weren't just benevolent mafioso's. Uh.

(23:17):
There was some you know, untowards stuff going on on there.
And for sure, for sure, yeah, one of them, like
I said, was the prostitution ring at the stone Wall
and they were dealing drugs at the stone Wall in
um and again like the the entire bar, the stone
Wall in as a bar was an illegal bar. Uh yeah,
and they weren't doing it out of the goodness of
their hearts. They were exploiting like a a vulnerable population.

(23:40):
But it's still regardless of the mob's intentions, gay people
took the place and made at their own, their own
spot and enjoyed it. As a result. It was also
by all accounts, um not only a dive bar with
water down drinks, but from the sounds of it, it
was unsanitary. Oh yeah, like just gross and uh not

(24:04):
because of the clientele, because the mafia was I mean,
they just didn't care. They weren't keeping it clean the
I mean they there was the one guy in the
document was like I never bought a drink there. He
was like, that's the last place I was going to
actually get a drink, Like I would go to meet
people and make friends, but um, no way was I
going to be ordering and paying for whatever they were serving.

(24:25):
He said they were serving like the beer out of
pictures and water buckets and stuff. Yeah, and he's like,
there's no telling what was in that beer. He said
that there was a rumor that, um, some infectious disease
had spread because of the beer at the Stone Hall.
It was like it was a dirty, dirty place, but

(24:45):
again it was a place where gay people could feel loved,
you know. Yeah, And one of the reason it was
kind of allowed to, uh to run to a certain
degree was the mafia was paying bribes and giving kickbacks
to the cops of the six Precinct, which is where
it was so chuck, they sort of had a deal
worked out. I'm sorry to interrupt you, ma'am, but have
you seen the documentary The seven five. I've seen it twice.

(25:08):
How amazingly good is that. Yeah, it's one of the
best documentaries I've seen in a long time. I agree.
And Adam Diaz Man, come on, yeah, that's that guy's
like a real person. I know. It's amazing. Yeah, if
you're interested at all in bribes and dirty cops and

(25:29):
kickbacks in New York City in the in the eighties, uh,
definitely definitely watched that one. Yeah, it was amazing. The
seven five, which was the seventy Precinct, correct, yes, which
was cop talk. It's seven five. Yeah, I think it's like, um,
Jamaica Queens. Maybe, yeah, I can't remember, but a guarantee

(25:52):
they're making a feature film about that at some point.
Surely it's too good too. It's like you can't write
anything better, so sorry, man up to do your chester.
We're talking about how the six was taking kickbacks from
the owners of the Stone Wall. Yeah, so you know, uh,
they were taking kickbacks. So it was allowed to a
certain degree because they were getting paid off, right, and

(26:12):
the place would still get rated. Apparently it got rated
fairly frequently, but when it got rated, the owners would
be tipped off. It would be rated on like a
week night when the place was pretty much dead and
a lot of people weren't gonna get hassled, and when
it was rated, um, maybe there would be another bribe
taken at the time the patrons would basically be let go.

(26:35):
But the whole process was just a process of intimidation, right,
Like you had to show your ID on your way
out the door, and if you were gay and your
life could be ruined for being out, and you didn't
want to show any cop your I D. So it
was the whole thing was just a bad jam and
the idea that it didn't do anything really except maybe
increase the kickbacks for the cops just made the whole

(26:57):
thing even worse, you know. Yeah, and uh so this
kind of went along for a while. But everything changed
on the on the night of June and into the
early morning when Deputy Inspector seymour Pine of not the
sixth Precinct, which is notable, but Manhattan's first Division of
Public Morals. Uh he led a different kind of raid

(27:19):
with some undercover cops at about one am. And um,
everything changed that night. Yeah, that night something was different,
Like everything just kind of came together and just went
a certain way. You know how, Like do you watch basketball? Sure,
so it's astounding when you know one team can just

(27:41):
be killing the other team and then all of a sudden,
somebody on the losing team like steals a pass and
takes it back and just dunks it or there passes
it to somebody else for like three points and they
sink it, and the momentum just completely turns and it
can happen just like that. I have the opression that, like,

(28:01):
in the course of of the gay rights movement, this
was one of those instances where a pass of stolen
and taken to the other basket and just dunked. Yeah,
it's uh nice sports analogy. Um, you're right, there's something
about that kind of momentum that can't be manufactured. Uh.
It all just has to come together in an organic way.

(28:23):
And Uh, it's funny Ed did put in here. There
was There were some people throughout the years that have
uh said that the death of Judy Garland earlier on
June had had riled up the gay community because she
was so big in the gay community. They're all upset
over Judy Garland, and that is what kind of helped

(28:44):
kick off the Stonewall riots. By all accounts, that's probably
not true, but maybe they were grumpier than normal. Who knows.
Maybe it just strikes me such like a demeaning, dismissive explanation,
you know, like, oh, you gays were just mad because
Judy Garland, so you acted up and it just happened
to work out in your favor, you know, Right. So

(29:05):
what happened is Pine comes in, He's got these cops
and their intention was to uh not only shut down
a gay bar, but to shut down a mafia bar
for selling liquor without a license. Uh, And like you
said before, it was just a part of a series
of raids that summer all over Manhattan for these underground
gay bars. Yeah, the the Checkerboard had gone under on

(29:27):
its own, but the rumor was that the cops had
shut it down. Of a Telestar, the snake Pit, the
sewer Um, they all went down either on their own
or because of police raids. But either way, the idea
and the gay community was that they were in the
midst of a major persecution. All of their places were
getting shut down, and supposedly among the police they were

(29:49):
shutting down mafia bars, but the gay community wasn't getting that.
They were seeing that their gay bars are being shut down.
So there was definitely a sense of person cution that
summer in New York among gays who went to gay bars. Yeah,
things were kind of kind of simmering at this point. Yeah,
And one more thing, I want to give a shout

(30:09):
out to David Carter, I believe his name is he
literally wrote the book on stone Wall that the stone
Wall Uprising documentary was based on. He's just he's in
a story and of the stone Wall Uprising. So most
of the stuff that we have that's legitimate comes from
this guy's research, Yeah for sure. Uh. So what happens

(30:31):
is these cops come in there, they start the routine
like you were talking about, of exit the bar one
at a time, we need your ID. They didn't just
hurt everyone out in one big rush because they wanted
that identification, which part of the intimidation. And so what
happens is one by one, these people are filing out
and they don't go home because they're hanging out outside

(30:51):
waiting for their friends inside to get let out. And
this crowd starts gathering. Uh. Then the crowd starts building
not only from the people inside, but as Ed points
out in this article, um, other people in the community
and in the village. This is you know, it was
a gay part of New York still is. And these, uh,
the street kids start coming up, and these transgender people

(31:14):
in cross stressors, and you know, basically everyone in that
community was something to gain and nothing to lose, start
kind of hanging around as this uh kind of a
more intimidating. It feels like raid went on right right,
and and they a lot of them they weren't like
necessarily coming from down the street. A lot of them

(31:36):
have been inside like the stone Wall. Yet another thing
about the stone Wall, it was there was one of
the few places where um, transgender people were welcomed, and
it was actually kind of their bar um. And like
you said, is people were filing out, showing their ide
and waiting for their friends. That crowd was growing bigger
and bigger, and they're growing on the other side of

(31:58):
the cops. So now there's this crowd developing that and
the cops are between the crowd and the outside of
the stone Wall, right, so they're kind of trapped. Yeah,
it's a pretty tight area anyway, if you've ever been
over there, the whole West villages like that, but where
the stone Wall is in particular, it's just not you know,
it doesn't face some big, wide open Manhattan street scene. Yeah.

(32:19):
And so there's this crowd is getting bigger and bigger.
There's it's hot, they're getting a little restless, they're starting
to shout some stuff at the cops. Um. And I
think there's a number of things that ed Says contributed
as as triggers or flashpoints from this what should have

(32:40):
been a routine police raid to harass you know, gay
bars are shut down a mafia owned bar um turning
into this uprising um and there is there were there
were several things. One of the things that the context
that was in was this is a time in the
United States as a whole when social all unrest was

(33:02):
pretty prominent. There are a lot of groups that were
organizing and agitating just against the status quo and the establishment,
and so the idea of pushing back against police brutality
was definitely you know, in the air in the United
States more than say, you know, five or ten years earlier. Yeah,
I mean, this was a time of war protests of

(33:25):
the Black Panthers if you listen to that episode, and
in fact, as you'll see in the days following, uh,
not even following the riots, but as the riots extended
into days two, three, four, or five and six, the
Black Panthers actually showed up in support, which was great.
Uh So another thing that happened was the uh there
was no backup. There were there were not enough cops.

(33:46):
They were calling for backup from the Six, but the
Six had been getting kickbacks and kind of the story
goes that they didn't so much appreciate this other group,
the division of public morals coming into their did their
uh zone and kind of taking charge of this raid.
So they were like, you know, we're not gonna send
anyone right now. At least that's how the story goes. Yeah,

(34:07):
seymour Pine is actually interviewed in the Uprising documentary and
he's saying like the radio kept cutting out every time
he called for backup, and he's like that had never
happened before. Um, So the the insinuation is is that, yeah,
the six Precinct was like you're on your own, pal,
this will teach you a lesson, but you could kind
of understand from the six Precincts point of view, like

(34:31):
it was fine, like any like three or four straight
cops could handle any number of you know, gay people
coming out of a gay bar during a raid. Because
gay gay people were viewed as docile, effeminate, basically every
everything that um the white male establishment viewed women as

(34:53):
like in all of the the repugnant ways, they also
viewed gay people in exactly the same way, right, So
they idea that the sixth Precinct didn't send any backup
wasn't like these guys are gonna get killed and we
don't care. It was let those guys handle handle. You know,
this the the administrative part of this raid or whatever.
They bit this off. Now they can chew it right. Yeah,

(35:16):
Like what's gonna happen. They're not gonna fight back, like exactly,
you know that never happened. That was the idea. So
all this is going on, there being fight out, filed out,
this crowd is growing, tensions are brewing, and um, here's
where it gets murky and and apparently there's a lot
of versions of the story and even some infighting within

(35:37):
the LGBTQ community on who actually started it. Uh. Some
people say that someone named Marcia Johnson uh yelled from
the bar, I got my civil rights and threw a
shot glass through the bar mirror. It was called the
shot glass heard around the world. Other people say someone
named Jackie Hormona uh started it. And other people say

(35:58):
this uh. One lesbian being stuffed in a cop car
was battling so fiercely that she kind of got things going. Yes,
supposedly she shouted, why don't you guys do something to
the crowd. Is she's like fighting a bunch of cops. Yeah,
to me, it doesn't matter who maybe lit the fuse,
so to speak. Um, it could have been any number

(36:19):
of people as far as I'm concerned. Yeah, well, yeah, sure, yeah,
I mean it could have been that. It could have
been um. The people started throwing pennies at the cops,
and then pennies turned into bricks, and then somebody um
set some garbage on fire outside of the uh the
um stone wall, and and essentially something changed, right, the

(36:42):
tone changed. It turned as if you were a cop.
It turned ugly real quick and whatever started it, it
started to to to move fairly quickly. And seymour Pine,
Deputy Inspector seymour Pine of Manhattan's First Division of Public Morals, said,
we need to get into the safety of the bar,

(37:03):
which is really saying something about what the mood of
the crowd was like if all of a sudden, the
inside of the stone wall in was now the safest
place to be, right it was. It became their refuge, ironically,
so they locked themselves in and uh did not stay
in there for too long. I mean, there were still
some patrons in there. There was a reporter in there
supposedly and uh yeah he was from the village voice. Yeah.

(37:26):
And then they the people outside ripped up a parking meter.
Um knocked down the door. Uh. And by all accounts,
the cops were in a bit of a state of
shock because they didn't see this coming. I think a
lot of the protesters were surprised at themselves that they
were standing up as one and and being physical with
these police officers. Yeah. And one of the one of

(37:48):
the people who was there, who was interviewed in the
documentary was saying, like they crowd like saw it. They
saw that the police were scared, and like crowd was
feeding on that, Like it was just feeding the crowd
that to see the cops who had always been in control,
who are the ones who had abused you know, this
community for so long, We're now suddenly scared for their lives.

(38:12):
Just just this crowd was just eating it up, and
it was feeding the energy that they were working off of.
And Chuck, apparently there's one of the cops was so
scared that he threw his gun at the crowd and
from what I understand, no shoullets, That's what I'm saying.
From what I understand, no shots were fired, which means
that it would have been full of bullets. So basically
that cop was like, here here's my loaded gun. Yeah,

(38:35):
that's weird. That's what you're supposed to do in an
old Western when you run out of bullets, right, or
with Superman, right, you shoot at him and then all
the bullets bounce off his chest, and then you throw
your gun at him and he ducks. So weird. All right,
let's take another break. The riot is in full swing
at this point, and we'll come back and finish up
and tell you the end of the story right after this. So, Chuck,

(39:18):
I feel like we should well we're describing the rest
of the riot. We should be playing yakety sacks, just
to give it a light touch. So it was. Um.
One of the one of the accounts that I saw,
apparently compiled by David Carter was that um, it was.
It was. It was a gay riot, right. There were

(39:39):
a lot of transgender um people dressed up women dressed
up UM doing a kick line at the police, like
a Rockets kick line and singing right. Um. One transgender
woman hit one of the police with her purse. Um.
There was there was a there was you know, death

(40:00):
only that element going on. The cops were apparently really
caught off guard by this time. The the I think
the sixth had gotten the word, and we're starting to
send back up because they had heard that these cops
were now holed up inside the stone wall and there
was a riot going on outside, so they were sending
back up. But even the backup and trained riot police

(40:21):
were like powerless in the face of this completely bizarre riot. Right,
they were used to a certain kind of riot, they
were not used to a gay riot, and and it
was throwing them off big time. Well, it's funny to
the uh, the one of the guys in the documentary
said the next day he was talking about all the
the fake jewelry and the sequence on the street and

(40:42):
he was like, it looked like just like a field
of like shimmery diamonds and things. So this is you're right,
this is unlike any riot they had experienced. And um,
I guess this was precursor to SWAT. Was New York's
tactical patrol force. Yeah, it might have been, what wasn't
it And temporary SWAT was like called out for the

(41:03):
against the Black Panthers in l A for the first time.
It would have been like maybe that year, the year before,
but New York wouldn't have had a SWAT team by then. Yeah,
We did an episode on SWAT, so you can go
listen to that and correct us at will. But so
they call in the technical Patrol Force. Uh, things are
definitely serious at this point, and uh they were probably

(41:25):
you know, between six hundred and a thousand people. Uh,
people started calling people on the phone. Uh, you know,
get down here, it's going down, and um the crowd
swelled in. You know, when you got a thousand angry
people from the LGBTQ community that had had enough after
years and years of mistreatment. Um, it was pretty serious affair. Yeah,

(41:46):
for sure. I mean any time people are throwing bricks
at cops, it turned serious pretty quick, right. Yeah. So, um,
because you said before, like the the layout of the
streets in in the um Westville are not like in
a neat grid. The cops would chase the rioters or
the um, the protesters, whatever you want to call him

(42:09):
at this point down one street, and then the crowd,
rather than running and dispersing, would just turn as a
hole down another stream, come back around, and then they
would be chasing the cops. So there was this whole
like chase and and like just just changes in the momentum.
Like we were talking about earlier. Um, and it just
went on for hours and hours and hours basically until

(42:31):
daylight from what I understand. Yeah, So eventually, um, this
crowd dispersed, but uh, it did not end there. This
went on for about six days, and uh. Another guy
in the documentary said that he felt like people were
even more angry on day two. Um kind of once
word got around, Um, but on day two, three, four,

(42:53):
or five and six, it was a little bit different. Things.
Actually they got a little more organized, um, and not
in a in a violent way, like you know, here's
how we're gonna take them down strategically. But uh, like
we said, people started coming out. Black panthers came out,
hippies came out, so the rights protesters, tourists came out.
It became a like Ed says, a counterculture event. And uh,

(43:18):
before you knew it, it was. It was kind of
the first big, major major gay protest was going on.
Right They basically anybody who wanted to fight the cops
was like, let's go do this, and they they did
for like you said, two, three or four or five,
six days. It was coalescing. It feels like day two
though Day two seems to be like the the day

(43:43):
when everything really came together, because there were still more
protesters than cops. Apparently, although the cops changed tactics. They
were no longer like hitting people with clubs in the legs.
They were hitting him in the head and they were
like a lot of people with head injuries laying around.
It was pretty grizzly and brutal, but the protesters were
still like fighting pretty hard. But in the midst of

(44:05):
all this there were also people giving speeches and they
were chanting gay power. Um. There was a political tone
to it that hadn't been there the night before, and
that that wouldn't be there necessarily for the following nights
because a night I guess three, um, there were more

(44:26):
cops than than protesters from that that moment on. But
one of the one of the other things that that
really kind of egged this whole thing along as well
was that the next night, after this this riot and
protests and um at following the raid, the stone ball
In opened again for Saturday. So they opened up on
Saturday and it was just a they just put out

(44:46):
a welcome sign for all of the protesters saying, come
on back, it's not done yet. Yeah. So Eventually everything
quieted down after those six days by that next Sunday
and UM, but the this would not be the end.
It was really just kind of the beginning of what
was to come. UM. A few months after that, they
had a commemorative march in New York and across the

(45:09):
United States, and then that was just one March. And
then a year later, on the first anniversary of the riots, UH,
they had what would become the first Gay Pride March.
They didn't call it that at the time. UM. And
in the in the documentary, it's it's really moving when
UH they're talking about you know, at first they didn't
you know, they said they didn't know if it was

(45:30):
supposed to be from Christopher Street to UH to Central Park,
and they said, we didn't know if we were gonna
make it that far. We didn't know if there would
be ten of us or twelve of us. UH. It
was just sort of uncertain. You know. It was obviously
way before internet, and so there wasn't you know, communication
like you have today. But what they had relieflets, and

(45:51):
they handed out thousands of them, UH, and there were
a few hundred people at first, but all these people
from the LGBTQ community were apparently in the streets and
support and as they marched they joined in. I think
I think there was a lot of fear to you know,
hold up a sign and join a march until they
saw other people doing the same thing, and so they

(46:13):
kind of joined in. And by the time they got
to Central Park, you know, there were thousands and thousands
of people, uh in what would be, you know, the
first Pride parade in the United States, and apparently the
the time that was scheduled, Like, the parade finished in
about half the time they had allotted for it because
everybody was moving so quickly because they were so excited

(46:35):
and so nervous about what was gonna happen. But yeah,
it turned out to be the first gay Pride parade.
The guy called it, they called it a run. Yeah,
it was pretty funny. Yeah, but it's pretty amazing that
as it went it just attracted support, Like that's a
heck of a parade. When the bystanders get sucked into
the parade, that's a good parade right there. Yeah. So

(46:58):
out of this grew the activists Alliance the Gay Liberation
Front UM ed pointed out an irony that it really
never occurred to me. But one of the reasons it's
considered sort of the birth of the modern gay rights movement,
he said, is because it was not the start of
the gay rights movement. And like we said earlier, there
was that foundation was already there. Uh, this was just

(47:21):
sort of the catalyst. They weren't starting from scratch. They
had these groups that were together and they were kind
of just I think waiting for this, for something to
happen to really bring them attention. And UM. Even though
there were some uprisings in sixty five and sixty six
and sixty seven in San Francisco and l A, they

(47:41):
weren't UM although the New York Times didn't cover this
like they should have either, But those weren't covered by
major newspapers at all, just underground newspapers, so they never
really uh kind of got the the coverage, and they
weren't as noteworthy a stone Wall ended up being. I
was reading about that to the UM Compton caffee Compton's
Cafeteria riot in San Francisco, and I think nineteen seven

(48:05):
UM was a pretty big riot actually, and it was
a transgender UM riot where transgender women who were UM
working the tender Loin as sex workers because it couldn't
get work anywhere else. Um, they were just sick of
being brutalized by cops. And one of them was being
arrested for being transgender, and she threw her a cup

(48:27):
of coffee in the CoP's face, and the whole riot,
just the whole the place just rioted. Like it was.
It was just an explosion of violence in the face
of brutality. And none of the papers mentioned it didn't
even get mentioned. Like the mainstream media would not touch
anything that gay people were doing, including rioting in the

(48:49):
streets of San Francisco. Um, just they just wouldn't talk
about it. Well. And yeah, like I said, the Times,
while they did cover it, it was it wasn't a
backpagees thing, but it definitely didn't at the attention that
any other kind of like you know, violence against police
would have gotten at the time. But um, the LGBTQ
community didn't. They just didn't stop. Basically, they said, you know,

(49:11):
we're going to turn these into groups and marches and
rallies and parades and protests. And that was really the
significance and and the legacy that Stonewall had today is it.
It really just was sort of a uh parton the pun,
kind of a coming out party for the entire movement.
You know. Yeah, it was a debut tant fall for

(49:33):
the gay community. It was. Yeah, that's pretty cool. Um.
I think that was the key was organizing, like taking
that momentum and organizing it, turning it into something big. Yeah.
I think that's probably the key with anything like that. Yeah.
And I think it also, um, I think it brought
together that community in a way that it hadn't before. Um.

(49:56):
It seems like they always sort of supported one another,
but they're are in word or we're in our divisions
of you know, kind of straight acting masculine gay men
and lesbians and the trans community. But this seemed to
bring everyone together of all races and um, just apparently
the the entire riot and and uh protest scene was

(50:21):
just incredibly diverse. You know. Don't watch the movies. Yeah,
so very bad. Yeah, one of the heroes in one
turns straight and marries a policewoman in the end. I mean,
the documentaries are good, but there's been two movies two
thousand fifteen, the one and two thousand fifteen was just

(50:42):
an abomination. Basically. Yeah, documentaries are rarely bad, almost never bad. Yeah,
the it's the the movies. Movies, they're not that great sometimes. Yeah,
the one in Roland Emmerick made this movie and what's
that name? Familiar? I know that name? He did Independence
Day in Godzilla. Okay, Like, I have no idea what

(51:04):
he was doing with this thing. Maybe he I don't know,
Maybe he's gay, Maybe his heart was in the right place.
I have no idea. Like, I don't know anything about
the guy. But all I know is he was roundly
criticized for whitewashing, uh what happened and fiction and he
said it was fictionalized, But like, why fictionalize it? Why
just cast a bunch of handsome white dudes when you
can tell the real story, you know? Right? Yeah, and

(51:27):
and and it's like you you said you already kind
of touched upon. But I think it bears repeating. Like
there's a lot of discussion about who did what and
who played what role in in the Stone Wall Uprising,
and I think the transgender community in particular feels like
yet again they're being put in the in the back

(51:47):
seat behind masculine, white gay males um when when in fact,
they may not have played a bigger role or may
have played an equally significant role to tran the trans
gender community that was there at Stonewall Um. But historically speaking,

(52:07):
the transgender community or sub community or subculture of the
gay community has has usually taken a back seat to
the what I guess what you would just call that,
that white masculine male community. And and I can understand
being upset about that if if you know, if you're transgender.
Uh so in twenty six uh and I guess I

(52:31):
was there right after this um because it was already
a monument, the Stonewall in and the cute, little tiny
Christopher Park right there next door out front was designated
a national monument by President Obama, the very first such
dedicated to gay rights. And the Pride March still ends
on Christopher Street every year. And I say, go and

(52:54):
have a drink there. It's a truly historic place, and
it's a landmark. And I would guess now they've cleaned
it up enough so you won't catch anything from the
house beer. Yeah, it's not. They don't have buckets of beer.
We have buckets of beer, but it's coronas in a
bucket of ice. Yeah, find your find your beach is

(53:16):
with the stone Wall. You got anything else? Nope? Man,
go watch the Stonewall Uprising American Experience documentary everybody, especially
the part of the footage of that first Pride parade
when it ends in the park. It'll just do your
heart good. Uh. If you want to know more about

(53:37):
the stone Wall Uprising, you can type stone Wall in
the search bar how stuff works dot com and it
will bring up this excellent article by the Grabster. And
since I said the grabs there, it's time for listener mail. Uh.
You know what, We're gonna forego listener mail this week
in favor of our annual call for uh iTunes reviews. Awesome?

(54:00):
How about that? So one thing that always helps the
podcast out. Um. People are always asking what they can
do besides spreading the word, is if you go and
leave a review on iTunes or I guess it's now
Apple podcasts. Um, it helps us out. And even if
it's bad, well, that didn't help us. But no, that
doesn't help. Don't listen to Chuck, everybody listen to the

(54:21):
first part, but not the second part. Just you know,
leave your honest review and assessment and all that helps
us out and it's been very effective over the years,
it keeping us viable and vital. So yeah, we'll be
back next week with listener mail, but we would very
much appreciate that. Well. Thanks and if you want to
let us know that you left us a nice review

(54:43):
so we can say thank you. You can tweet to
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(55:09):
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